Is Kelvoo's Testimonial intended to reflect the experiences of native people in the Americas?

The short answer is “no”.

In the third (and final) part of the story, people will see parallels between the kloormari’s circumstances and those of many Native North Americans, but the overall intent of Kelvoo’s Testimonial is not to represent indigenous people for the following reasons.

• As a non-native inhabitant of North America, it is not my place to represent the views, interests or experiences of the indigenous population, or any other ethnic group – it is not my story to tell. It would be unethical for me to accept revenue by pretending to represent others. The politically correct term for such a practice is “cultural appropriation”. While I think that the term is overused and often misused, I think that it would be applicable in this case.

 

• Non-indigenous people have a tendency to view Native North Americans as a single, monolithic culture. In many parts of the world, people assume that all indigenous North Americans wore feathered headdresses, used bows and arrows, and rode horses. The reality is that the boundaries of the US, Canada and Mexico used to be meaningless as the continent hosted hundreds of countries, languages and ethnic groups. First contact with the Europeans and the resulting consequences varied a great deal. If my story was intended to represent the experience of indigenous people in the Americas, which group would I have selected?

 

• In Kelvoo’s Testimonial, the kloormari live their lives based purely on the facts as they understand them. As a result, the kloormari lack imagination and creativity. As such, it would be insulting to suggest that indigenous North Americans lacked these attributes, especially in light of the huge range of art forms and legendary folklore of these people. Conversely, all kloormari live peacefully and harmoniously with one another at all times. It would be patronizing and disrespectful to suggest that all indigenous people of the Americas lived without conflict.

 

• While the kloormari in Kelvoo’s Testimonial experience hardship due to their interactions with outsiders, they also have access to allies and resources that can help them to recover. In my story, the kloormari’s numbers are not decimated by previously unknown diseases, their children are not abducted and taken to schools where they are abused, and they are not slaughtered en masse. In other words, the plight of the kloormari in my novel does not come close to the suffering inflicted on many indigenous groups in the Americas. To compare the two would be to minimize the centuries of pain inflicted on the native people of the Americas.

Excerpts:
Chapter 44: Back in the Village
“But Kahini,” I objected, “we are kloormari. We are defined by our language. Terran is such a limited, monophonic language. In kloormari, we can convey complicated ideas in a fraction of the time. The structure of our language develops our neural pathways in ways that are unique to us. Surely, if we lose our language, we are destined to lose our identity!”
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Chapter 45: Homelands
I replied, “But K’tatmal, kloormari and human values are not the same! K’tolin didn’t understand that it was forbidden to be on a human’s land. In fact, I don’t understand the whole concept myself. Why is it that, in exchange for money, a being can have exclusive access to part of a planet? Beings can reproduce, but land cannot. What happens when all of the land is owned? What will be left for everyone else?”

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