Irony and Indians: A collection of original fiction

Abstract

The last in a long line of Mesoamerican cultures, the Aztecs massed in the metropolis of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco and neighboring cities in the Valley of Mexico, with bureaucracies and royal houses as cosmopolitan as those of their eventual conquerors, the Spaniards. In North America, however, tribal cultures developed organizations based not on the state, but on kin and family relations. The basis of this paper is a comparison of the values fostered by tribalism and those propounded by bureaucracy, whether Mexican or European or even Ming Chinese. The method employed is that of a series of six short pieces of original fiction (one for each of the cardinal points, one for Father Sky, and one for Mother Earth), based on research into the world-views of North American Indian cultures and tribal experiences, and which may be construed as a critique of the notion of the universality of human values.