Hey there, I love Paizo and I love pathfinder. This isn't a call out or anything I just had some questions. There has some been a lot of concerned with the way creatures are utilized from various cultures around the world. Some people view it as upsetting when fantasy is exclusively based around European cultures, while other times using monsters, creatures, or entities out of context from their cultures of origins can be seen as appropriation. The most infamous example of this I can think of our things like Thunderbird or the W-----o or the creature on page 327 of the 2e Bestiary.(I won't refer to it by its full name because from my understanding of the cultural origins that's one thing you should avoid doing) and my question is what is the process in deciding too include these creatures. Has Paizo gotten approval of writing these creatures, or have indigenous writers/freelancers work on them. Two in particular are the aforementioned creature and the Kushtaka, from beastiary 3, page 158.
I Genuinely believe Paizo has the best of intentions, I know in the past they've talked about utilizing writers from cultures that most reflect the material in the past. I think Paizo is a great company that truly values diversity. I just had the concerns/questions I raised.
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I think there's already been a thread about wedigo.
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Yes, we did have a decently sized thread that got heated and some rather unkind language was used before mods took to pruning it. This isn't exactly a can of worms I would encourage opening again on the Paizo forums, but rather something to inquire about directly. This is an issue that requires a bit more nuance to discuss.
Well, let's look at it this way: if the name of the creature is a problem, why not simply change the name to one that isn't offensive? Those who know what it is will know what to do (follow suit), and those who don't know what it is will not create outrage by spouting the new name obliviously. It will create a life of its own and, eventually, the old name will cease existence, thereby making the knowers happy to be lifted from this problem. Everyone wins.
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To answer part of the OP's question, I'll direct you to this post I made previously on the subject.
I'll also ask, from a personal perspective, that people take the time to look into these things before creating new posts on the subject. If you type "kushtaka" into our search bar and click the magnifying glass, the post I linked previously is in the top 8 hits, along with several other posts from me talking about my Tlingit heritage and wanting kushtaka in our game.
When someone confronts a company going "I'm not a member of this culture, but I need to know if I should be offended on their behalf", you're basically demanding that authors from minority groups stand and be accounted for. I shouldn't have to pull out my Goldbelt shareholder paperwork and blood quantum card to answer a question that 30 seconds of research would have covered.
It also creates a difficult burden for people who want to write while retaining a certain amount of anonymity, and there's any number of reasons an author might want to do that. Some might want to retain anonymity because they want their work to be judged based on the quality of their content and not the color of their skin or the history of their people. Some might want to preserve their privacy because they're e.g. a Jewish author living in an area with an active or recently active KKK chapter. So while sometimes a simple "Yes" or "No" answer should be sufficient, it's almost never taken as such and that often means that someone from a marginalized group has to come out and do a song and dance to appease people from the dominant cultural group (I don't know if that's the case in this thread, specifically, but it certainly has been before).
That's not to say "Don't ever ask these questions", because they can be important questions to ask. Indigenous authors and consultants should be included and deferred to in projects that touch on Indigenous subject matter, the same way Black authors and consultants should be included and deferred to in projects that touch Black subject matter. But if you're not a member of the culture in question, you should start by researching the subject yourself first, rather than expecting people from marginalized cultures to come justify their existence on demand.
Personally, I would say it's probably also best to watch the conversations happening among members of potentially impacted cultures to see whether it's a thing they're discussing and whether they might need your support or amplification, but that can be a tricky thing to gauge, with a lot of nuance. For example, wendigos aren't the sole province of one culture; they're part of the mythology of a wide array of Indigenous cultures and nations stretching across most of the US and Canada and influencing stories and cultures from Massachusetts to Alaska. How do we handle it if an Indigenous author from one nation wants to tell a wendigo story while members of another nation don't even want the name spoken by people who aren't part of their culture? That doesn't even have a good answer between Indigenous groups, let alone someone creating a product at a national or an international level.
It's a tricky thing, walking the line between representation and appropriation, and most people will have slightly to extremely different views on the matter. It's also part of the greater social discussion of our time, and it's entirely possible there will be answers in the near or distant future that will make the conversations happening now look backwards and ignorant (much the same way that looking at popular media from even fairly recent decades can be utterly cringe-inducing today).
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I confess, the first time I heard about this creature, it was from a member of an Ojibwe band who told stories about the "wiindigoo" (the Ojibwe word which is the source of the English name) to scare some young'uns. I had never even encountered the "do not even speak the name of the creature" outside of the Paizo boards where this has come up before.
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To answer part of the OP's question, I'll direct you to this post I made previously on the subject.
