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 BrookM wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Not to mention the fact that people from off Rez can come on Rez, commit crimes and often get away with them.

Did someone say "Rez"?

Sorry.

I've been meaning to get to that, but haven't gotten around to it. Thanks for the reminder!

carmachu wrote:

You dont even read your own articles. False on the noble savage archtype. They dont even HAVE or UNDERSTAND all the reasons. Thats your bias speaking.


Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.

I never said that the article was about a colonizing metanarrative. The fact is that sexual assaults are insanely high among Native American women. Where does the alcoholosim come from? What about the breakdown in family structure, what lead to that? Did you miss the part in the article where it described the lack of response to crimes against Native American peoples?

One cause is neglect. Neglect from the Government and from the dominant Euroamerican society. Neglect has a hell of a lot to do with a narrative of non-existence. If you want articles that are more on point about Native American Activism I can give you plenty.

Your Complaint holds no weight about the dehumanizing of them.
Because of 1 reason, there are no humans in that world. If there where your complaint would have merit. But within the world they are just as "beastly" as the others.
Also, There are many examples of this. Like the Tauren of WOW, Pandarens of WOW, The Buffalo of MLP. Using an animal associated with the culture to actually become the culture itself is hardly unheard of.+

weeble1000 wrote:

carmachu wrote:

You dont even read your own articles. False on the noble savage archtype. They dont even HAVE or UNDERSTAND all the reasons. Thats your bias speaking.


Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.

I never said that the article was about a colonizing metanarrative. The fact is that sexual assaults are insanely high among Native American women. Where does the alcoholosim come from? What about the breakdown in family structure, what lead to that? Did you miss the part in the article where it described the lack of response to crimes against Native American peoples?

One cause is neglect. Neglect from the Government and from the dominant Euroamerican society. Neglect has a hell of a lot to do with a narrative of non-existence. If you want articles that are more on point about Native American Activism I can give you plenty.

All of these things may be true but have nothing to do with the Liberi or their portrayal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Your Complaint holds no weight about the dehumanizing of them.

You missed the point. He isn't saying that the Liberi are being dehumanized. He is saying that things like this dehumanize Native Americans. I might not agree with him, but at least get his argument right.

I guess the problem is, you don't get to decide what other people are offended by no matter how strongly you believe you should have that power. If you harangue them until you're blue in the face, maybe even with a bunch of citations to Foucault and Lacan, and they still don't find that thing offensive ... well, I suppose you could just throw your hands up and say "clearly this is proof that I am the superior man!" But guess what, they're still not offended by that thing. Calling them ignorant just reveals that the whole enterprise has been more about you than whatever issue you're shoving down people's throats. Here's an on-point YT clip:




"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

"You know what? I'm outraged right now."

Ok,
What im saying is that there is no dehumanization of native americans here because
1: Because there are no humans in the world, they are not portrayed as beasts, from anothers point of view. They are just There, existing.
2; taking a Cultures asetic and customs is very common for game makers to do.
I mean, how else would you imagine a talking panda? With an Irish accent? Or a Sheep Without a Welsh accent?

 Surtur wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
That's not technically racism, CURNOW. As for the OP, I think you're stretching a bit here. The use of the 'noble savage' archetype far predates Fanticide and has little to do with racism at this point except when it is applied to real people.

It is being applied to real people today. Right now. The fact that you made such a statement is part of the ongoing issue. We, as in Americans, are engaging in on ongoing process of colonizing American Indian peoples. Do you know that, for example, the rate of sexual assault among American Indian women is more than twice the national average? That is absolutely the result of neglect; a neglect to a minority population that is directly influenced by the very 'noble savage' archetype that you say has nothing to do with racism.

HOLD THE PHONE HERE! All crime rates are doubled amongst the Native Americans on reservations, not just rape. Before you start spouting more partial facts, you need to look at a few more things. Federal agents have limited powers on reserves, Native Americans are empowered to create their own tribal police force and 1999 $89 million was given to attempt to increase officer ranks among tribal police and 2009 another $248 million for criminal justice infrastructure on Native American lands. This isn't some stereotype going on here causing crime, but legal jurisdiction, low crime control and other socio-economic factors.

This situation exists because of the way that the American Government has chosen to treat American Indian peoples. Most people in America are barely cognizant that there are 5.2 million Native Americans living in the United States.

I picked out the rate of sexual assault because it is a dramatic example. The fact that rates of other crime is also elevated does not mean that the rate of sexual assault is also not incredibly and unacceptably high.

weeble1000 wrote:
This situation exists because of the way that the American Government has chosen to treat American Indian peoples. Most people in America are barely cognizant that there are 5.2 million Native Americans living in the United States.

I picked out the rate of sexual assault because it is a dramatic example. The fact that rates of other crime is also elevated does not mean that the rate of sexual assault is also not incredibly and unacceptably high.

I don't think anyone is saying that modern Native Americans are not experiencing a number of problems. I am saying that the portrayal of the Liberi has nothing to do with that. In fact, all of the effort you are putting into railing against a miniatures company could be better served educating people on real issues of Native Americans.

 pretre wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

carmachu wrote:

You dont even read your own articles. False on the noble savage archtype. They dont even HAVE or UNDERSTAND all the reasons. Thats your bias speaking.


Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.

I never said that the article was about a colonizing metanarrative. The fact is that sexual assaults are insanely high among Native American women. Where does the alcoholosim come from? What about the breakdown in family structure, what lead to that? Did you miss the part in the article where it described the lack of response to crimes against Native American peoples?

