Thank you for not showing offensive savages

[Mike Pohjola]

I'd like to publically thank those clever editors and colorers who saved
my day with this week's Aku Ankka publication of a Little Hiawatha story
(D99173).

As you know, most Little Hiawatha stories are about Indians or some other
such "colored" people. Yuck! What's next? Negro heroes in Donald Duck
stories? Mickey Mouse turns out to be a Jew? I mean, how offensive can you
get?

I was all ready to get angry at this comic story that I believed to be so
fundamentally against everything that's right and proper. Then when I
actually started to read the story, I noticed that they'd made some
changes.

Yes, they were still kind of like Indians, with their feathered
head-pieces and amusingly big noses. Some of them were even colored
slightly tanned. I thought this was a bit extreme, but then I said to
myself: "Anything for artistic liberty." And I kept on reading.

I was right to do so. It turned out not to be such an Indian story, after
all. It was kind of like a Smurf story with the Smurfs changed to
almost-Indians. Still, I wouldn't like to see any non-whites having
adventures in my comic books. I have to look at all sorts of foreigners
all day in the city, so at least my Aku Ankka should provide me with
something inoffensive and anglo-american.

Although I noticed it first, I left the best improvement last: Hiawatha
and his family are actually white! They wear those freaky clothes and have
long hippie-curls, but underneath all that, they're white. Much whiter
than those Indians they're hanging with. They're the same color as Police
Chief O'Hara in another story in the same book. Irish I can live with.

Even Hiawatha's father, the chief, is white. Now, I don't mind native
aboriginal savages as long as there's someone proper to keep them from
their heathen ways.


That's why I'd like to thank the person who made this choice. You taught
me (and millions of kids throughout Europe!) a valuable lesson. No matter
where your heritage comes from, you can be just as white as normal people.

Thank you!


Mike Pohjola
mikep at iki.fi            +358-50-5238399            http://www.iki.fi/mikep