I'll also ask, from a personal perspective, that people take the time to look into these things before creating new posts on the subject. If you type "kushtaka" into our search bar and click the magnifying glass, the post I linked previously is in the top 8 hits, along with several other posts from me talking about my Tlingit heritage and wanting kushtaka in our game.
When someone confronts a company going "I'm not a member of this culture, but I need to know if I should be offended on their behalf", you're basically demanding that authors from minority groups stand and be accounted for. I shouldn't have to pull out my Goldbelt shareholder paperwork and blood quantum card to answer a question that 30 seconds of research would have covered.
It also creates a difficult burden for people who want to write while retaining a certain amount of anonymity, and there's any number of reasons an author might want to do that. Some might want to retain anonymity because they want their work to be judged based on the quality of their content and not the color of their skin or the history of their people. Some might want to preserve their privacy because they're e.g. a Jewish author living in an area with an active or recently active KKK chapter. So while sometimes a simple "Yes" or "No" answer should be sufficient, it's almost never taken as such and that often means that someone from a marginalized group has to come out and do a song and dance to appease people from the dominant cultural group (I don't know if that's the case in this thread, specifically, but it certainly has been before).
That's not to say "Don't ever ask these questions", because they can be important questions to ask. Indigenous authors and consultants should be included and deferred to in projects that touch on Indigenous subject matter, the same way Black authors and...
I would like to apologize it was never my intention to force out Blood Quantum nonsense. I mainly had ask due to indigenous friends having brought up these concerns. I myself am in a complex situation, mostly raised by my white mother but have some connection to my Taino and Hispanic heritage. Something i struggle with if I even have the right to claim due to feeling like I haven't been a part of it enough. Thus the difficulty of coming from multiple heritages. I also could have worded it poorly, but I had mostly was curious if there was any contribution, I wasn't intended for specific names or anything like that.
I also apologize, I had searched W.....o and the past but I had forgotten to search Kushtaka.
This is a good subject, I love Paizo and it's staff and it's community. I wasn't trying to force anything or the like. It was concern from myself, and some friends. For any offense or burden I may have caused this wasn't my intent and I am sorry.
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Going to link my own post from when this thread last came up.
I also want to add something else, because as a writer and worldbuilder I've had to think hard about this problem:
In order to bring about a world defined by the presence of justice rather than the presence of mutual injustice, I think we need to get away from the idea of a cultural copyright in which blood purity is the standard for ethical usage, and instead we need to reflect on and reconsider the nature of two vital civil rights related to information and how it is distributed, and how establishing these rights better for indigenous people will lead to the presence of justice:
1. Freedom of Expression, this one has been misused by the right in order to attempt to justify hate speech and such. Similarly there's an obvious argument to be made here about not infringing the speech rights of creators who don't fit into certain categories of identity, but I want to go further and examine a different side of it. In order to truly have freedom of expression we need to ensure that indigenous people, and people of color, have not only a passive right to speech that cane be effectively ignored or downplayed, but an active one in which we ensure they have equal access to platforms and audiences for their speech. Traditionally, indigenous people have been denied expression, buried and erased by the dominant cultures, and denied the economic means to create platforms. The denial of Freedom of Expression is often a tactic of Genocide, in America (I believe the expression was "kill the indian, save the child"), in Canada (there was recent findings concerning bodies found at boarding schools, but even the survivors had this done to them), in Japan (was reading about the Ainu just recently), and in many other places, we have seen crackdowns on native expressions of culture-- that has to stop in order to allow past, present, and future indigenous voices to flourish alongside others-- the presence of this justice would remove the element of erasure cited by anti-appropriation advocates and platform indigenous voices alongside any other popular voices that might experience, internalize, and employ elements of cultures originating with an ethnic group.
2. Access to Information, we usually understand access to information as the public's right to freely access information regardless of social class, purpose, etc-- its your right to an education, and your right to research and explore alternative ways of thinking, e.g. the book available in your public library, your right to a quality education and to literacy and so forth. But one aspect we may not think about is that imperialism often denies us this right, as it pertains to the cultures and stories it seeks to destroy. Without thorough preservation efforts, colonizers have traditionally destroyed indigenous culture and denied us authentic sources and voices entirely-- leaving only the voices of the colonizers in trying to understand those cultures, and robbing indigenous peoples of their own histories as other practices of genocide can break down traditional lines of oral history or destroy the physical objects used for keeping records. With efforts made to preserve such cultural works and platform them for the education of the public, we can ensure that the authentic traditional narratives of indigenous people are well represented regardless of how else those elements are used elsewhere in cultural works. This can also serve to make some works, which lean into historical accuracy and representation, more accurate regardless of who is writing them, as even the most well meaning descendent is still dependent upon records to understand how their ancestors lived.
