I have gone over this multiple times on my blog, but let’s do it one last time, I guess.
That is exactly what I’m saying. Riordan’s depiction of Piper is racist. I doubt it was intentional, but racism borne out of ignorance is still racism, especially since Riordan is a very famous and well-off author who could’ve very easily hired a Cherokee consultant to help make sure that Piper was as accurate and appropriate as possible. Instead, he turned her into a walking stereotype.
1) She wears feathers in her hair. Not sure why people think that this is okay in the year 2019, but a lot of settlers have gotten pissed off at me for bringing up so let me just say that it is absolutely racist no matter how you look at it.
Native people do not just randomly braid feathers into our hair, that’s a stereotype that was created by white people to exotify us. We especially don’t braid random EAGLE FEATHERS in our hair, considering that eagles are sacred and their feathers are only worn under very specific circumstances by very specific people. In Cherokee culture, eagle feathers are only worn by spiritual leaders or warriors, and they MUST be gifted to that person by an Elder or tribal leader. The best equivalent I can think of is a Purple Heart badge.
Even if she did earn her eagle feather and received it from a tribe Elder, she still wouldn’t wear it casually. Feathers are only worn for ceremonial purposes, and kept safely stored away until they’re needed. No Native person who has received that incredible honor would wear an eagle feather with a Hello Kitty t-shirt, as Piper was explicitly described as doing.
2) She’s given “kaleidoscope eyes”, which has a lot of bad connotations. First of all, they’re supposedly inherited by Aphrodite but a) gods don’t have DNA and b) no other child of Aphrodite is described with shifting features like that. If they were inherited from Aphrodite, that’s still bad since her appearance shifts based on what others think is most beautiful, suggesting that not only are regular brown eyes not beautiful, but that Native girls with actual Native features are less beautiful than Native girls with European features.
3) She’s oversexualized in her claiming and by Jason afterwards.
“But now she was adorned in a beautiful white sleeveless gown that went down to her ankles, with a V-neck so low it was totally embarrassing.” (The Lost Hero, page 95)
“With the makeup and the dress and the perfect hair, she’d looked about twenty-five, glamorous, and completely out of his league. He’d never thought of beauty as a form of power, but that’s the way Piper had seemed—powerful.
He liked regular Piper better—someone he could hang out with. But the weird thing was, he couldn’t quite get that other image out of his head. It hadn’t been an illusion. That side of Piper was there too. She just did her best to hide it.” (The Lost Hero, page 201)
She is sexualized by Aphrodite in her claiming and then later by Jason, without her knowledge or consent. The things said above are absolutely not appropriate ways to describe a 15 year old, and definitely not a 15 year old Native girl.
The oversexualization of Native women, especially young girls, is DANGEROUS. According to the National Institute of Justice, about 56% of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes, and 55% have experienced domestic violence. In 97% of those cases, the violence was from a non-Native perpetrator. This is a very dangerous reality for our community and our women and girls, and I am NOT impressed with a white man contributing to that sexualization and exposing all of his readers to it too.
4) It’s stated multiple times that her dad is from a reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. There are no Cherokee reservations in Oklahoma; in fact, Oklahoma doesn’t have any reservations at all, something you can find out with a simple google search. Instead, Tahlequah has the Cherokee Nation Headquarters, which is a government base and not a living facility.
To make this sort of mistake, Riordan had to have done the absolute bare minimum of research. If it wasn’t a mistake, then he made a conscious decision to make up an entirely fictional reservation, pushing the frustrating and stereotypical misconception that all Native people have to be from reservations in order to be Native.
5) She’s a kleptomaniac. There’s a violent stereotype associated with Natives being thieves, something that has gotten countless Native people arrested, assaulted, and killed for the crime of being Native. There was no reason to make stealing her way of getting attention when there’s tons of other things she could’ve done.
6) “The week before, he’d turned down several million dollars to play Tonto in a remake of The Lone Ranger. Piper was still trying to figure out why. He’d played all kinds of roles—a Latino teacher in a tough L.A. school, a dashing Israeli spy in an action-adventure blockbuster, even a Syrian terrorist in a James Bond movie. And, of course, he would always be known as the King of Sparta. But if the part was Native American—it didn’t matter what kind of role it was—Dad turned it down.” (The Lost Hero, page 165)
Her dad is more willing to play a violent Middle Eastern stereotype than play as a Native person. I think that speaks for itself.
7) There are frequent mentions of the rattlesnake song and a lot of implications that it would help Piper in her journey. It’s one of the very few mentions of Cherokee culture in the series, and the only thing that has any real bearing on Piper as a character and her journey.
“Her dad laughed, as if that had never occurred to him. ‘No, Pipes. Fine airplane. That’s not how I named you. Grandpa Tom picked out your name. First time he heard you cry, he said you had a powerful voice—better than any reed flute piper. He said you’d learn to sing the hardest Cherokee songs, even the snake song.’
[…] Afterward, the snakes were impressed that the man had given up so much and kept his promise. They taught him the snake song for all the Cherokee to use. From that point on, if any Cherokee met a snake and sang that song, the snake would recognize the Cherokee as a friend, and would not bite.
‘That’s awful!’ Piper had said. ‘He let his wife die?’
Her dad spread his hands. ‘It was a hard sacrifice. But one life brought generations of peace between snakes and Cherokee. Grandpa Tom believed that Cherokee music could solve almost any problem. He thought you’d know lots of songs, and be the greatest musician of the family. That’s why we named you Piper.’
A hard sacrifice. Had her grandfather foreseen something about her, even when she was a baby? Had he sensed she was a child of Aphrodite? Her dad would probably tell her that was crazy. Grandpa Tom was no oracle.” (The Lost Hero, page 256)
And when she finally encountered a snake that she had to fight, that build-up led literally nowhere. Instead of singing the traditional and cultural song that was explicitly talked about, she sang an entirely different song for literally no reason.
“Kekrops’s offer made sense. At least, it sounded like the least suicidal option. But Piper was certain the snake king was hiding his true intentions. She just didn’t know how to prove it …
Then she remembered something her father had told her years ago: You were named Piper because Grandpa Tom thought you would have a powerful voice. You would learn all the Cherokee songs, even the song of the snakes.
A myth from a totally different culture, yet here she was, facing the king of the snake people.
She began to sing: ‘Summertime’, one of her dad’s favourites.” (The Blood of Olympus, page 337)
Not only does that choice not make sense, but it threw all of the previous foreshadowing right into the garbage and discarded one of the very few, possibly only, accurate depictions of Cherokee culture in the series.
8) She’s paired off with a white guy, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, except that there’s almost no Native women in media who don’t have white love interests. There’s a very long history behind Native women being forced to marry white men, sometimes literally being sold to them for that specific purpose, and as someone whose family was directly impacted by that history, it’s really horrifying when media treats white men as the only valid option for Native women.
