Algonquin Protagonist, Half-Algonquin Villain: Problems?
i’m an Algonquin author writing a story about an Algonquin transgirl, Ivy, who’s trying to rediscover her heritage. a big conflict in this story is her “friend”, proserpine, a half-Algonquin half-white who doesn’t give a shit about her own heritage and thinks Ivy shouldn’t either. she’s constantly dragging Ivy out to parties, wheedling her into going to study groups, calling her after school to talk, and generally getting in the way of Ivy’s research.
but I worry that having a half-Algonquin villain might be problematic. i’m considering three options to negate this: give proserpine some white friends egging her on to get in Ivy’s way, make her less Algonquin (a quarter or less instead of white), or have her white father putting pressure on her to get in Ivy’s way, and in the end have her see what a scumbag he is and denounce him.
I’d say your solutions are doable, but a bit incomplete. There’s a lot of pitfalls here I want you to be aware of, as someone reconnecting and mixed with white.
The Importance of Positive Side Characters
Right now, you’re stuck on two Indigenous characters and only negative-influence side characters, all friends or family of Proserpine. All of the problems are caused by white characters to try very hard to show that this anti-Native racism is a white problem.
What you haven’t done is explore the possibility of having positive side characters, such as:
Connected Indigenous people of various percentages who offer a safe friendship space so Ivy isn’t alone
Other reconnecting people (both mixed with white and not) who invite her to reconnection activities so Ivy can tell Proserpine “sorry, I’m busy”
Elders who help her along and encourage her to follow her own path
White friends of Ivy’s who are supportive and condemn Proserpine
These positive side characters would help flesh out the story and richen the conflict; primarily, they would force Ivy to make a choice between new friends who support her, and old friends who don’t. They would also force Proserpine to wonder if it’s really worth being unsupportive if she’s at a genuine risk of losing a friend of hers.
Percentage of White Mix Does Not A Villain Make
I really, really do not like the implication that the “closer” to white you are, the more toxic you are to other reconnecting people. I am 1/8th Mohawk/Mi’kmaq, and my mom is ¼. My mom is the one who “reconnects” via the new age section at the bookstore, literally never checks if a thing is white-authored, and has no land stewardship initiatives. I’m the one who digs into ethnographies, looks for environmental conservation initiatives, and looks for ancestral crafts and has all the language books.
This is one of the reasons I suggested supportive white friends of Ivy’s and supportive mixed-reconnecting friends. While white people make really easy villains in these sorts of situations, your story and proposed solutions create some really toxic blood quotient implications that make it only full-blood people are good, supportive characters.
By relying on “% white” as the shorthand for “villain” in this specific situation, you end up throwing all white-mixed reconnecting Natives under the bus. Are we often villains? Yes. Proximity to whiteness produces a lot of anti-Blackness, a lot of internalized white supremacy, etc.
But this is not universally true, and I really don’t want a story about reconnection to have that sort of message. If you’re trying to position this as a story about the importance of reconnection, then you’re going to need to toss the BQ ideas out to not accidentally hit someone right where it hurts.
Balancing White Privilege with Reconnection
And now for the flipside of it: You aren’t wrong for wanting to position white people as the aggressors and as the causes of a lot of strife. I’m just fine with Proserpine being ½ or ¼ and being a toxic force; I just want it balanced out with other people of the same percentage being positive forces.
It is very true that white Natives can be very toxic people, but this is regardless of their reconnection status. If you want to flesh out the negative side characters, then by all means toss in one or more white Natives (status or reconnecting) who are also antagonistic forces, but try to mix up where they fall on the reconnecting spectrum so that you don’t reinforce BQ ideas that mixed = lesser.
I think the thing you need to keep in mind is: white supremacy is the problem, not necessarily white/mixed people. Natives can be status, dark skinned, and be very, very white supremacist. Natives can be completely disconnected from culture and should qualify for status but could have removed themselves from the registry because of white supremacy.
It is not as simple as mixed with white = automatic villain. Having that logic is a disservice to all mixed people.
Tragedy of Disconnect with Proserpine
I feel like you’re starting to dig into Proserpine being a tragic figure with your solutions. I’d say the strongest one is the father being part of why she is so flippant about her culture; as someone with a white dad who wasn’t all that into anything Native, it’s accurate to my experience and would show how assimilatory a lot of spouses to Indigenous people are.
The thing is, this option also raises the issue for why the mother married him, but generational trauma and internalized white supremacy is a thing. See: my mom.
With how long residential schools have gone on, even if this story was set in modern day Proserpine’s mother could have been a student at them herself, been part of an assimilatory adoption effort, or any other such tragedy.
I’d really like to see that tragedy explored, just a little. This would also help mitigate Proserpine’s villainy and turn her more into a sympathetic figure, because Native people in particular would see that forced disconnect and know it’s generational trauma that she’s continuing to act out. It would make it a very nice ending for her to go against white society and reclaim herself, and so long as the nuance of her family life was woven in, she wouldn’t be too much of a villain.