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Also, separately from these rights, we need to focus on expanding the rights and protections that serve to heal the wounds inflicted by centuries of colonialism, ensuring equal political representation for marginalized groups, and prevent them from being disproportionately targeted by law enforcement, and in the end dismantle the social structures that render meaningful justice along class and racial lines impossible. Which is a tall order, but this kind of debate can't be put to rest until the building blocks of oppression are themselves dismantled. Trying to solve the problems without meaningfully addressing those social inequalities will just feed the xenophobic elements present in both dominant and marginalized cultures-- that's what happened in Israel where populist 'strongmen' like Netanyahu and his predecessors on the right stoked the fears of a people collectively traumatized by marginalization and genocide to justify the subjugation of Palestine, its what happened in India when dreams of independence evolved into Hindu nationalism and resulted in the marginalization of Muslims living there, and fueled Japan's imperial ambitions in Hokkaido and eventually all of Asia.
We have to address the colonialist assumptions that post-colonialism left un-criticized and continue to evolve our pursuit of justice out of a context of pervasive nationalism, we need to stop building borders, and start building bridges (and less pithy, infrastructure to support economic justice for those disenfranchised, both in general because I'm not gonna say its economic equality is generally fine, and in the specific of those disenfranchised by Imperialism.)
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Always ask: Are you trying to protect and defend ______? Or are you trying to surreptitiously silence and hide ________?
I remember a conversation I had on here not too long ago with someone else. We were discussing how to reasonably represent a character with Autism that actually had some mechanical advantages/disadvantages that would make sense.
Well, in the middle of a rather productive discussion about it, a couple of people came on thread and told me that I shouldn't even be trying to represent someone like my IRL self in-game because there may possibly be some hypothetical autistic person who would get offended by it.
*facepalm* Oh, the irony.
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I would like to apologize it was never my intention to force out Blood Quantum nonsense. I mainly had ask due to indigenous friends having brought up these concerns. I myself am in a complex situation, mostly raised by my white mother but have some connection to my Taino and Hispanic heritage. I also could have worded it poorly, but I had mostly was curious if there was any contribution, I wasn't intended for specific names or not. Something i struggle with if I even have the right to claim due to feeling like I haven't been a part of it enough. Thus the difficulty of coming from multiple heritages.
I also apologize, I had searched W.....o and the past but I had forgotten to search Kushtaka.
This is a good subject, I love Paizo and it's staff and it's community. I wasn't trying to force anything or the like. It was concern from myself, and some friends. For any offense or burden I may have caused this wasn't my intent.
No offense taken! This kind of topic just comes up with some frequency and this felt like the time and place to kind of break into the other side of the topic re: authors and the demand to justify their work. It's a tricky situation that requires some flexibility from everyone who touches the issue as we navigate the path forward.
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No offense taken! This kind of topic just comes up with some frequency and this felt like the time and place to kind of break into the other side of the topic re: authors and the demand to justify their work. It's a tricky situation that requires some flexibility from everyone who touches the issue as we navigate the path forward.I would like to apologize it was never my intention to force out Blood Quantum nonsense. I mainly had ask due to indigenous friends having brought up these concerns. I myself am in a complex situation, mostly raised by my white mother but have some connection to my Taino and Hispanic heritage. I also could have worded it poorly, but I had mostly was curious if there was any contribution, I wasn't intended for specific names or not. Something i struggle with if I even have the right to claim due to feeling like I haven't been a part of it enough. Thus the difficulty of coming from multiple heritages.
I also apologize, I had searched W.....o and the past but I had forgotten to search Kushtaka.
This is a good subject, I love Paizo and it's staff and it's community. I wasn't trying to force anything or the like. It was concern from myself, and some friends. For any offense or burden I may have caused this wasn't my intent.
It is a good point to make!I also would like to thank you for you reaching out even though you have talked about it in the past.
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Always ask: Are you trying to protect and defend ______? Or are you trying to surreptitiously silence and hide ________?
I remember a conversation I had on here not too long ago with someone else. We were discussing how to reasonably represent a character with Autism that actually had some mechanical advantages/disadvantages that would make sense.
Well, in the middle of a rather productive discussion about it, a couple of people came on thread and told me that I shouldn't even be trying to represent someone like my IRL self in-game because there may possibly be some hypothetical autistic person who would get offended by it.
*facepalm* Oh, the irony.
Speak for yourself. I'm autistic and I would be pretty uncomfortable if a game had rules/mechanics to represent that rather than leaving it up to roleplay--that seems more likely to result in stereotyping than representation, or at least oversimplification given how varied people on the autism spectrum are.
