How the World Moves by Peter Nabokov - Penguin Books (2016)
I would like to think that I benefitted from a fairly progressive upbringing. My teachers always encouraged me to ask questions, pursue alternative viewpoints, and listen to the marginalized voices drowned out by the bullhorn of Western narcissism. My parents pushed me to unearth the foundations beneath every accepted narrative, every assumption, every story that concluded with a straightforward confrontation between good and evil. But there are certainly gaps in my knowledge. After reading How the World Moves by Peter Nabokov, I realize how little I know about the country I am proud to call my home. I am not dense enough to believe that North America rose out of the sea like some biblical Atlantis, custom-made to accommodate the battered victims of European religious strife. The modern world did not pop into being as the first white man’s boot touched down upon Plymouth Rock. But I am ashamed to admit that I know very little about the pre-puritan history of the ‘New World.’ The fact that I still think of Native Americans (Indians? American Indians?) as a homogenous mass—a bastardized conglomerate of many distinct tribal units—is rather alarming. I am embarrassed to say that as a relatively enlightened twenty-four year old woman with a receptive heart and an inquisitive mind, the names that I remember most easily are those of Pocahontas and Sacagawea—both of whom have been reduced in the established narrative to harmless feminine ideals of ‘noble’ savagery that mainly exist to compliment and assist masculine Western progress. It is high time to fill in the gaps.
How the World Moves is about a single Pueblo family and their attempts to juggle Native expectations and Western opportunities. Raised in the isolated New Mexican mesa community of Acoma, Edward Proctor Hunt embodied what it means to be a cultural hybrid. Born in 1861, Hunt coexisted, from the start, as a member of one of the oldest nations on earth, as well as one of the newest. His ancestors could trace their roots back to Pueblo villages pre-dating the birth of Christ. Their communal identity was strengthened by a set of complex creation myths, a pantheon of minor deities, and a deeply-entrenched respect for nature. They had survived wars against neighboring tribes, the aggressive and racist policies of the Catholic Spaniards, and the exploitive and inhumane ones of the later Americans. They watched as their lands were settled by white men and their children were carted off to Christian boarding schools. The fact that Acoma culture remained relatively intact for so long is partly explained by its geographical isolation atop a rocky outcrop. It is also due to an ingrained wariness and a refusal to speak about their beliefs and rituals with outsiders. But by the time Edward Proctor Hunt came into the world, things had already begun to change. Writes Nabokov:
Edward’s life span [covered] the period of the greatest displacement of indigenous peoples in world history. During this time many millions of tribespeople and peasant villagers were thrown on the road, uprooted by war, famine, greed, genocide, or extreme prejudice. The story behind the Hunt family’s hegira is akin to that of refugees in general who must face anguishing decisions about staying put or reaching out for more survivable and successful futures. Many strike hard bargains between tradition and progress and wind up fending for themselves through all manner of diasporas, both external and internal. Their stories are a defining aspect of our human experience, as thousands of premodern communities produced postmodern families like the Hunts.
How does one choose between individual survival and cultural preservation? Which among us has been asked whether we would prefer to abandon our community or die a slow death in obscure and unseen poverty? If a boy watches his homeland shrink, year by year, overtaken by men who wield superior weapons and technology, can his embrace of modernity really be considered a betrayal? These are difficult questions and there will never be easy answers. Was Edward Hunt a sellout? And when exactly did his betrayal occur? Most would argue that his willingness to perform in traveling shows as a kind of whooping, scalp-snatching ‘every-Indian’ character was the point of no return. But perhaps the Acoma elders would suggest that Edward Hunt severed ties the moment he agreed to share tribal secrets and myths with the esteemed anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institute. Because if knowledge is power, the Acoma Indians’ refusal to share their worldview was itself an act of resistance. As if to say, you can take our land, you can call us primitive, but you will never infiltrate the intimate spaces of our minds. Edward Hunt let the white man in. After centuries of oppression, manipulation, and criminal neglect, it was impossible for the Acoma elders to understand how one of their own could trust the duplicitous motives of an outsider. Writes Nabokov:
The target of this adulation hardly knew what hit them. First came the question of how to decipher the ravenous curiosity that energized these eager white faces. It was such an about-face from even a generation before, when disdain, even disgust, for Indian religion, social practices, and pace of life was palpable. What range of desires lay behind this new scrutiny, and why were they being questioned about beliefs and practices these whites once found so abhorrent?
The problem facing Edward Hunt is the same problem that many ethnic ‘minorities’ come to face. White people often take individualism for granted. I am not expected to live my life in opposition to harmful racial stereotypes, so I enjoy greater freedom to make mistakes and act selfishly. I try to make my friends and parents proud, but that’s as far as it goes. I do not have to answer to a larger community fighting for recognition and respect. There is no room for selfish behavior, for individual desire, when one is expected to redeem the status of an entire race. That is why it is so difficult to make a conclusive statement as to the contradictory character of Edward Hunt and his adaptive clan. Writes Nabokov:
They delivered the thrills of seeing costumed and war-painted Indians in the flesh (especially those attired like fearsome Plains Indian warriors) with the sense that audiences were also being educated in their tribal backgrounds. Here were Indians who seemed incontrovertibly Indian but whom outsiders felt good being around. The fortuitous combination of their handsome looks and unique life experiences made them perfect mediators for all the contradictory ideas and symbolism that swirled around the paradoxical images of the Indian—as savage and noble, solid friend and frightening foe, enemy other and congenial ally, rapist and spiritualist, border-town drunk and wilderness mentor.
As problematic as the Hunt family’s simplified and flattened performances may have been, they were at least celebratory in tone. Despite the fact that Indians were (and are) considered to be more or less interchangeable, their accumulated dances, songs, and crafts were deemed worthy of preservation. There were also spiritual lessons to be learned from the Indians, along with a more symbiotic relationship with nature. Were the Hunts, whose insider knowledge did afford them at least a bit of authenticity, truly any worse than the affluent white Bohemians who turned native culture into a doomed and dying fetish? In other words, if the above quotation makes you feel uncomfortable, how about the following?
The crocodile tears shed across America over the widespread lamentation that the country’s Indians were a “vanishing species” were in flood as the nation approached its new century [the twentieth]…Painters, sculptors, and photographers exploited the nation’s distress over the plight of the Indian by portraying broken warriors fading into sunsets, riding alongside train tracks or telegraph wires, or slumped over drooping horses…What no political or social forecasters were willing to admit was how this pathetic vision caused inner sighs of relief. If everyone remained patient, natural attrition and what some called “the normal replacement of one race by another” would solve the “Indian Problem” all by itself.
How The World Moves is full of passages like the one above. Peter Nabokov raises difficult questions, prods festering wounds, and bolsters his elegant prose with an impressive library of research. His role, of course, carries its own contradictions. How are we meant to feel about white anthropologists who claim to speak for their subjects? Isn’t Nabokov’s repeated assertion that Edward Hunt was ostracized for sharing tribal secrets with Western academics a bit hypocritical? Nabokov is, after all, himself a professor of American Indian Studies at UCLA, and his research relies on interviewing and observing Natives who might be punished for their collaboration. I’m not sure I know how I feel about these issues. On the one hand, I have an acknowledged appetite for information—I am fascinated by other cultures (past and present) and would like to learn as much as I can. On the other hand, I recognize that some knowledge is too sacred to be shared. Secrets, especially spiritual ones, belong to individuals and communities—they are not owed to some kind of nebulous Western knowledge bank. If not knowing something allows another culture to protect its dignity, then I think I am happy to remain in the dark.
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