For a long time, it seemed that J.K. Rowling could do nothing wrong by her fans—from supporting fan fic writers to slamming Trump. But she’s been under fire since last Tuesday when she released the first of a four-part History of Magic in North America, an extension of the Harry Potter universe on Pottermore, where she discusses such Navajo legends as the skinwalker. Voices from the Native American communities have accused her of appropriating the marginalized culture of a living people.

Some members of 11&more had our own spirited debate to unpack some of the issues behind the controversy:

Well intentioned, but poorly researched?

Nicole (political science teacher; American): I think the critics have a point, especially considering that in the US, Native Americans have been so publicly marginalized without much repercussion—Washington Redskins, anyone? It is an interesting critique given that she’s British and not American, but I think the criticism stands.

Monica (digital and world-building strategist; Filipina):  I adore J.K. Rowling, but I think what she wrote about Native American magic shows an underlying lack of understanding/research about the culture she is writing about. It’s like saying Chinese wizards don’t need wands as they can just use chop sticks. Her writing of Native Americans is a very generalized stereotype which lacks depth and imagination.

But surely it’s just fiction? And what about getting the rest of the world interested in Native American culture?

Anna (author and music/arts publisher; Georgian): And what about the argument that:

a) This is fiction;

b) Most of fiction is about taking small parts of reality to build new worlds upon it;

c) That it would enrich global culture by sparking debate and understanding of Native American legends. Basic European readers like me would never even have heard of this kind of magic otherwise.

PS: I love the idea of Chinese wizards using chopsticks instead of wands. In my world these small details are the most poetic ones!

Nicole: For me:

a) You can respectfully do fiction. See: American Gods.

b) That isn’t exactly what she did, though. She took the part of Navajo culture that she found acceptable and fit it into her narrative and dismissed the parts that she didn’t want as essentially unworthy. Rather strangely, in my opinion, since her wizarding world does have shapeshifters. She is taking a living culture and making it her own when she has no business doing so.

c) If she was presenting an accurate depiction of Native American legends, then yes. It would add to the global culture. That, however, isn’t what she’s doing. I think it actually does people a disservice to expose them to a culture that has been whitewashed and perverted from the original.

Jia Jia (innovation consultant; Chinese-British): I tend to agree with Anna that the exposure’s probably a good thing. Fans of Harry Potter might just get interested enough in Native Americans to actually do some research and, over time, develop a more nuanced appreciation of the different peoples. I don’t think she’s doing any damage because Native Americans couldn’t be any more marginalized. They don’t have a voice. And whether it’s through Rowling’s sub-par world-building or through critique of this world-building, there’s now more of a public platform through which people can access Native American culture. Of course, the best scenario would’ve been stronger world-building from Rowling in the first place.

You can’t appropriate living cultures by perpetuating stereotypes.

Anna: Good artists copy, great artists steal, Picasso once said. If we concentrate on intellectual honestly, then the argument that this is a living culture doesn’t make sense to me. Had she written about ancient Egypt would we be even discussing it?

Also, in the current media/cultural environment where blogs and personal opinion (mostly incompetent) dominate the landscape, is it right to ask a popular fiction author to have a Ph.D. on every topic she uses for her fictional world?

Nicole: If she had written about ancient Egypt, no. Probably not. Look at all the books about ancient mythologies that Rick Riordin has written. Accurate? Eh… ish.

But, the Navajo are still around. They are a living culture. They get to make the rules, not some British author. That is where she went wrong, in my opinion.

Joy (grad student in education policy; American): We can’t expect perfect total knowledge before writing about something, of course. In this case, though, this particular example is pretty bad. I was kinda excited about expanding the universe beyond the UK, but I’m starting to suspect that the Everbrilliant Rowling may be a bit out of her depth here. Way out of her depth. Like, reinforcing some really nasty stereotypes out of her depth. Expanding the universe beyond what she knows was always going to be a tetchy project, and it’s looking like this just really isn’t her forte.

I find a difference between cultural details that are poetic, and ones that let crass stereotypes stand in for poetry. And it does hinge on the fact that Navajo culture is very much a living culture, with real people, that this is people’s actual religion. This is not a stuck-in-the-past culture, people or religion. This is a significant population with very current issues of overincarceration of Native people, use of reservations as dumping grounds for toxic waste, high levels of sexual assault of Native women, and on and on.

Navajo children were very recently stolen from their parents and put into boarding schools in order to beat the culture out of them, to “kill the Indian to save the man.” As such, it’s not really something you can throw around casually, especially if you’re going to use only token bits superficially and represent them as the actual thing. I get that she’s writing fiction, and isn’t trying to write a true history of things. But that’s the problem—she rolled in with complete entitlement to pick, choose, and warp a culture and belief system without realizing that she’s playing directly into a violent history of European entitlement to  indigeneity.