On a more relevant note, this type of disagreement is proof that multiple perspectives should always be consulted for these types of questions, as different people even within the group being discussed will have different views, none of which are necessarily more correct than the others.
Cultural appropriation is a genuine problem in my opinion, but I do think sensitive representation is usually preferable to omission. That said, though, sometimes there are aspects of a culture or religion that are best to not use if people of said culture aren't involved, even if the creator has good intentions. I'm not qualified to say whether that's the case for the wendigo or not, but I can understand why someone might be unsure about it.
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Speak for yourself. I'm autistic and I would be pretty uncomfortable if a game had rules/mechanics to represent that rather than leaving it up to roleplay--that seems more likely to result in stereotyping than representation, or at least oversimplification given how varied people on the autism spectrum are.
Yeah. And that was one of the things we were discussing. Our conclusion to that was that it should be kept strictly to houserules and handled per table and per gaming group. For that very reason.
What I didn't like was being unilaterally shut down. Simply told to stop talking about it.
The message that I got from it was, 'I don't want to be faced with this. Go away. I want to continue pretending that you don't exist.'
Which probably wasn't actually what they were going for. But that was what I heard loud and clear.
Speak for yourself. I'm autistic and I would be pretty uncomfortable if a game had rules/mechanics to represent that rather than leaving it up to roleplay--that seems more likely to result in stereotyping than representation, or at least oversimplification given how varied people on the autism spectrum are.Yeah. And that was one of the things we were discussing. Our conclusion to that was that it should be kept strictly to houserules and handled per table and per gaming group. For that very reason.
What I didn't like was being unilaterally shut down. Simply told to stop talking about it.
The message that I got from it was, 'I don't want to be faced with this. Go away. I want to continue pretending that you don't exist.'
Which probably wasn't actually what they were going for. But that was what I heard loud and clear.
I wasn't there for this conversation, nor do I know the context, but maybe it was the medium you were using? There's a bit of a difference between a sensitive conversation held over a public forum and one held in DMs or a private site. I'm certain if I had seen that on the forums, I would expect to see more than a few people upset.
I wasn't there for this conversation, nor do I know the context, but maybe it was the medium you were using? There's a bit of a difference between a sensitive conversation held over a public forum and one held in DMs or a private site. I'm certain if I had seen that on the forums, I would expect to see more than a few people upset.
It was quite a while ago. Initial PF2 playtest, if I remember correctly. And I don't understand why openly discussing my existence causes such a negative reaction, but it often seems to do so.
Speaking of which, I seem to be derailing this thread quite a bit. So I think I am going to leave it at that.
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I wasn't there for this conversation, nor do I know the context, but maybe it was the medium you were using? There's a bit of a difference between a sensitive conversation held over a public forum and one held in DMs or a private site. I'm certain if I had seen that on the forums, I would expect to see more than a few people upset.It was quite a while ago. Initial PF2 playtest, if I remember correctly. And I don't understand why openly discussing my existence causes such a negative reaction, but it often seems to do so.
Speaking of which, I seem to be derailing this thread quite a bit. So I think I am going to leave it at that.
I don't want to make you feel like you're getting a negative reaction from who you are, nor do I want to derail this thread any further. I want to note that there's a difference between "my character is autistic," and "here are the statistical bonuses/penalties for autism." One is much more likely to elicit a stronger emotional response - it's something that people can be more sensitive about and maybe needs a better home than public forums where anyone can see and comment and... be public forums.
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I'll keep this more simple.
I for one hope game designers never stop incorporating the history, myth, and culture of other places and people in games. I know from my perspective these games widened my knowledge of world history and culture because some game element would often cause me to research the history of that element. It made me more wide read as I would often read a book or story from the source index.
These games tend to introduce their audience to a lot of material they would never even know about if it wasn't introduced in game material. D&D has been great at including mythical material from a lot of different cultures and mythos over the years in a way that makes you curious and gives you a starting point to research.
I know that the original deity book Deity and Demigods in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was an inspiration to seek out material about the Greek Gods, Norse Gods, Egyptian Gods, Native American gods, and all the various mythos they included. That was a great book for introducing a young person to a variety of different myths and religions from around the world.
It would be an absolute shame to see that type of material eliminated from game material. It's always been really interesting for those of us that love to play these games to read about all the strange inspirations game designers use to create material real and imagined.
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I think many people agree with you on that one Deriven - I think the most important aspect, as others have stated in better detail above, though, is making sure that when representing another culture and their mythos - even by proxy of reference - that you do so in a way that is not reductive or, even worse, slighting to the culture in question. Obviously the aim is to make a nod to a culture in a way that fully embraces the context in which it came from. I've seen quite the praise for Mwangi Expanse on that front, for instance.
