Looking at the connection between Embassytown’s Arieki (also known as Hosts which is an alien race) and human breed and the Inuit people’s contact with European settlers (real life example)
Connection between Embassytown’s Arieki (also known as Hosts which is an alien race) and
human breed and the Inuit people’s contact with European settlers (real life example)
- A concern with the concept of cultural exchange
– ‘the ways in which contact with the foreign inevitably changes both parties for better and for worse’.
Concept and theme of language (the erasure of indigenous race’s language is present in
both cases)
Examples from Embassytown:
The novel offers a colonialist conflict
The mysterious Ariekei are irrefutably representative of the concept of otherness.
The Ariekei require ‘similes’, because their own language does not permit them to lie. In
their world, the truth of the words and the speech itself are indistinguishable. As Mièville
states ‘for Hosts, speech was thought… without language for things they didn’t exist’.
Scile tries his utmost to protect the native population of Embassytown from losing the
very thing that, he believes, keeps their race culturally unique and separate from human
ways of thinking. Indeed, he sees the loss of language as something of a ‘fall from
paradise’ for the Ariekei, associating lying with evil when he says ‘that’s what Surl
Tesh-echer wants. To bring in a lie…it wants to usher in evil.’
Scile’s attempts to keep the culture of the colonized away from the colonizer prove
impossible; events like the Festival of Lies bring the two together and allow humans to
impact on Ariekei traditions, and vice versa. No matter how much Scile may want to
keep the Ariekei away from the ideas of his own culture, it is proved impossible,
demonstrating the way in which a clash of cultures in such a contained space will
inevitably have an irreversible effect on each other’s ancient ways of lives.
Although the Hosts are a race completely unlike our own, not only biologically but also in
the way that they think and see the world, it is clear that the human invaders are as
‘other’ to them as the Ariekei are to the humans.
the novel acknowledges the insidious influence that colonial cultures can have on
indigenous populations
Inuit people’s contact with European settlers:
https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/indigenous/inuit-impacts.php (all info from this website)
Impact of Non-Indigenous Activities on the Inuit
Since European fishing crews began making annual trips to Newfoundland and Labrador
in the 1500s, non-Indigenous activities have altered Inuit culture and society.
Early European visitors and settlers introduced metal tools and other manufactured
goods to the Inuit, Moravian missionaries converted many Inuit to Christianity, and North
America’s predominately English-speaking society forced the Inuktitut language into
decline during the 20th century.
Beginning in the early 16th century, European fishing and whaling crews traveled to the
Labrador coast each year from across the Atlantic. Although they often came into
contact with Labrador’s Indigenous peoples, their presence did not greatly alter Inuit
society and culture. Inuit families continued to make seasonal use of local resources,
adhering to their traditionally nomadic lifestyle and economy. Some Inuit began traveling
south each summer to trade with the Europeans, where they acquired metal tools,
wooden boats, and other forms of technology for the first time.
Due to increased contact, frictions emerged which resulted in violence
Aside from their widespread conversion to Christianity, almost every other aspect of Inuit culture
was intact – most spoke Inuktitut, lived in their traditional lands, and maintained a seasonal
subsistence economy that largely consisted of hunting and fishing.
After Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949, provincial and federal government
agencies began to deliver health, education, and other services in Inuit communities. Unlike the
Moravians, who tried to preserve Inuit language and culture, early government programs rarely
took these issues into concern. Teachers, for example, delivered lessons in English, while most
health and other workers could not speak Inuktitut. This contributed to the marginalization of the
Inuit language – between 1971 and 1981, the number of Labrador Inuit using Inuktitut as their
home language dropped from 75 to 57.5 per cent.
