The Journey To...North America, Part Two

In writing these articles I have come to understand how many people are voiceless in the collective imaginary land that is role playing games. I hope that these articles make our hobby and industry a place where more people are welcomed and encouraged to become involved. Which brings me to North America, the part the second.

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I spoke to a friend of mine and her words still resonate with me. I asked Susan what she might want in terms of how her people are portrayed in role playing. She replied that she would not want her people's traditions taken for granted. Sacred is sacred. In struggling to find a theme for this article, her words helped me focus in on what is important. So I will begin, before talking about the people, with my "How would I use this?" section.

It is not hard for those of us descended from European, especially Western European ancestry, to relate to the sacred. Stonehenge comes to mind. Beowulf and the legend of Arthur. Joan of Arc. The stand at Thermopylae. Rome at its best and at its worst. A host of cultural touchstones that help give us some common context and cultural language. They literally are sprinkled through our role playing; ideas from history and mythology that fuel how we play.

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So if I were going to run a campaign among the North American native tribes, prior to European arrival, it would be heavily focused on those ideas that they found and still find as sacred. It would be an intimate campaign, with no Vecna or dragons or Sauron. Perhaps a band of folk who have suffered loss who wander from place to place, helping others and battling legends. The magic would be subtle and beautiful and full of mystery. It would deal with the idea of what is sacred and how the sacred shapes the lives of the characters. Of course this can be taken into science fiction as well and Shadowrun does some of this with its setting.

What is sacred to the native tribes of North America? A best we can generalize because there are over 500 recognized tribes in the United States, including many in Alaska. Susan mentioned a few things: The Dance, The Ceremony, The Animals, and of course The Land itself. In our modern times issues of land ownership and management have come up again as natural resources are found on tribal lands. To the native peoples, land is more than just a means of making a living or a sign of prosperity. It represents a means of preserving cultural history and identity. Indigenous folk see themselves as protectors of the land and everything associated with it. Equally important are the spiritual and religious aspects of the land and specifically sacred spaces. These sacred places are integral to the tribes spiritual practices and when the land is disrespected, this insults the people and their beliefs. They also believes it angers the land. This should be an important concept in any campaign run using native peoples.

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I would recommend talking to native folk about their own tribes and tribal traditions instead of relying on just Internet searches. In general most scholars break the native peoples of North America, excluding Mexico (covered here) into ten different cultural areas. These are the Arctic, Subarctic, Northeast, Southeast, Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, California, Northwest Coast, and Plateau. These cultures had distinct lifestyles from one another, with some being agricultural and others more nomadic. Tragically some have been lost along the way and that is something we should never forget. If we as games masters and content creators can keep them alive in our games, then that is one way of continuing their legacy into the future.

​contributed by Sean Hillman

 

[Morrus]

Please don't do that. That kind of substitution only encourages the self-righteous busybodies who love to declare dumb things like "Orcs are an analogy for black people! Orcs are racist!" Let Aasimars be Aasimars and Hobgoblins be Hobgoblins.

You can't deal with the people who decide what is and isn't "politically correct," which these days is mostly a very small group of San Francisco elites, by trying to appease them. Because the whole idea that any of this is about "respect" or "concern" for the dignity or well-being of others is a giant lie.

It's about power. You can see the exact same thing happening with Christianity. Do you think the people who castigate homosexuals and decry liberal progressives as the tools of Satan actually care about the souls of those they hector? Of course not. It's about power. It's about creating a sociocultural base of power which they stand on top of, and from this vantage can make demands of everyone else. Christianity stopped being about loving thy neighbor about ten seconds after Jesus got nailed to the cross, and it became about controlling thy neighbor, just as all religions do. In this modern era, the grip Christianity has had one Western morality is loosening fast, and more and more people simply don't care what the actual priests say about anything. That's create a vacuum, a space for moral scolds and manipulators of fear, anxiety and guilt to insinuate themselves.

What the mavens of political correctness really want is a new religion, with them on top as the new priest caste. They want all of us to live in a state of constant fear and anxiety, worried that we might "offend" some vague, nonspecific body of people. They want us to be confused and unsure about our own moral reasoning and afraid to follow our own conscience. The ultimate goal is to create in us a need for them to tell us what to think, what to say, how to live.

That's why the "rules" of political correctness change constantly. Twenty five years ago, En Vogue released the anti-racism hit "Free Your Mind," with it's catchy refrain of "Free your mind, and the rest will follow. Be colorblind, don't be so shallow." Being color blind was a positive, it was progressive. Now, "color blind" is a "racist term" that is only used by "bad people."

