What makes that moment icky isn’t that Beamer didn’t include any info about Alcatraz as a historic site with an indigenous history. What makes it fucked up and gross is this:

Gena:
I really don’t need oversimplifications of occupation movements by sovereign nations from the sexy zombie book right now. That is a thing I do not need. I mean, y’all saw what I linked to, right? PBS is free. EDUCATE YOURSELF, BEAMER.

Casey,

Okay, I need for you to go back, read Gena’s article, the points Gena and I are making in the comments, and the discussion guidelines. I need for you to do this because I’m not sure what relevance your field trip to Alcatraz has to the SYSTEMIC ERASURE OF INDIGENOUS HISTORIES IN THE US, and what point you’re trying to make by bringing it up.

If the point you’re going for is that this MAJOR event in civil rights history is ZOMG OBSCURE I WASN’T EVER TAUGHT IT, you need to step back and think about the kind of privilege associated with marking some historical knowledge as “normal” and some knowledge as “obscure/unknowable”. I PARTICULARLY need for you to do this because TWO OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK TALK ABOUT NATIVE HISTORY IN RELATION TO ALCATRAZ (as Gena points out in her review) and that what we’re talking about isn’t your field trip/lack of knowledge (read the links) but the ways in which native histories get co-opted into larger stories as scenery and cute factoids not relevant to the ACTUAL plot or narrative. Your focus on NOT KNOWING is a DERAIL; the conversation Gena is introducing ISN’T about no one knowing about Alcatraz, it’s about the cooptment AND DISMISSAL of indigenous histories as irrelevant.

I also just remembered something.
I took the boat-tour around Alcatraz for my 16th birthday and they didn’t mention the AIM there, either.

Indigenous/Native/First Nations histories are rarely-to-never taught in N. American schools unless you actively seek it or have an unusually awesome and passionate teacher/curriculum. I’ve been lucky enough to get that, and have resources to look into when I had questions growing up.

But for Beamer to specifically make Alcatraz a key element of the plot in 21st century writing, and to either have visited or done enough research to describe the interior, cell locking mechanisms, etc.– in a story where modern data accessibility is a recurrent theme– to only name-drop Native occupation, without even referencing the AIM by name, can only be a willful omission. Whether it’s active filtering as “useless trivia to be cut for length,” or a deliberate “fuck it, not even important enough to me/my characters (WHO I WROTE THAT WAY) to look it up,” when the AIM occupation is one of the most recent historical events of cultural significance to occur at that prison within the past 50 years? Ish is problematic, to say the least.

The not-knowing wouldn’t be so bad if Beamer didn’t decide to highlight her own ignorance, you know?

Yeah, Kate meets up with her sugar daddy in New Jack Bear City and they catch up. She internally notes he just wants closure because he’s pity-squicked, and double pity-squicked that she’s a stripper, and then offers her sadness dollars– which are superior, because they’re old-school US dollars, and not BEAR DOLLARS in BEAR MONEY. But, see, even though that’s a horrible example of their continuing relationship power dynamic and EVEN MORE slut-shaming, it’s okay! Because Kate runs into her out-of-touch boss, and, like all good out-of-touch adult figures representing antiquated prejudice, he blames Kate, and all other zombies, for their cannibalism and the subsequent panic destroying America as a pillar of Western culture– and his comeuppance is to be homeless and have to beg for change outside a pizza place near Patient Zero (the strip clurb).

…Yeah. And then Kate hisses at him to scare him, and Walter’s all, “That’s risky for yourself and others when you perpetuate fear-based interactions, Miss Irresponsible,” and Kate’s like, “YOU’RE NOT MY DAD, I’M GONNA GO HAVE SEX WITH AUDREY DUE TO BOREDOM.” -__-

Also: I guess getting a magickal STD MADE her THAT kind of girl, even though she’s still so pretty/innocent/pure that she has to hide her face while she strips.

SUCK.