It's a difficult thing for writers to do sometimes if you're trying to represent a culture that isn't yours. Even if you're trying your best not to color things in an unintended way, if you aren't working with people of that culture or who know that culture more intimately than you then inevitably some cultural biases might sneak through unbeknownst even to you.
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Wendigo is in an odd position because it's a widespread myth among canadian tribes but some tribes treat it with far more seriousness. In most tribes it is just a monster, another aspect of their mythology and a cautionary tale. In others it is far more dire and even speaking its name is taboo. I only have experience with the former group by way of exchange student and was unaware of the second untill that first thread.
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Something I struggle with is understanding the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation/dissemination.
It's a very difficult line to know when you're crossing it. Especially when something has moved from the source culture (or in a case where a source is not identifiable and exists in many culture).
I'm not a creative type, so it's not something I confront on a regular basis, but if I had to I wouldn't know how to navigate it.
How do we communally identify where the line is?
Do we refuse to include something because it might offend somebody?
How would we go about getting "approval" if such a concept can even be said to be possible? (I don't think it is since you're asking for everyone of a culture to agree)
Can we say that if the intention isn't to harm or degrade then it's acceptable?
Do we need to have something that says "This is inspired by X culture"?
How do we feel about heavily borrowing from a cultural tradition but removing the name/changing the myth/idea a bit? Is it considered acceptable or a disservice?
This might seem like a silly list of question, but for me personally I'm seeking to understand this topic and it's something I definitely don't. I suspect that there is no easy list of answers to my above questions, and I think that's what makes this so difficult.
My personal perspective (as someone who isn't a member of a minority culture) is that unless there is obvious/intended harm from a representation of a part of culture that we as a global community need to accept (not sure the right word to use) the spread of culture and melding into new cultures which might morph and change the original ideas.
This has been the way of the world, basically forever.
I mean take a look at the ancient Greek and Roman gods. It was mostly a copy and paste job with some tweaks.
But I also understand some people might view may statement as being unfair and since I'm not a member of a minority culture I'm not sure I can say how we can proceed as a global society.
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A few years ago I was on a shuttle taking me from Newark airport to Manhattan, and there was this American girl who told me: "Oh, you are an Italian! How nice! Do you eat pizza everyday?"
Well no, once every 1-2 weeks on average, probably less than she does; anyway, I'll get to the point.
Imagine this girl walking into the Domino shop I actually happened into the following day, and asking: "Are you sure it's ok that you cook pizza here? That's an Italian thing, so not only are you appropriating it, you are also doing a very bad job at that (true, that pizza really sucked). Do you at least have an Italian cook?"
Now, I didn't like that pizza, let alone my wife (we asked 'NO ONION PLEASE!', and it was full of onion to the brink), but no fellow compatriots I know would be offended by the fact that Domino is actually making and selling pizza (they even dared open some places here in Italy, I have no idea about how well they are faring), they just laugh at that and maybe act smarter than me and avoid eating it. Except for a few Neapolitans maybe, who actually take great pride in their 'One True Way' of cooking pizza...
What I mean is, mocking people is a bad thing to do; besides that, have your pizza, and have it the way you like it. Each one of us has got different tastes.
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I never heard of the Wendigo being a "don't speak it's name" thing, but Skinwalker definitely has that going on. I've actually had a player in my group who is visibly uncomfortable talking about it. It was explained to me that the Wendigo was a cautionary story for north eastern native americans, while the Skinwalker is an unspeakable evil that many people in south western native american cultures actively fear.
That goes along with what Michael Sayre is saying: if you look around and don't see the people involved taking issue, don't decide on your own to get upset on someone their behalf; it's performative. If you actually know someone who is impacted and has made their stance known (or you are such a person), then you can amplify that message.
Also, conflating two separate myths (Wendigo and Skinwalker) and getting upset on someone's behalf for both is SUPER unhelpful and insulting.
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That goes along with what Michael Sayre is saying: if you look around and don't see the people involved taking issue, don't decide on your own to get upset on someone their behalf; it's performative.
I will reiterate what Michael also said here: you need to actually look for what people from that minority group are saying about it. Often people will fall back onto "well, nobody I know has complained about it." A lot of times that's even true, but it's also pretty common that they have few, if any, friends in said group, and the ones they do have just might not feel comfortable talking about it with them.
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A few years ago I was on a shuttle taking me from Newark airport to Manhattan, and there was this American girl who told me: "Oh, you are an Italian! How nice! Do you eat pizza everyday?"
Well no, once every 1-2 weeks on average, probably less than she does; anyway, I'll get to the point.
