I started this episode with an audible “OH, NO.” The scene opens with New Agey flute music and a generic American Indian performing a generically Indian ceremony over some sort of tiny generic statuette in a generic cave under the surface of Manhatten. Visually, this is not promising, but I really wonder what language he is speaking, and how well. If the voiceover is relatively accurate, that’s something, at least.
Cut to present-day NYC, with someone pulling up the hood on what looks to my admittedly non-expert eyes like a generically “Indian” magic cloak, which enables the wearer to walk through walls (and carries its own hip-hop soundtrack, too!). This is not a particularly sophisticated invocation of the Lenape: they’re figured, as First Nations people usual are, as mystical Others with a unique connection to nature and the land. In this case, that connection is so pure as to allow supernatural manipulation of the elements.
It all just seems so very stereotypical! I am, of course, more than willing — excited, even — to be proven wrong. I don’t know enough about Lenape culture to know how accurate any of the representations of Lenape art and language are. But it all seems pretty generic to me.
Also problematic for me was when Artie takes one look at the feather and says “Looks Native American.” Because only the First Nations ever use feathers? Later, however, he at least acknowledges the name of the Lenape, which is one tiny step in the right direction.
I do feel like Weaver’s repetition of “It’s not meant for you” in the climactic cave scene acknowledges the imperialist creepiness of the white dudes collecting Lenape and Lenape-related artifacts in order to find the sacred cave and therefore master the elements. We’ve had 500 years of fantasies of white domination already; without Weaver’s saying that, this episode really would feel like yet another un-self-conscious instance of it. And yet the elements are themselves white fantasies: the Water of Eternal Life, in particular, plays into the same myth of the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Léon kept pursuing. In fact, the four “superpowers” bestowed by the four elements in the cave all represent what Europeans dreamed they would find in the New World, and the idea of there being a secret cave hidden underneath NYC that would provide all of those things only contributes to the notion that the Lenape and other tribes had Secret Knowledge about how to dominate the earth, but that they nobly safeguarded that knowledge (and therefore the earth) from the greedy rapaciousness of others.
It’s another aspect of the myth of the Noble Savage. The problem is really that even though this story has an American Indian artifact at the center, the Lenape themselves don’t matter at all to the story. The artifact is just a plot device, something to enable the white characters to work through conflict and save the day. There’s no depth to the representations of non-white characters.
Which reminds me: I still really like Leena and I wish she were given a chance to talk about anything that does not involve helping the white people ~*~understand themselves~*~! I was so excited for the first few minutes of the scene between Leena and Claudia — I thought we were going to pass the Bechdel test at last! But even though the two women only talked about Claudia, I think it violates the spirit of the Bechdel test to have the two women characters talk about something that isn’t a man if one of them is still falling into skeevy racial stereotypes.
But what do you think, friendly reader?
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A note on terminology: I interchange “Indian” and “American Indian” with “First Nations” because those are generally the terms that I have seen people of Native descent prefer to use themselves when they don’t use tribe names. “Native American,” as I understand, is a term that was decided on by white people.
Prestidigitation Station 