'Hunt Gather Parent' and the Noble Savage trope

Thanksgiving is this week in the United States. Especially with becoming a parent, this time of year often has me reflecting on the myths we tell, and what they imply. The story of Thanksgiving is typically told as such: the Pilgrims of Plymouth were struggling to survive in this New World until the Indians (few retellings, especially those aimed at children, are specific enough to name the Wampanoag tribe) come and, out of kindness, show the Pilgrims their ancient strategies for planting native crops, such as corn. With this ancient wisdom shared, the Pilgrims were able to survive to reap a full harvest. The Pilgrims then decide to have a large celebration with a Thanksgiving feast and invited the local Indians, who agreed and brought gifts of meats, such as turkey and venison. A grand time was had by all, a celebration of peace and prosperity.

But that's not the story. Not really. Like most things, there's a lot more nuance and complication. The Wampanoags did share how to plant local crops that had a better chance of flourishing than the English crops the settlers had been planting, which did allow the latter to survive. However, this was not done with an easy spirit of friendship; there was wariness on both sides. In fact, many scholars note that the Wampanoags were not even invited to the feast or celebration. Instead, "the Wampanoags showed up unbidden. And it was not simply four or five of them at the table, as we often imagine. Ousamequin, the Massasoit, arrived with perhaps ninety men—more than the entire population of Plymouth. Wampanoag tradition suggests that the group was in fact an army." According to Paula Peters, a historian for the Mashpee Wampanoag of Cape Cod, this large group was likely assembled because the settlers were "celebrating their first harvest by blasting muskets," and that this caused “90 Wampanoag to arrive for war." Peters added: “[The confusion] being smoothed over, they stayed for a tense, diplomatic meal that may or may not have included turkey." 

This is a much more complicated story than the one usually told, and that's not even taking into account the war, disease, and massacres that occurred in the years after this feast celebration. The story that's typically shared, especially with children, is not only sanitized, but also has a hint of the "Noble Savage" trope. 

"The Noble Savage" is an idea that has lived in stories, both fiction and non-fiction, since at least the 17th century. Many attribute the term (incorrectly) to 18th century French social philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, Rousseau did not invent the term, though he did reference it. The belief, essentially, was that "American-Indians, really any non-European non-White culture of indigenous peoples, lived in a more communal manner, closer to and in harmony with nature, and therefore in a more moral way than than that of European culture with its focus on private ownership of goods and land." 

As writer Lyndon Moore explains in his article reflecting on the "Noble Savage" and related racist tropes: "The corrupting influence of 'civilization' had not touched them and, to European minds, the outcome of this was evidenced by an inherent nobility and goodness."

Many in Europe saw natives and aboriginal peoples as "a counterpoint to an industrial society that was losing touch with nature and the pristine as it embraced the ways of city, industry, and the search for wealth" (Herring 227). The trope appears throughout literature, from Robinson Crusoe to Tarzan, and many of us grew up seeing versions of it in Disney's Pocahontas and even James Cameron's Avatar (though obviously his blue-cat-alien people are only metaphors for real indigenous tribes, but the point still stands). 

So, why am I reflecting on all of this on a motherhood in media blog? What does this trope have to do with motherhood or parenting, other than the vague fretting on how to eventually tell the Thanksgiving story?

Well, I decided this past month to read a highly recommended parenting book: Hunt, Gather, Parent. And I'm sorry to report that it is keeping the "Noble Savage" trope alive in this most uncomfortable way. 

In Hunt, Gather, Parent, NPR science journalist Michaeleen Douceff embeds herself in three communities (the Mayan village of Chan Kajaal, the Inuit town of Kugaaruk, and the Hadzabe tribe in northern Tanzania) in order to learn from the people in these groups the "lost" and more "natural" ways to parent children. Cutting back and forth between anecdotes of her hectic and over-scheduled parenting life in San Francisco and the near-idyllic scenes of calm and simplicity of these communities, Douceff makes the claim that the women of these indigenous communities (and yes, they are all mothers that she describes; the role of father is only alluded to vaguely in asides) are "super parents."

It's deeply uncomfortable. On one hand, a review in The Atlantic magazine praises Doucleff for taking care "to portray her subjects not as curiosities 'frozen in time,' but instead as modern-day families who have held on to invaluable child-rearing techniques that likely date back tens of thousands of years." And I agree that she does take time to note that the families that she visited have television, play video games, text on cellphones, and exist within the modern world. To a point. 

On the other hand, whenever she's talking about the parenting practices themselves, as well as when she first arrives in any of the emersion locations, Douceff takes the time to describe the families' actions and their community in a way that feels right out of an 18th century travel journal. The set up to her Mayan section takes paragraphs to stress the thatched roofs, the goats and chickens in the road, and how close the village is to the ancient Mayan pyramids. She takes time to describe examples of children helping to butcher and cook pigs for their family in Mexico, keeps emphasizing raw caribou meat being a family snack in indigenous Canada, and describes the butchering of other small animals and exotic fruits collected by the Hadzabe. "This isn't New England. It's far, far away," she writes in her Inuit section, after describing polar bear skulls decorating one family's yard.