Or look at the way they've made "people of color" into a thing. "Colored people" is totally racist, but if you turn it into a postpostitive adjective, "people of color," then it's "correct." What's hilarious, of course, is that the "reasoning" given for this is "people first," i.e. the idea that the "person" should come first to emphasize that these are people we are discussing. Yet if you watch closely (actually I'm kidding, you barely have to be observant at all to catch this), you'll notice that it's never "people of whiteness," but always "white people." This is because "political correctness" is really all about using white guilt to control and manipulate white people, so the people who advocate this nonsense don't actually have to be consistent in any meaningful way, because it's not really about the things they say, it's about exercising power over others.

None of these people actually believes that saying "people" first is an actual meaningful act, otherwise they would have changed how they say "white people." It's just a way of confusing and controlling people by constantly shifting the language they are "supposed" to use so that they constantly have to turn to the mavens of political correctness to be told what the proper language is this week. Well, either that or the alt.righties are right and they really do just hate white people and continue to use "white people" because they are deliberately and consciously dehumanizing "people of whiteness," but even I think that's paranoid. Never attribute to malice that which can be readily explained by incompetence and stupidity. I think they use "white people" despite it conflicting with their reasoning for using "color of people" not because they are evil and hate white people, but because they are intellectually lazy and facile and don't actually ever bother to think about the ramifications of their arguments.

I'm getting lost in the weeds here. The point being is this: Ignore them. These mavens of political correctness are no different than any other kind of priest. You can just ignore them. They don't have any actual power. This latest iteration of the plague that has been with us since the dawn of time doesn't even make any supernatural claims -- there's no Hell for people who think "people of color" is a dumb, reductive term. There's no Politically Correct God watching our every movement, knowing the secrets of our hearts. They have literally no power beyond the power to whinge at people.

Put them out of your mind and enjoy your games the way you want to enjoy your games. If something you are doing troubles [your conscience, then listen to that voice. But if it's not, then don't let some busybody threatening to get offended at you make you doubt your own conscience.

This rant about your many and varied problems with inclusion in modern society and religion is completely inappropriate.

Given that I had to say the same thing to you just recently, and you’ve decided to ignore me, you’ll be leaving us.

 

[Steve1]

...

Explain your reasoning here.

Sure. Simple: You didn't make your own judgement of what I wrote?

Which is itself a value from the culture you grew up with.

How do you know what culture I grew up with? It's ironic that considering the article that started this discussion, you would imply that Western culture promotes the recognition of the values held by other cultures.

"I don't want to be killed or enslaved" is not a value specific to Western culture.

I never said it was. My point was that values exist outside the framework of those found in Western culture.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If you knew that by part taking in a certain ritual you are making it possible for your family to keep living and that it is one of only a few ways you could go to paradise after death oh and on top you get to live a full year surrounded by luxuries and revered as a deity would you do it even if it means you have to die?

I have two responses.

Firstly, take another look at how you are justifying submission to the sacrifice: it will save others' lives and grant you luxuries. These are goals understandable to any human being. You are not saying that dying this way is valued in and of itself in a manner that people with different value systems just can't understand. The value system here is, at bottom, the same. What differs is the culture's understanding of the facts.

Secondly, I imagine different Aztecs had different opinions about their religion. It would be a mistake to think of them all as ecstatic true believers just as it would be a mistake to think every medieval European was a happy Catholic.

 

[Shasarak]

My main concern with playing in a North American campaign would be the Bronze age (or worse) technology level and the fact that you would have to walk everywhere.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

So your choice is to glorify the Big Empire rather than the "small fry then. And who deems what is good? What you suggest as good is based on your own viewpoint and it doesn't frame the viewpoint of other cultures and their perspectives. What use a car, a plane, a computer, to an indigenous person that lives in the Amazon Rainforest? Are you going to next say that your way of life is better than theirs? And if so, who are you to judge? We must be mindful and respectful of another culture's values that don't include our own; no, especially when they don't include our own. The good you espouse is a value judgement that is not shared by all, and that is exactly what we need to be mindful of.

For about 150,000 years most humans lived just like the Native Americans did before European explorers made contact with them. How many cultures existed during those years that were lost to the sands of time because they had no written language to record their events, all we have is archeological evidence to suggest how they lived and died.

What use a car, a plane, a computer, to an indigenous person that lives in the Amazon Rainforest?

Well for starters a car is a means of transportation, because in the Amazon Rainforest, there are not a lot of trains, buses and other forms of mass transit, so the best way to travel from point A to point B is with either a car, or because of the Amazon's vast river system, by boat. A plane is a more rapid form of transportation, a computer is a means of communication for indigenous people, and also a source of entertainment, they can download movies and so forth. The fact that you use a computer to communicate with us means that you too also cherish western civilization, because without western civilization we would not have these things. Ever hear of Doctors without borders? I once knew a doctor that traveled to the Amazon Rainforest to treat indigenous people living their. If it weren't for western civilization, there could be no doctors without borders, modern medicine wouldn't exist! People would be grubbing a meager existence out in the Amazon Rainforest and dying young.

