I'm not really one for "native" stories, you know the sort of Dances With Wolves scenarios where the noble savage steps out of the jungle to teach stumbling, bumbling Joe White Bloke that his ways are evil and embracing the jungle is his only hope. Disney's Pocahontas, anyone?
But when I read Card's America, I found it to be a refreshing look at the genre. Without giving away any spoilers, the story is basically that the feathered serpent of Aztec myth shall return and clean the corruption of the Europeans - here referring to all whites - from the Americas. Many stereotypes do appear, such as reference to the money-grubbing North Americans and the pipes running into the earth to suck out the oil like a leech - though I had to wonder, "is the oil vital to the ecosystem, exactly?" But I digress. Poverty and filth as seen on the news contrasts with the lifestyle of the male protagonist, but curiously, it is the indian woman he encounters who has all the prejudices. He wants to help, she resents his heritage. And when he protests that he is not European, she corrects him, saying that only the indians count as Americans.
That theme struck me as the most interesting - the idea that one's identity must be tied up in one's cultural past. And why not? I can't deny my own heritage any more than I can deny the color of my own skin. But fascinatingly, Card does not really take sides. In the world of the story, it eventually becomes unfashionable to be "European," but the boy finds that, though he embraces the change brought by the feathered serpent - coming in the form of an indian Messiah with his all-conquering armies driving out those whites who won't assimilate - the boy still resents the change for stealing his identity.
So one must ask the question: at what point have the "invaders" become natives?
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