Native American Tropes to Avoid

For me, the most important thing when incorporating a real-world cultural feel to a fantasy project, is to remember to portray the culture in a positive light. So absolutely take the things you like about the culture, but then don't rely on a more "European" way of communicating it? I don't know whether i'm saying that right. I'll try to clarify.

A while ago, we had a fellow scribe who made an African-feeling culture, but he gave them some distinctly European traits, and that angered a few readers, because they felt he was saying the people weren't good enough without making them more European. It seems a silly perspective in a way, because he was just trying to make something unique, but I suppose the argument had merit, despite the unintentional message. And I mean no insult to people who feel either way about that particular issue, I'm only using it as an example of what I'm trying to convey. If you took that culture, say, based on Native American people that we as readers will recognize, but then you give them a religion that feels an awful lot like Christianity, it may send an unintended message that they are a great culture, but would have been better if they were more "like this" or whatever.

Oh man, please understand what I'm saying, because I'm trying to be tactful, but it's a tough thing to talk about without causing offense.

If you're using a recognizable culture, consider the ramifications of changing things, and I know that's hard to do, because our very craft is in taking something real and twisting it into something creative and unique. But when you change people's culture and heritage (and let's be serious for a moment, some cultures have a history of abuse by other people and attempts in the past to "Americanize" or "Europeanize" their members has been cruel and horrific in many ways), you can send a message reaffirming the hurt caused in the past.

There are probably tons of resources where you could learn about different native people in the Americas (I used to live in New Mexico and we had a bunch of local resources, like the cultural heritage museum, but I'm not sure where to find them on the internet), and research would probably help you to find some really authentic ways to portray your fantasy culture with a respectful nod to their inspired real-world cultures.

I think it's great to set out trying not to be negative and cause offense, as I'm very concerned with the same things, but also consider how you can use your fantasy culture to bring to light some of the amazing things of your subject culture. Will you delve deep into the traditions of the subject culture? Will you combine different qualities from distinct real-world peoples to create a hybrid sort of fantasy culture? Will you use a few surface details but change the whole identity of the culture, by creating a lot from your own mind and imagination? How might that affect actual members of that real-world culture? Are they included in your target audience?

I don't want to advocate overthinking this, but it's a ground I tread very carefully, as I've seen writers get raked over the coals for innocent choices that bite them in the ass later, when critiques come back very negative.

But in the end, we all have to make choices that are right for us and the work. In my current novel, I have a woman who was raised by a witch. I have to use that word, not because it's one I love or anything, and I understand how it's both a positive word for people who identify themselves with it, and a negative one to people who think it's demeaning or scary, or inappropriate for any number of reasons. But seriously, I had to pick something, and it's a word that I think most readers will accept as appropriate for the kind of woman the subject was--an earthy lady who dealt with herbs and spirits and who used her magic to astral project and create charms. What else would you call her? I could make up a word, but then that would subject my work to unnecessary explanations over something that's a TINY point of the book. All I need the reader to understand is that my MC has the ability to see auras, she mixes potions and poisons, and she thinks she can astral project, and she attributes it all to the woman who raised her and taught her the earthy sort of magic of her culture. But I'm prepared to defend my word choice to any future Wiccan or Christian reader who might take offense. I just have to hope that people can get over my not having a perfect word for what I'm doing, because I reality, I have to foremost provide a story in the English language that readers will understand, and my big job is to not overcomplicate things by dragging in unnecessary explanation.

I apologize for the long post that's slightly off-topic, but I hope I've given you something to consider in any case. Just try to honor the cultures you're using to draw inspiration from, and consider carefully which details you'll change to suit your needs, and what message you might be sending in the changing.

Best wishes!

P.S. If I caused any offense to anyone, I apologize in advance. I'm trying to be more aware and sensitive, but I sometimes have a no-nonsense way of talking about things that I understand can be sore subjects for other folks. I believe open discussion is the best way to share and educate everyone, and I'm doing my best to always be sensitive to marginalized populations.

 

So, I actually just did this like two weeks ago, for no practical reason whatsoever. Somebody on Facebook recommended an RPG called Ehdrigor, which was designed to reflect native or indigenous populations, and I took notes developing my own thing while I looked through it. When I was in High School I ran a D&D game set in a Native American setting (filled with all the cliches), and I wanted to see what doing it right would have looked like.

Here's what I've got for you:

- Mentally cut or ignore everything else in your world while you think about this. I know it's more of a mind game than an actual tip, but this is NUMBER ONE. If you want to build them correctly, you want to see the world from their perspective. You need to shake this idea that you're adding indigenous people to a medieval fantasy. See it the other way around - first you make an indigenous population, and then you add the medieval fantasy. See it from the inside, from their perspective.

- It's okay to simplify the real world a little, for the purposes of creating a coherent and rich fantasy element for your people. There are (at least) four big cultural regions in Native America. North American tribes, Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas. If you're looking at the North American tribes (modern day U.S. and Canada), you're going to find a lot of similarities between the legends and beliefs of the people involved. It's fine to merge the beliefs of different tribes while you paint your fantasy picture, to figure out the Magical Elements.

- But this is important, after you have your Magic System, you still need to diversify the people you're creating, and be real about it. You can give everyone the same lightning bird god, but as somebody said, don't give them all tepees. Different terrains, different cultures, different governments - think about how different the seven lords of Westeros are, or the difference between Gondor and Rohan. You want to mimic that degree of realistic, internal diversity - at least in proportion with the rest of your setting. And then consider, just like Winterfell has ties to the old gods of the North, some Native American tribes had a lot that drew from Aztec mythology - Inca or Mayan or another magic system in your setting would work just as well.

- Be careful with things like dreamcatchers, tepees, peyote, and the like. In the real world these are all very regional. Even if you want to involve some of these things in the region's magic system, I would suggest being a little careful about using them directly or making them universal. But for instance, sleeping alone in a tepee in the wild plains, taking a dose of peyote, and building a carefully made dreamcatcher could represent three different ways of accessing the same magic across the different tribes. But if you want to make these kinds of things universal, maybe you can, but what you don't want to do is accidentally push them so far that you make your native populations too uniform. If the magic is all you care about within your story - if the peyote and dreamcatcher are all you see in the story - then break them up. If the magic is a secondary backdrop, then it's okay if the accents are all the same behind the diverse cultures and governments.

- No culture is uniformly positive. "Noble Savage" is just as much a stereotype as anything else.

 

This, IMHO is one of the big things to remember. You can get all the culturally significant details right and avoid all the native stereotypes, but still mess things up by replacing those things with other stereotypes and bad character portrayals.

All cultures have good people, bad people, and those in between. They'll have people who speak eloquently, people who speak simply, people who speak with accents, and those who don't. They'll have smart people, dumb people, and average intelligence people.

They'll have beautiful people and ugly people, what ever that means to individual cultures and individuals themselves.

With that said, if you want to create a grounded culture and portrayal of that culture, make sure the people are characters not caricatures. Make sure that the statement "All the people of culture X are Y" does not apply.