Imagine this girl walking into the Domino shop I actually happened into the following day, and asking: "Are you sure it's ok that you cook pizza here? That's an Italian thing, so not only are you appropriating it, you are also doing a very bad job at that (true, that pizza really sucked). Do you at least have an Italian cook?"Now, I didn't like that pizza, let alone my wife (we asked 'NO ONION PLEASE!', and it was full of onion to the brink), but no fellow compatriots I know would be offended by the fact that Domino is actually making and selling pizza (they even dared open some places here in Italy, I have no idea about how well they are faring), they just laugh at that and maybe act smarter than me and avoid eating it. Except for a few Neapolitans maybe, who actually take great pride in their 'One True Way' of cooking pizza...
What I mean is, mocking people is a bad thing to do; besides that, have your pizza, and have it the way you like it. Each one of us has got different tastes.
Not saying you're wrong, but this is a bad analogy in my opinion. Italians aren't a marginalized group in North America the way indigenous peoples are, and they (we? I'm of partial Italian descent but using "we" for millions feels weird) didn't have their cultures/beliefs/religions suppressed in their own home for centuries. Using folklore from those cultures requires more care than cooking a meal from a culture that isn't yours but doesn't face oppression.
Again, that doesn't necessarily disprove your point, but I thought it was worth noting that there's a significant difference between those two examples.
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I agree that there are differences, but first of all, Italians in the USA have definitely been marginalized in the past; that said, my point was about how culture works (and has always worked) in general: learn something from other people, and make it your own.
It's bad when you take some pieces of it to mock a certain group - though I personally don't consider it AS bad as other probably do.
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Sorry for posting again back-to-back, but I don't think that an edit would do in this case.
I wanted to add that the fact that other people in the world do something with what they have learned from you, usually doesn't affect you in the slightest. I don't believe that's something worth getting mad about.
What exactly is the connection between how oppressed your ancestors were and how valid your feelings and concerns are?Not saying you're wrong, but this is a bad analogy in my opinion. Italians aren't a marginalized group in North America the way indigenous peoples are, and they (we? I'm of partial Italian descent but using "we" for millions feels weird) didn't have their cultures/beliefs/religions suppressed in their own home for centuries. Using folklore from those cultures requires more care than cooking a meal from a culture that isn't yours but doesn't face oppression.
Again, that doesn't necessarily disprove your point, but I thought it was worth noting that there's a significant difference between those two examples.
I genuinely don't understand how you got that from what I wrote.
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I'm Irish, and if anyone used Irish culture or history as an analogy why oppressing a person facing current systemic erasure they'd deserve to be called out.
Irish people were violently colonized, murdered by systems of extraction, and had our language and history attempted to be erased. AND now we're mostly wealthy* white people who oppress the other indigenous people of our own island. Let alone what gets done by other white people using Irishness as an excuse.
You can't necessarily use one people or groups experience as an analogy for another's. Let people tell you their own stories.
*By global standards, plenty of deep inequality in our little tax-haven.
Something I struggle with is understanding the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation/dissemination.I've found that line is whenever someone decides it's insulting and that's different for everyone.
How do we communally identify where the line is?Functionally impossible.
Do we refuse to include something because it might offend somebody?Someone is always going to be offended somewhere. The best you can hope for is as few as possible, or you'll never make anything.
How would we go about getting "approval" if such a concept can even be said to be possible? (I don't think it is since you're asking for everyone of a culture to agree)I agree, people can only speak for themself individually.
A truly mind-boggling amount of human history and tradition is like this. It blew my mind in university learning just how much on human history, especially religion, is the equivalent of copying someone else's homework and doing the bare minimum to not get caught. Unless somehow all the same things happened every few hundred years in a new place.My personal perspective (as someone who isn't a member of a minority culture) is that unless there is obvious/intended harm from a representation of a part of culture that we as a global community need to accept (not sure the right word to use) the spread of culture and melding into new cultures which might morph and change the original ideas.
This has been the way of the world, basically forever.
I mean take a look at the ancient Greek and Roman gods. It was mostly a copy and paste job with some tweaks.
Yeah, this is basically what I expected. But I also don't want to make assumptions since I'm not the one is position to be have my culture appropriated. The closest thing I've heard of in terms of American culture being "appropriated" (and I wouldn't even begin to call it that) is when I heard from a German friend that is very common to have "Red Cup" or American parties. Everyone uses red solo cups and does "American" things. Whatever that means. Apparently this is a common theme in Europe, or at least I was told.
Americans just use solo cups because it's a cheap way to have drinks. And the most common kind are red. And there's really nothing deeper to it than that, but it's interesting to me how a cultural phenomenon developed around this snippet of American youth party culture.