One of the ways that Douceff's writing reflects the classic "Noble Savage" trope is when she's not even describing humans directly at all. She uses the metaphor of a river often in the book, referring to the indiginous mothers' relationship with their children as:

"... a wide, serene river, meandering through a mountain valley, smooth and steady in its flow. Gentle. Easy."

This "gentle" and "easy" river metaphor feels like it almost echoes songs from Pocahontas...

And it's not just her flowery descriptions. Douceff has chapter titles that indicate her perspective on the knowledge she's gaining, such as "Ancient Antidotes for Anxiety and Stress." She calls the parents she visits "world experts" simply by being in these indigenous tribes (she does not seek out specific leaders or teachers in these tribes; from her description of her methods, often upon arrival she just asked around for any parents at all and then sought to interview them and watch their routines). The children these women raise are "the most self-sufficient in the world" or "the most empathetic in the world," and all are "always" calm, helpful, and effective. There is no room for nuance, no possibility that there are parents in these tribes (ones she didn't meet) that may be less than this romanticized ideal.

There is also her implied belief every step of the way that parenting is "easy" for these women. Douceff acknowledges that these women are incredibly busy; she describes how they are all in charge of the cooking ("we're talking fresh tortillas every day made from stone-ground masa!"), cleaning, child rearing, and also working (some mothers work in family businesses, others are cleaners, others work in other service industry jobs). However, because the stress in these women's lives does not seem to come from power-struggles with their children, Douceff keeps referring to their mothering as "easy" in a way that feels problematic, especially as she does not acknowledge at all the difference in ease between her life as a San Francisco NPR reporter and those of the large, working-class families she's observing.

The most pervasive of Douceff's implications is that these women have lessons to teach her mainly because these women have "ancient knowledge" that is more connected to what's "natural," things they learned from their "ancestors" that Douceff and other Western, urban white women could now also learn from. She never seems to acknowledge that, while there are distinct cultural differences of course, most of the women she interviews are mothers of three children or more. This is a very difference situation in comparison to Douceff's own first-time motherhood, regardless of location or cultural context. 

At one point, she describes a Mayan preteen who Douceff is absolutely shocked to see do the dishes in the morning without being asked. This is something Douceff says she's "never seen in California." My immediate reaction is: how many working-class families with multiple children did you interview or examine in California? Or any American families with a larger spread of children at all? I have a set of cousins who grew up in a family of seven (five children), and the eldest often understood that dishes were considered their job in the household and would similarly do them without being directly asked because of that understanding. When Douceff asked the Mayan girl why she was doing the dishes, the girl replied simply that she wanted to help her mother, who works hard. This exchange reminded me of a conversation with a former student of mine; he mentioned that he tried to help out around the house as much as he could, since his mother (a single-parent) was often so busy juggling her career work and carrying for his younger siblings. It was the least he could do to try and make her life easier, he explained. Such parallels in my own experiences made me wonder if Douceff really needed to travel so far for these "ancient wisdoms."

And I'm not the only one who has wondered. As Rebecca Onion says in her response piece to Douceff's book "There Is No Parenting Utopia," much of the advice that Douceff describes as ancient indigenous secrets can be found in many "Western parenting guidance that self-describe as 'respectful,' 'gentle,' ... 'Montessori-' or 'Waldorf-inspired.'" As I was just finishing another book about Montessori, I had also noted that much of the advice that Douceff finds so useful is very similar to advice rooted in Gentle Parenting or Montessori. She didn't need to travel to these "exotic" and "ancient" communities to learn these lessons.

The parenting advice itself, if removed from the "Noble Savage" trope, is not at all bad parenting advice; I plan to approach chores in a similar way to what Douceff describes, and I agree that children needs sympathy during tantrums more than they need discipline.  But it's also impossible to ignore the package that this advice comes in. Historian Nicholas G. Rosenthal has noted that cultural perceptions of indigenous people as "Noble Savages" remain “so strong and enduring" that it has caused so many natives today to be "treated as anachronisms and anomalies” (qtd. in Herring 245). And that's exactly how I would describe the feeling of Douceff's book.

Now, I want to be clear that I believe Douceff meant well. She is unfailingly positive in her descriptions of families she met during her journeys, and she retweets the work of indigenous education experts, writers, and anthropologists as well, being sure to share her platform. However, as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, it's worth remembering that the "Noble Savage" trope can be harmful, even if it's well-meaning. 

On Twitter, Dr. Shannon Withycombe shared how dangerous this "noble savage" style idealism can be: "In 1700s Europe white male doctors began attending childbirth cases [and] created racialized narratives to cater to upper-class white women. [However, they stated that] 'Primitive' women did not need medical attention because they had easier births, they didn’t experience labor pains, [and] they were dehumanized as closer to animals. After all, these physicians argued, a cat doesn’t need a doctor to give birth..." Lance M. Foster, a Native American anthropologist, stressed his view on this topic: “People have just got to realize that Indians are human beings with all the good and bad that go with that" (qtd. in Herring 245).

It's important, as always, to examine the myths we tell ourselves, our children, and each other. Even the well-meaning myths and simplifications can perpetuate harmful messages and a distorted history.