Some Harry Potter Fans Aren't Happy With the Trailer for Pottermore's 4 New Stories

The first of J.K. Rowling's four new stories about The History of Magic in North America dropped today on Pottermore, but some fans have been bracing themselves for what they're about to read.

The issue? The trailer for the stories, which debuted yesterday, mentions the Navajo idea of skinwalkers in the same breath as Ilvermorny, the fictional American wizarding school, and the Salem witch trials, a recorded time in American history wherein women were persecuted as witches. But Native Americans' beliefs aren't fictional or a relic of times past. What's more, there's more to Native people than mysticism.

Dr. Adrienne Keene outlined her feelings about the trailer on NativeAppropriations.com, and explained that:

"But we’re not magical creatures, we’re contemporary peoples who are still here, and still practice our spiritual traditions, traditions that are not akin to a completely imaginary wizarding world (as badass as that wizarding world is). In a fact I quote often on this blog, it wasn’t until 1978 that we as Native peoples were even legally allowed to practice our religious beliefs or possess sacred objects like eagle feathers. Up until that point, there was a coordinated effort through assimilation policies, missionary systems, and cultural genocide to stamp out these traditions, and with them, our existence as Indigenous peoples. We’ve fought and worked incredibly hard to maintain these practices and pass them on."

She also pointed out the imagery of a Native man transforming into an eagle, and added that "Native spirituality and religions are not fantasy on the same level as wizards. These beliefs are alive, practiced, and protected. The fact that the trailer even mentions the Navajo concept of skinwalkers sends red flags all over the place, and that it’s mentioned next to the Salem witch trials? Disaster. Even the visual imagery of the only humans shown in the trailer being a Native man and burning girls places the two too close for comfort."

It's unclear as to how J.K. Rowling will address beliefs that she didn't create. Ilvermorny, like Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, seems to be a made-up concept, so there's little harm in the practice of crafting an entire fictional world that exists there. And while the Harry Potter books and movies weave in mythology like leprechauns and centaurs, those concepts are fanciful, and it's far less damaging to reframe them in a fictional context than it is to reference actual people who exist (and are constantly being discriminated against) today.

"We fight so hard every single day as Native peoples to be seen as contemporary, real, full, and complete human beings and to push away from the stereotypes that restrict us in stock categories of mystical-connected-to-nature-shamans or violent-savage-warriors," Dr. Keene writes. "Colonization erases our humanity, tells us that we are less than, that our beliefs and religions are 'uncivilized,' that our existence is incongruent with modernity. This is not ancient history, this is not 'the past.' The ongoing oppression of Native peoples is reinscribed every day through texts and images like this trailer. How in the world could a young person watch this and not make a logical leap that Native peoples belong in the same fictional world as Harry Potter?"

Related: You'll Soon Be Able to Eat and Drink Exactly Like Harry Potter in L.A.

Check this out: