In February I let my subscription to National Geographic expire on account of the magazine's deepening politicization, but by the beginning of last month a reasonable article published by the Society had changed my mind. "If National Geographic indeed still values factually responsible, and perhaps less sensational, reporting," I wrote, "that is worth thirty-four dollars annually."
Indeed, perhaps — but unfortunately not.
Due to the lapse in my membership, two belated issues arrived in one shipment, and each cover was another page in the brief for National Geographic v. Western Civilization. For the month of March, a somber article on elephant poaching and the vain efforts of African rangers to protect herds failed to offer the most likely explanation for a struggling preserve: the land is run by the government of Chad, a corrupt authoritarian state with the memorable per capita income of about a hundred dollars. Readers were encouraged to donate to support Chad's — elephants. The magazine noted that some ivory is legally marketed around the world and can be bought, for example, in the United States, see incriminating picture at bottom-left.
When I saw April's cover, a swordfish lolling upside down in a fishnet, I decided to wait for May.
May's issue came yesterday. I opened the package in the elevator. The first words out of my mouth were "You have got to be kidding me." The cover? "Jamestown: the Real Story." Next to a colonial painting of a bemused, painted Indian was a summary of National Geographic's exposé: "How settlers destroyed a native empire and changed the landscape from the ground up."
How the magazine could imagine that a majority of its audience hadn't been brought up on the selective derogation of European colonization, one can't say. The narrative's implication was simple: American Indians blithely dominated one another in a sylvan paradise, and would have until the end of time, too, had the Virginia Company not come from England.
National Geographic began with a misnomer, identifying the natives of Virginia as part of an "empire." Yes, a few dozen tribes on the coast were subservient to a chief named Wahunsunacock — also known to us, mercifully, as Chief Powhatan. But an empire is, if you don't intend to flout the English language, qualified by expansive territory or multifarious subjects. Powhatan's domain encircled Chesapeake Bay, and the tribes were all of a people known as Algonquians. The first human empire, the Akkadian Empire, was several times that size and incorporated several languages and cultures.
There aren't many defensible reasons to accept whatever happens to be the largest historical concentration of power as an empire. Doing so, however, addresses shortcomings of the local population that may contradict an argument. Such as: why were Powhatan's habitations so pastoral? National Geographic very nearly suggested it was by choice, even explaining a lack of domesticated animals as a lack of domesticable animals. Without question? North American Indians were barely within reach of the copper age — scarcity of suitable mammals or not, they may have arrived at husbandry on schedule, if ten thousand years too late. The word here, not used prominently in the article, is "primitive."
Why weren't the Iroquois, Powhatan's adversaries and those eventually responsible for the destruction of the Erie, mentioned once? At what point did the brute contests of men become morally exclusive, what with the history of the world a litany of encroachments, invasions and alterations? And on and on.
I chose to start a collection of the gilt-framed periodical four years ago because I read every National Geographic I came across in the couple of decades before then. Mummies, dinosaurs, astronomy: reports were completed to the best knowledge of their authors, not inaccurate so much as incomplete, and always fascinating. If I wanted to have to pause at the end of every third sentence, shake my head and think No, that isn't right, I would wait until the editors of The New Republic went on a safari and then buy the expositive issue. Yes, my response to all this I find invigorating, but there is a library nearby.
So yesterday, I canceled my subscription forthwith. This morning, I received a message from the Society assuring the return of my balance. An hour later, another message came from National Geographic something-or-other. In fact it was from an intern working with National Geographic Traveler, and she was verifying a story written about a bike tour in Italy through which the author met my cousin and his bride. I forwarded the inquiry along to my cousin, who soon called the girl. In the meantime, there was an error that needed correction — my cousin was thought to share my last name, when he is my father's sister's son — and a few facts clarified. I was pleased to give both. The intern thanked me and rewarded me with, of all things, a copy of the Traveler issue that carries the article.
So I have twenty-five dollars more to spend, and — resting in my mailbox, ready to be taken and read during some future lunch hour, shall be the National Geographic Society publication that I really wanted.