Also, does this read as super “noble savage”y to anyone else, even with all of her no-but-they’re-smart-too-in-a-plant-animal-sort-of-a-way disclaimers?!?!?:

“The most glaring difference between magic practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand. The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality.”

Appropriating culture is a part of art but there’s a difference between great storytelling and lazy stereotyping.

Nwando (artist, performer, musician, DJ; British-Nigerian): From what I can see, Rowling has engaged in art exploitation in the same way she always has done. And I was doing something similar in my work. I feel artists should be free to mythologise in the standard way myths are created. That is by taking older ideas and morphing them to fit another idea to explain something beautiful about the way the world works.

I don’t believe that all religious practices deserve automatic “respect” or to be treated with extra sensitivity regardless of how marginalised the peoples who hold the beliefs are. So the issue of her messing with the skin walkers doesn’t in itself bother me—again, this is myth making and story telling. That she used it in a way that buys into old stereotypes is more my issue, and given the fact that Harry Potter is based on stereotype upon stereotype I don’t understand why anyone would be surprised.

My issue with Harry Potter was always that it took a rather old fashioned and to my mind hackneyed view of British culture and exploited an international audience’s (and current British audience who’s tastes are getting a bit upstairs/downstairs) thirst for Ye Olde British Public school tales. I always found something in it a bit lazy and again, dealing in old stereotypes.

What if I just don’t see the Harry Potter Universe making sense beyond quaint Britannia?

Jia Jia: Reading Rowling’s piece, I actually found it really weird that she’d extend the world of Harry Potter beyond the quaint British Isles. I agree with Nwando that Harry Potter taps into the appeal of Ye Olde British Public school tales. To me, THAT’s the world and the full extent of the world. It’s not the real UK, it’s an imagined one. And to extend that imagined world into our real-world history feels unbelievable. I could maybe buy into Dumbledore & co. corresponding with French wizards at the Sorbonne, but push that any further, and Rowling would have to do some serious world-building rooted in:

a) a deep understanding of the cultures she’s tapping into;

b) a convincing alternative history for each of these cultures to make them fit into the Harry Potter world.

The issue is power—exploiting the narratives of an oppressed people for your own gain.

Nash (teacher, writer, community worker; Filipina): In Rowling’s defense, maybe she was trying to expand the universe of her wizarding world and make it more inclusive but in doing so, she achieves the opposite. She reproduces and cements stereotypes and makes it look like Native American communities are homogenous and locked in time. They’re not. Joy hit the nail on the head too—how noble savage-y to expect every Native American to know the flora and fauna like the back of his palm. My cousin’s son is Filipino-Indian and Native American. He likes burgers, listens to rock and roll, and is a fan of Steph Curry. He couldn’t tell you the name of a flower if you pressed him and neither can his mom who is Native American.

Sure, fiction is about creation and we are free to create as many alternate ways of being as we can conceive of but surely someone of Rowling’s stature would know that the text takes on a life of its own and therefore, she does have a responsibility as a writer to be faithful to living cultures and to the people whom she is representing. It’s doubly unfortunate that in addition to having their culture made almost decorative, most discussions overlook the fact that Native American History is a history of injustice.

Nwando: Yes, there is an issue with exploiting the culture of oppressed peoples and I’ve had to be really aware of this as I’ve been researching and re-mythologising Haitian Vodou culture. This culture has been most terribly exploited by the US entertainment industry, ultimately I think for political reasons (keep people afraid of the scary black culture and they won’t question our immoral interventions in that country). I’ve had to work hard to think about my collusion in this kind of exploitation and I’m still constantly questioning it.

So I guess where I’ve arrived at is that Rowling has a responsibility to be careful with a culture that has been exploited along similar lines (noble savages, scary indigenous culture that needs civilising, natives who can’t handle the western world etc.) because obviously she has global reach and influence. But I’ve seen nothing from her past work that would suggest that this is even within her frame of reference.

Jia Jia: I don’t think that artists have an obligation to be politically correct. They have an obligation to output the best creative material they can. And to do that, they have to know their shit. Which Rowling doesn’t when it comes to Native American anything. Because the piece she’s written is short on the specific details (as opposed to tired tropes/stereotypes) that make world-building convincing.

What IS messed up is that a lot of people will laud Rowling for extending her universe to represent Native Americans. It’s disproportionate praise and it’s not unique to Rowling. It basically applies to every white person who gets involved in the causes of minorities. “Good on you for going to Africa for three months to save the kids” sort of thing; the movie corollaries are white messiah narratives like Dances with Wolves or Avatar. Controversies like this one are good for calling out an embedded sense of entitlement.