I cherish cultures that are responsible for much of the human progress that occurs, advances in science, transportation, communication, and medicine, what is wrong with that?

 

[Thomas Bowman]

So the Empire can be forgiven for waging numerous wars because it... prevented wars?

The Romans killed thousands of Christians starting with Christ himself.

Marco Polo's account of the Mongol Empire would seem to contradict yours.

The Roman Empire was more tolerant of other gods besides their own during their pagan era, than the Christians were, there is that. Rome under the State Religion was a more tolerant society and it was more cosmopolitan than it became when it adopted Christianity as its state religion. Also a good part of the Roman period was during the Republican era when many gods were worshipped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic

You know that the Christian era of the Roman Empire was less democratic than during the Roman Republic when it had more of a representative government. Rome is a mixed bag, it is not the Nazis, I am pretty sure than most Roman citizens would have been horrified by the things the Germans did during the Holocaust if they knew about them. The Romans did after all consider the Germans to be Barbarians, and the things the Germans did during world war II would have only confirmed those suspicions.

On the Mongols, I was referring to Genghis Khan, the Khan that Marco Polo met was Kublai Khan, he was a more civilized leader, but basically the Mongols conquered what already existed, they are not know for making any lasting improvements except perhaps in the field of warfare. The Roman Empire lasted a lot longer than the empire of the Mongols, the Nazi empire lasted 15 years, Rome lasted about one thousand years. They say Rome wasn't built in a day and because of that it lasted longer than some other hastily built empires such as the one the Nazis created.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Sure. Simple: You didn't make your own judgement of what I wrote?

I didn't say that anything you said or did was good or bad or right or wrong or that you ought or ought not to do something. Yes, you could say that my statement was a "judgment" to the effect that your statement fit the definition of a value judgment, but no, my statement was not a value judgment.

How do you know what culture I grew up with?

You've been referring to Western culture using the first person plural throughout.

It's ironic that considering the article that started this discussion, you would imply that Western culture promotes the recognition of the values held by other cultures.

An educated guess: you did not live as an isolated hermit all your life and come up with this theory of cultural tolerance totally independently. You have read and had conversations with other people who espoused the same or similar values, and their words transmitted those values to you just as you now want your words to transmit those values to us. That's culture.

 

[Shasarak]

So the Empire can be forgiven for waging numerous wars because it... prevented wars?

You get a lot of leeway on your atrocities when you kill people that no one living can remember.

Besides the Romans also offered Carrots, it was not just all Stick all the time.

 

[Bagpuss]

No one is saying "Don't play other cultures", instead we are saying "do so with respect".

You only need to look at the second comment for an example of someone saying "Don't play other cultures".

 

[Thomas Bowman]

You get a lot of leeway on your atrocities when you kill people that no one living can remember.

Besides the Romans also offered Carrots, it was not just all Stick all the time.

Unlike the Nazis, the Romans did not kill millions of innocent civilians, to then that would have been a waste of potential labor. The Romans might have enslaved them, or if they behaved themselves they might eventually make them Roman citizens if the conquest went smoothly. Most Roman Emperors were a lot more tolerant that Hitler, all they wanted was for people to pay their taxes, and to fight in their legions, beyond that they didn't care what gods they worshipped so long as they honored the deities of Rome, the failure to do the second was their main source of conflict with Christians and Jews.

Christians and Jews did not tolerate the worship of other gods besides their one God, that offended many Romans, Romans respected other pagan religions, because when one already worships many gods, there is always room for more, but they did not appreciate monotheism, which is the fact that Christians and Jews said that the gods the Romans worshipped were false, and that only their one true God was the one that existed, by that metric, the Pagan Roman Empire was a lot more tolerant of other religions than was the Christian or Jewish faiths. When Rome adopted Christianity as their official religion all that tolerance died and pagans that did not convert to Christianity were persecuted.

If you will notice, not a lot of religious wars were fought prior to Rome's adoption of Christianity, so given what the Ancient World had back then, particularly the fact that it lacked democratic or representative governments, Rome conquering other non-democratic nations on its periphery was not altogether a bad thing. Small nations fight wars because their leaders want power just like the Roman Emperors did, but as the smaller nations were more numerous, they fought with each other more often. Rome wages war mostly on its borders while trying to expand them, in its interior they kept the peace, because it was in the Emperor's interest to do so.