What’s the deal with TJ Klune?

Many readers are familiar with The House in the Cerulean Sea, which tells the story Linus- a caseworker tasked with determining if a set of magical children will bring about the end times. This book is a darling of online community spaces but has faced backlash from indigenous creators for its appropriation of the 60s scoop and messages of white saviorism.

“-so when I wrote Cerulean, I knew I had to do so carefully, to make sure that what I’d decided on to be the central theme of the story wouldn’t be lost. That central theme? Kindness.” -TJ Klune

In HITCS, magical children are abducted and placed in a state-run orphanage. This plotline is based directly off The 60s Scoop and told through the lense of a feel-good story that ignores that for the indigenous families who were torn apart during this era, love did NOT conquer all.

Reviewers state that in HITCS, the messaging is that these children are able to be happy so long as they assimilate and find their place in the same society that removed them from their family and culture. Love is essentially enough to make up for the system that abused them. We know that was never the case for the indigenous children stolen by these systems.

The 60s Scoop

The practice of abducting indigenous children for forced assimilation purposes existed long before the 60s scoop through residential schools and forced child labor. However, the 60s Scoop refers to a period of time in which there was a large number of indigenous children stolen from their families in Canada and placed into white homes while residential schools were closing.

Children were taken without the consent of their families on the (racist) basis that their own parents were unsuitable to care for them. These decisions largely ignored that indigenous communities living in poverty were forced do so through decades of violence in the name of settler colonialism.

These decisions were additionally based on Euro-Canadian standards of living. An example of this would be the assumption that the lack of stocked fridges and pantries meant the children were not being fed while ignoring the cultural diets and methods utilized by these communities. Another example would be children removed from singles mothers on the basis the mother did not live on her own. Many of these parents never heard from their children again.

By the 1970s roughly a third of children in care were indigenous.

The stolen children were placed into home ranging from those that were ‘well intentioned’ to those that used these children as slave labor to those that emotionally and sexually abused them.

Their identities were taken from them as these white families attempted to shape them into their own model of who the child should be white erasing their culture and history.

“Children growing up in conditions of suppressed identity and abuse tend eventually to experience psychological and emotional problems. For many apprehended children, the roots of these problems did not emerge until later in life when they learned about their birth family or their heritage. Social work professor Raven Sinclair describes these experiences as creating “tremendous obstacles to the development of a strong and healthy sense of identity for the transracial adoptee.” Feelings of not belonging in either mainstream Euro-Canadian society or in Aboriginal society can also create barriers to reaching socio-economic equity.”

-indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca

Residential Schools

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, missionaries took on what they felt was their ‘spiritual responsibility’ of ‘civilizing’ indigenous children. The first U.S. government-operated boarding school was not opened until 1879, but legislation such as the Civilization Fund Act existed prior to the boarding schools.

Indigenous nations that had already seen centuries of displacement and genocide were seen as ‘savage’ and in need of education to exist and assimilate to the colonizer’s way of life. In Canada, there were an estimated 150,000 children placed in these schools, though it is impossible to know the exact number.

The school’s sole purpose was to ‘civilize’ these indigenous children by removing all connections to their community, culture, and identity. This would impact future generations as the passing down of traditions and history were done by elders and family.

Tools such as corporal punishment, food deprivation, and restriction of their native languages were used to reach these goals. The children at these schools suffered sexual assault and forced conversion to Christianity. The discovery of children as young as three could be contributed to the girls becoming pregnant due to rape.

Lost Children

In 2021, the remains of 215 children were located on the grounds of Kamloops Indian Residential School using ground penetrating radar. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation hired a specialist and oversaw the project that uncovered the of unidentified children forcibly removed from their homes and placed into a school that they would never leave.

Understanding the depths of depravity that stained the halls of these schools highlights the absurdity of turning The 60s Scoop into a whimsical fantasy story focused on kindness. That this story is one in which the abductors of magical children are given a forgiving approach underplays the true horrors of these schools.

“And the icing on the cake, once you realise the source material is. The message is essentially “This place isn’t so bad, they just needed to find someone in the system who cared about them… Also while they are still ~*~different~*~ they are still kids who deserve love”. Stop it.”

-Kas on Goodreads

Klune admitted that as a ‘white dude’ there wasn’t much for him to be preaching about while seemingly failing to reflect that might also mean this wasn’t his story to tell. Beyond that, creator @dineaesthetics discusses how the ‘scoop’ is still happening to this day. You can find the shortened version on Instagram and a longer version on TikTok.

When the impacts of the scoop are still being felt today, the narrative of love and kindness conquering all rings hollow. Cushioning the appropriation of indigenous history does not absolve Klune of the harm he has caused.

White authors often attempt to appear aware of their privilege, but when they continue to bulldoze through communities taking what they want for themselves… that awareness often times feels manipulative. Stating that you’re appropriating from a place of privilege is perhaps worse than if you’ve never acknowledged it at all.

For more insight from an indigenous creator, visit @fromthemixedupdesk on TikTok and Instagram.

In the Lives of Puppets

In a reddit post, user u/HotCantaloupe962 discussed Klune’s initial decision to make the main character Victor autistic. Klune expressed his dissatisfaction with the publisher’s decision to remove all references to autism in the book. It was stated that Klune had three sensitivity readers and while two loved it the third felt the book was a ‘horrifying misrepresentation of autism.’

From @getyawordsout

While there are disagreements on whether or not the representation could be considered ‘good’ representation some creators have taken umbrage with showing Victor’s humanity by contrasting him with a robot.

Further quiet controversy about this book includes Klune’s awareness of the pushback and allegations that he has had book creators who have criticized his work removed from panels.

What I do feel this indicates is Klune’s tendency to take inspiration from communities that does not belong to for his work. The appropriation of indigenous pain and white saviorism in addition to what some have called ‘allistic saviorism’ within In the Life of Puppets displays that while Klune may do research he seems unable or unwilling to fully understand the subjects he wishes to tackle.

Just because an author wants to tell a story doesn’t mean that they should.