J.K. Rowling, released four new stories from March 8-11 that delve deeper into the history of wizarding in the colonies with a "Magic in North America" series. The four-part series arrives in order to celebrate the upcoming prequel film, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". The stories were first published on Pottermore.com on March 8.
The first story, "Fourteenth Century-Seventeenth Century", discusses the wizarding world between the 1300's and 1600's and is short at a mere 500 words. In other stories, readers learn about the slang term for “Muggle”, "no-maj", which means "no magic." Readers also discover Native American skin-walkers, know as Animagi, that can transform their human form into animals. Rowling elaborated further in her stories about who exactly the Animagi were,
"The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic practiced by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand.
The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.”
These stories fueled a Twitter-storm of angry readers who are accusing Rowling of cultural appropriation. Many are criticizing Rowing for her seeming lack of knowledge on American history. It is her shallow understanding of native history and culture in the the stories specially in her first story, "Fourteenth-Seventeenth Century," that becomes problematic.
Dr. Adrienne Keene, author of the blog Native Appropriations writes in relation to Rowling’s stories:
“We fight so hard every single day as Native peoples to be seen as contemporary, real, full, and complete human beings and to push away from the stereotypes that restrict us in stock categories of mystical-connected-to-nature-shamans or violent-savage-warriors. Colonization erases our humanity, tells us that we are less than, that our beliefs and religions are 'uncivilized', that our existence is incongruent with modernity.
This is not ancient history, this is not “the past.” The ongoing oppression of Native peoples is reinscribed everyday through texts and images like this trailer. How in the world could a young person watch this and not make a logical leap that Native peoples belong in the same fictional world as Harry Potter?"
In the second installment, Rowling dives into the Salem witch trials and explains a different history in which wizards in the new world found it difficult to practice magic. In the third installment, she tells readers why the “no-maj” community was segregated. In the fourth and final story, Rowling speaks about wand makers in North America and the different types of materials they used such as Thunderbird feathers, Wampus cat hair and White River Monster spines.
Overall, the four short stories set a good background for the upcoming movie, but next time it would benefit Rowling to do more research before creating an entire history using borrowed cultures and experiences.
