In both his Foreword and Acknowledgments, author Drew Hayden Taylor enthuses about his lifelong love of science fiction and his long-held desire to curate a collection of sci-fi short stories told from a Native perspective (adding that he decided to write the entire collection himself when an anthology from various Native writers proved impossible), and this enthusiasm for classic sci-fi is evident on every page of TAKE US TO YOUR CHIEF. On the surface, this means that most of these stories rely on familiar tropes, but it's undeniable that the Native lens adds a certain fresh perspective.
How many times has a character in a book or movie, at the moment of impending first contact with an alien race, pray that the aliens will treat Earthlings better than the Europeans treated every people they ever colonized? (How fortunate no one was using this land. You people can go stand over there. And here's some smallpox blankets to keep you warm and thin your numbers.) It's a nice bit of irony, then, to consider what contact with extraterrestrials might mean to Native peoples who have lived through this before. With this particular trope, Taylor spins the idea of first contact in two directions. In A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon, Part 2, the “ancient” Willie Whitefish shakes his head at those who are throwing welcoming parties as spaceships approach the planet:
On his night table, Willie had piled a collection of books about the colonization of North America – everything from Columbus straight through the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, the Trail of Tears, to the impact of the sale of Alaska on the Inuit and the Aleutians. He had watched documentaries about the Beothuk and the Carib people, nations destroyed because of the arrival of new people with new ways of killing. It was a tough and sordid history of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal conflict. Part of him had become permanently angry the more he read, cursing the fact he'd learned to read. But another part of his soul just shook its head in disbelief at what evil humans do to others, and what others let be done to them. Montezuma and that king of the Incas were way too trusting. They should have known better.And at the end of the collection, in the titular Take Us to Your Chief, a methane-scented, calamari-armed, slime-beast plays the idea of contact for laughs:
As is protocol, our Grand Council has instructed me to request that you, as leader of this great planet, designate an ambassador to return with us to Kaaw Wiyaa to facilitate a cultural exchange and begin negotiations. As a goodwill gesture, we would be willing to construct sizable stone pyramids, or assist in the erection of enormous stone heads, or create giant stone circular calendars, as per your customs. We humbly await your decision.Taylor also uses humour deftly in Mr. Gizmo; a story about a Kwakwaka'wakw teenager who is contemplating suicide until the spirits inhabiting the things in his bedroom come to life, as objects traditionally did in his people's stories:
There's been a lot of talk among us lately, about where you young people have been going these days. Years, actually. Yeah, ever since the People of Pallor – that's what we call them – arrived, things have been kind of tough for your people. Actually, all First Nations people. Sort of a hangover of the colonized. We call it PCSD – post-contact stress disorder. But, buddy, enough is enough.On the one hand, I wondered if that would really have been considered a “science fiction” story if if hadn't been a toy robot that was doing all the talking – are Native spiritual beliefs equivalent to science? – but I was persuaded of that position by the next story, Petropaths; about a troubled young man who learns the secret of time travel from the thousand-year-old rock carvings on a cliff face; what a perfect blend of traditional beliefs and science fiction trope.
In some places, it felt like Hayden went a bit overboard with moralising about the modern Native situation – in Dreams of Doom, a community newspaper reporter discovers a government plot to root out Native activism through bugged dreamcatchers; in Superdisappointed, a Native man develops (government-suppressed) superpowers from the mouldy housing and contaminated water on his Reserve, as though the “Earth is beginning to fight back” – but just because these ideas rankled me doesn't mean they aren't valid Native concerns. I thought that Stars, about three Natives from different periods in time who contemplate the night stars in different-but-the-same ways, was quietly lovely, and I loved the question posed in Lost in Space: if a connection to the physical land is such an important part of Native identity, where does that leave the Native astronaut? And even bigger questions are posed by I Am...Am I, about an emerging AI that begins to identify with Native spirituality, to its own detriment.
In the Acknowledgments, Hayden notes that he wrote these stories very quickly after deciding to just proceed with the project on his own. That may explain why I didn't find the writing to be consistently exceptional throughout, and so far as using the sci-fi genre as a tool for social commentary, I didn't find many new ideas here. In the end, Hayden wanted the world to have a collection of sci-fi stories with a Native outlook, and in that he succeeded. Enjoyment of the actual product may vary.