Anyways, I agree that all we can do is try to operative in good faith when we borrow from other cultures and I'm not sure there's much else we can do.
I think perhaps in a moderate size company you can make attempts to reach out to appropriate individuals to review what you've included from their culture, but such a task isn't necessarily going to easy or even helpful. No single person is the authority of any culture because it is something shared between all people of that culture.
Creators can make attempts to be thoughtful and appreciative, but there's no guarantee of how the world will receive the work.
my point was about how culture works (and has always worked) in general: learn something from other people, and make it your own.
You're not wrong. I mainly just wanted to explain why it's potentially an issue with certain native American cultures and less so with Italians.
Italians in the USA have definitely been marginalized in the past
I'm aware that Italian-Americans were historically marginalized. The key difference there is that has ended, while Native Americans continue to face many problems.
Another part of the issue is that people of non-native backgrounds tend to have more influence on how certain cultural aspects like this are portrayed than the originators of those things. Which is not to say you can't use things from outside your culture, just that some people understandably take issue with misinterpretations of something becoming more prevalent than the original, especially in cases where creators don't understand or respect said culture. If Native Americans from the ethnic groups that the wendigo is from were more represented in pop culture and their version(s) were as well known as the Hollywood ones, there probably wouldn't be a discussion to begin with.
At the end of the day it's about how it's done more than whether it should be. Sharing culture is a good thing, I agree, but it can do more harm than good if it's done improperly, and there's a greater danger of that when there's a power dynamic involved.
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So I'll be honest it can be hard to tell when people are responding to the ideas I have presented in a general sense or how I have presented them here.
If you read in my later posts, I do in fact mention what brought me to ask this question were concerns expressed by me indigineious friends, particularly I have an ex who is Ojibwe, and several other friends in Indigineious circle, and part of my interest in Indigineious issues is both as an ally and to connect with a part of my heritage that I felt has been hampered by both colonialism and strained family relations. And while it is not my culture we are speaking on today, that dynamic has led me to act with great empathy towards others.
If we are to say authors should not have to expose their heritage( which I am in agreement on), perhaps maybe we shouldn't expect or assume that people who bring up these issues are just overzealous white saviors/allies who have no connection to these issues?
Lastly I think we should strive for a point with a free sharing of culture, however we still exist in a point in time were some people have greater control of media and how culturesare depicted. I don't nessecarilly think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.
Edit: I'm really tired and worded a section of this poorly, I deleted it because I didn't feel it properly contributed to the conversation. This is a an attempt to express what I originally intended in a more appropriate manner.
If you are a writer or or trying to adapt a piece of culture or express an experience you haven't experienced yourself( be it cultural, racial, an experience of being disabled, etc) the best thing you can do is to do proper research, try to handle things with respect, and if you are publishing the thing for profit hire a sensitivity reader.
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If you really can't distinguish between my point that cultures that aren't oppressed and have more control over how they're represented are in less danger of being culturally appropriated from than ones that are and don't--and the idea that someone's complaints/concerns about the presentation of their culture should be ignored simply because they don't face oppression--then I'm not even going to bother trying to explain this. That is a clear straw man argument and does not remotely resemble my actual argument.
Also, I was not "dismissing" their example, I was highlighting the differences between that and this situation and explaining why they aren't that similar.
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I can't speak on Italians in any other part of the world as I don't have the proper knowledge. However Italian Americans while discriminated against in the past have largely adapted and have been integrated in to American Whiteness and for the most part benefit from the privilege of being White in America.
Indigineous Americans are still affected by colonialism. The last residential schools in the U.S closed in 1996(If I am remembering mh research correctly). Indigineous people have suffered from Genocide(both killing of large swaths of indigineous people and the attempted destruction of a multitude of unique cultures) you can't really compare the two.
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Lastly I think we should strive for a point with a free sharing of culture, however we still exist in a point in time where some people have greater control of media and how cultures are depicted. I don't necessarily think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.
This.
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I can't speak on Italians in any other part of the world as I don't have the proper knowledge. However Italian Americans while discriminated against in the past have largely adapted and have been integrated in to American Whiteness and for the most part benefit from the privilege of being White in America.
Indigineous Americans are still affected by colonialism. The last residential schools in the U.S closed in 1996(If I am remembering mh research correctly). Indigineous people have suffered from Genocide(both killing of large swaths of indigineous people and the attempted destruction of a multitude of unique cultures) you can't really compare the two.
Depends on why we are having this discussion in the first place. Because some people are hurt (emotionally) by representations in Pathfinder? If that is the case it should not matter if that person identifies with a oppressed culture or not.
Having oppression, current and past, matter in this discussion would only make sense if you see having your concerns be acknowledged as some form of reparation
And this is the problem, you have reduced this situation to be purely about emotions.
