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Nitɬ'am: societal origins
Oct. 2nd, 2011 02:49 pmBefore I get onto the main topic of the post, one more comment about the name Nitɬ'am. The medial cluster is ejective, which is not a kind of sound most English speakers have learnt to make. It's a little bit awkward to have given them a name which is not readily pronounceable by most English speakers, but I think it's also realistic - it's realistic that those sounds would be in their language, and there are plenty of people groups even in our world that have sounds that English speakers can't readily pronounce. I would expect English speakers to anglicize Nitɬ'am to Nitlam; for people who don't know the International Phonetic Alphabet, the first syllable of the anglicized version sounds like 'neat' and the second syllable sounds like 'lamb'.
One thing I've been thinking a bit about, and not quite sure what would work best, is how Nitɬ'am society originated. How did it come to be that there was an island where the whole population was genetically blind?
The first scenario I thought of, some time ago, depended on prejudice: there was a community with some blind people in it, and due to prejudice they were basically expelled from the community and marooned on this island. I didn't especially like this scenario, but it was the only one I could think of.
I've come up with the basics of another scenario that I think is both more pleasing and could even actually be more practical. It would probably start the same as the prejudice scenario. In both scenarios, there was probably some initial event reducing genetic diversity that made a significant blind minority in the population. Parallels would be the genetic situation that led to a substantial deaf population on Martha's Vineyard from roughly 1700 until the early 1900s, and the genetic situation that led to a substantial colourblind population on the Micronesian island of Pingelap.
So, there's a community with a significant blind minority, say about 10% of the population. In the prejudice scenario, the blind minority is seen as inferior/undesirable and expelled from the community. But in the other scenario I'm thinking of, the blind minority is integrated into the community. There's plenty of work that needs to be done, and it's not feasible for 10% of the population to not be doing useful things, so ways are found for blind people to do all sorts of work. Maybe not all the kinds of work that sighted people could do, but lots of them. There would have been households where everyone was blind, so ways would have been worked out for blind people to do everything that's important for daily life. They wouldn't at that point have had to develop ways for blind people to do everything that's important for maintaining the community, because it would be possible for blind people to do some parts of it and sighted people to do other parts. For example, I can imagine that blind people might have worked in gardens while sighted people went out hunting. Being blind would have been within the range of expected normal, though it may have been expected that blind people would fit in certain niches of the society.
At some point, there was a community division and it ended up that the people who settled the island (or stayed on the island while the rest of the community left) were all or almost all blind; the reasons for this separation may have had nothing to do with blindness. It could be something like that a ship got lost at sea and washed up on this island, and it so happened that the sighted navigators either died en route/in the wreck, or simply didn't end up having any descendants, while blind people who were on the ship doing other things survived and had children.
This scenario has one big practical advantage over the prejudice scenario: it makes it understandable how the people who ultimately were the founders of the blind society had gained the skills necessary to carry on life - to produce food, build houses, make clothes, etc. In a prejudice scenario where blind people are thought of as worthless and incapable, it's less likely that they'd have had a chance to gain those skills; conversely, in a society where they had gained those skills, they'd be less likely to be considered worthless and incapable.
~~~
I remember once, as a child or teenager, reading a book about a boy who was stranded on a tropical island - a coral reef island in the Caribbean, if I remember right. He was temporarily blinded by the shipwreck that stranded him and had to figure out to survive on the island without sight. I'd be interested to figure out what that book was, and maybe have another look at it.
EDIT: Apparently the book is The Cay, by Theodore Taylor. I'd forgotten that it's actually two people who get stranded on the island - a white boy and an elderly black man, and one of the things the book deals with is the white boy's prejudice against the black man. But I was right in remembering that the boy goes blind.
One thing I've been thinking a bit about, and not quite sure what would work best, is how Nitɬ'am society originated. How did it come to be that there was an island where the whole population was genetically blind?
The first scenario I thought of, some time ago, depended on prejudice: there was a community with some blind people in it, and due to prejudice they were basically expelled from the community and marooned on this island. I didn't especially like this scenario, but it was the only one I could think of.
I've come up with the basics of another scenario that I think is both more pleasing and could even actually be more practical. It would probably start the same as the prejudice scenario. In both scenarios, there was probably some initial event reducing genetic diversity that made a significant blind minority in the population. Parallels would be the genetic situation that led to a substantial deaf population on Martha's Vineyard from roughly 1700 until the early 1900s, and the genetic situation that led to a substantial colourblind population on the Micronesian island of Pingelap.
So, there's a community with a significant blind minority, say about 10% of the population. In the prejudice scenario, the blind minority is seen as inferior/undesirable and expelled from the community. But in the other scenario I'm thinking of, the blind minority is integrated into the community. There's plenty of work that needs to be done, and it's not feasible for 10% of the population to not be doing useful things, so ways are found for blind people to do all sorts of work. Maybe not all the kinds of work that sighted people could do, but lots of them. There would have been households where everyone was blind, so ways would have been worked out for blind people to do everything that's important for daily life. They wouldn't at that point have had to develop ways for blind people to do everything that's important for maintaining the community, because it would be possible for blind people to do some parts of it and sighted people to do other parts. For example, I can imagine that blind people might have worked in gardens while sighted people went out hunting. Being blind would have been within the range of expected normal, though it may have been expected that blind people would fit in certain niches of the society.
At some point, there was a community division and it ended up that the people who settled the island (or stayed on the island while the rest of the community left) were all or almost all blind; the reasons for this separation may have had nothing to do with blindness. It could be something like that a ship got lost at sea and washed up on this island, and it so happened that the sighted navigators either died en route/in the wreck, or simply didn't end up having any descendants, while blind people who were on the ship doing other things survived and had children.
This scenario has one big practical advantage over the prejudice scenario: it makes it understandable how the people who ultimately were the founders of the blind society had gained the skills necessary to carry on life - to produce food, build houses, make clothes, etc. In a prejudice scenario where blind people are thought of as worthless and incapable, it's less likely that they'd have had a chance to gain those skills; conversely, in a society where they had gained those skills, they'd be less likely to be considered worthless and incapable.
~~~
I remember once, as a child or teenager, reading a book about a boy who was stranded on a tropical island - a coral reef island in the Caribbean, if I remember right. He was temporarily blinded by the shipwreck that stranded him and had to figure out to survive on the island without sight. I'd be interested to figure out what that book was, and maybe have another look at it.
EDIT: Apparently the book is The Cay, by Theodore Taylor. I'd forgotten that it's actually two people who get stranded on the island - a white boy and an elderly black man, and one of the things the book deals with is the white boy's prejudice against the black man. But I was right in remembering that the boy goes blind.