While emotions are important in the discussion this is how we should respectfully act when it comes to the portrayal of cultures, specifically in this thread that of Indigineous culture. It is about preserving cultures that have been attacked up into at least the 90s. You are making this about to be about personal issues by reducing the conversation to "oh someone is sad about this." When the conversation is about our place and contributions in much larger systems
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When the conversation is about our place and contributions in much larger systems
I agree with what you're saying, but to me this is a still a problem with no clear approach.
Many content creators are small companies. They lack the capacity (in my estimation) to meaningfully move the dials on this issue. Not to say it isn't good to try, but it also places on onus on them which they may not be able to deal with. Even Paizo is a small business IMO.
Even if Paizo could get everything right and make everyone perfectly happy, the breadth of their audience and the size of their company still means it affects a tiny fraction of the larger system.
That doesn't mean it's not worth caring about, but from my perspective it also seems like a rather hopeless situation. The ones in real positions to move things forward aren't business like Paizo. It's businesses like Facebook, what was 21st Century Fox (the film and tv stuff, not "news"), and other mass media and social media platforms.
Unfortunately it seems like all these titans will do is pull a show or fire an individual if it's deemed offensive by a large enough portion of people.
I don't have a solution, and the situation seems rather hopeless to me. But that's just my perspective on things.
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If we are to say authors should not have to expose their heritage( which I am in agreement on), perhaps maybe we shouldn't expect or assume that people who bring up these issues are just overzealous white saviors/allies who have no connection to these issues?
I think the problem is that where the criticism is coming from is important, your (in a broad sense not just you) privilege may not stop you from being an ally, and you may strongly consider yourself one, but it matters what things you fight for under that banner and the actual effects they have on the people whose interests you're trying to represent. You might have a gut feeling, or a conditioning that things should or shouldn't be portrayed in certain ways, but the people it actually effects might not feel that way-- making your advocacy potentially harmful. Similarly, you have power that you can misuse, both in terms of the indigenous group, and in terms of others as well, so if you're going to fight the good fight, you have to be self-critical. It isn't about how good you or I feel, its about doing what's right.
For example:
I don't nessecarilly think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.
What does it mean for something to not be questionable here? What power are you exercising and who is that decision being made for and imposed upon? Which people who have been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used?
The thought of the dominant group acting as a kind of jury who has the power to privilege some voices within marginalized groups over others and then enforcing the desires of those privileged voices is chilling, and its a big part of why my own advocacy rejects 'cultural appropriation' in favor of attacking the root causes of the oppression and increasing representation-- the presence of justice (platforming for creators voices so they aren't buried), rather than mutual injustice (marginalized people who still lack in the conditions necessary for an equal voice, and creators whose usage of culture is policed). It seeks to empower the voice of marginalized creators, rather than take on the potentially oppressive power of choosing who to disempower.
Indigenous voices aren't a monolith, something that might be offensive for one member of the group can easily be beloved representation for another. Those debates fall on intersectional lines too, how close to traditional or conservative power structures within that group is the individual, versus how transgressive are they in terms of their culture. Mixed race individuals are especially vulnerable in this respect, as they can sometimes be denied their voice and be expected to defer to people who 'better represent' (scare quotes are there to undermine any validity or endorsement of that evaluation by othering it) the culture in question.
Our language about 'listening' conceals what in reality can often mean 'choosing' and therefore our way of exercising power over marginalized peoples, essentially becoming final authorities over disputes within and without their culture.
When you get into the weeds, our use of power in 'listening' and 'choosing' gets fraught. American Imperialism has often taken on the guise of supporting individuals from those countries and cultures who view themselves as marginalized by the current regime, but obviously those actions should not be taken as sanctified by the presence of those individuals. Meanwhile, domestic violence is an issue that faces many marginalized communities-- with those communities developing cultures of silence where patriarchal power structures interprets aid to the victims or the enforcement of their civil rights as a form of colonialism, where 'listening' can become a means by which the dominant group maintenances those power structures. Sarah Schulmann has a great book entitled Conflict is Not Abuse that details the damage well meaning allies can deal by wielding their power, and recklessly disclaiming responsibility for their decision-making to the need to listen and respect the wishes of victims.
But, I don't think any of this means you shouldn't be an ally and fight the good fight either, but it means that we need to rethink our ideas about how to fight that fight, and frame it in terms of our own moral responsibility, instead of disclaiming our responsibility to someone else under the pretense of listening (but you know, we should also listen and consider carefully what the voices of marginalized people actually have to say, take them seriously, and ensure that their civil rights-- from which their own rightful power is derived, are being respected, in a practical sense.)