One cause is neglect. Neglect from the Government and from the dominant Euroamerican society. Neglect has a hell of a lot to do with a narrative of non-existence. If you want articles that are more on point about Native American Activism I can give you plenty.

All of these things may be true but have nothing to do with the Liberi or their portrayal.

That is a matter of opinion. My opinion that these things are intimately related to the colonization of American Indians, a process that I believe is ongoing. I view the Liberi as a particularly flagrant example of that ongoing colonization. You don't have to agree with me, but that is why I find the Liberi offensive.

weeble1000 wrote:
That is a matter of opinion. My opinion that these things are intimately related to the colonization of American Indians, a process that I believe is ongoing. I view the Liberi as a particularly flagrant example of that ongoing colonization. You don't have to agree with me, but that is why I find the Liberi offensive.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you have no idea what you're talking about. Of all the problems that Native Americans experience in modern life, 'colonization' is not one of them.

You may have a large amount of misplaced white guilt that you need to deal with, but that's not Fanticide's fault.

my fiancee basically just said "you white people have it so easy that you actively seek to find things to get upset about. you need to find something better to do with your time. there's nothing offensive about them. i kinda like them, actually."

again, she's almost full native, choctaw and apache.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
p.s. tribe card and everything, if you want to question

 pretre wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
This situation exists because of the way that the American Government has chosen to treat American Indian peoples. Most people in America are barely cognizant that there are 5.2 million Native Americans living in the United States.

I picked out the rate of sexual assault because it is a dramatic example. The fact that rates of other crime is also elevated does not mean that the rate of sexual assault is also not incredibly and unacceptably high.

I don't think anyone is saying that modern Native Americans are not experiencing a number of problems. I am saying that the portrayal of the Liberi has nothing to do with that. In fact, all of the effort you are putting into railing against a miniatures company could be better served educating people on real issues of Native Americans.

There are real issues, but those issues have to do with the way that the dominant Euroamerican society thinks about Native Americans. The Liberi feeds directly into that narrative. It supports a narrative of nonexistence. As Vine Deloria Jr. has argued, the dominant Euroamerican society has effectively consigned American Indians to an imagined past and treated them, as he puts it, "ghosts with little or no immediate identity." Americans define their identity through the otherness of Native American peoples. Now, I'm not saying that every single person is aware of that and does it actively, but America defined its right to exist through the exclusion of American Indian peoples. Much of the friction between American Indian peoples and the dominant society results from the inherent paradox of a national identity rooted in the non-existence of American Indian peoples and the very real existence of those people. This is a very real underlying cause of the abject neglect that Native Americans have been treated with. They cannot be eliminated in reality, but that have already been eliminated figuratively and rhetorically.

The Liberi communicates that it is okay to see the Indian as a subhuman beast. It communicates that Indians are not real. It communicates that the the extent that they were real, they have long since disappeared.

People in this thread have said that it is offensive to have a chimp in balckface because it would upset real people today. The disturbing but unsurprising implication is that the Liberi are not offensive because there is no one to offend. There you see the master narrative hard at work.

The Liberi says that there is nobody to offend.

I gotta agree with kronk. This is a flat-eartihsm exercise: take an illogical, irrational position and argue it for the sake of arguing.

Also I find it fundamentally racist to minimze the modern day struggles of First Peoples/Native Americans by equating a stupid miniature wargame as representative of anything relating to those issues.

weeble1000 wrote:
The Liberi communicates that it is okay to see the Indian as a subhuman beast. It communicates that Indians are not real. It communicates that the the extent that they were real, they have long since disappeared.

No, it communicates that aliens or non-humans can have human characteristics. You are reading waaaay too much into it.

Did you just get out of a NA studies class last semester or something?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gymnogyps wrote:
Also I find it fundamentally racist to minimze the modern day struggles of First Peoples/Native Americans by equating a stupid miniature wargame as representative of anything relating to those issues.

This is much closer to the truth than the OP's point.

He is the one who is really the problem here. Native Americans are more than a sum of our stereotypes.

interestingly, my fiancee is getting pissed at anyone that equates her heritage or her race's struggles with some crappy miniatures.

 judgedoug wrote:
my fiancee basically just said "you white people have it so easy that you actively seek to find things to get upset about. you need to find something better to do with your time. there's nothing offensive about them. i kinda like them, actually."

again, she's almost full native, choctaw and apache.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
p.s. tribe card and everything, if you want to question

I appreciate your fiance's opinion, but she is not speaking for every American Indian person. Neither am I, let's get that straight before anyone jumps on me. In any event, there are also American Indians who consider blood quantum and tribal registration to be artificial measures of "Indianness" imposed by whites. I'm not denying her cultural heritage, just pointing out that the issues we are discussing are complicated, emotionally charged, and divisive, even (and perhaps especially) among American Indians.

weeble1000 wrote:
just pointing out that the issues we are discussing are complicated, emotionally charged, and divisive, even (and perhaps especially) among American Indians.

And have nothing to do with Liberi.

Can we get this moved to OT since it has little to nothing to do with Miniatures and more to do with the state of the Native American in modern society?

weeble1000 wrote:

I never said that the article was about a colonizing metanarrative. The fact is that sexual assaults are insanely high among Native American women. Where does the alcoholosim come from? What about the breakdown in family structure, what lead to that? Did you miss the part in the article where it described the lack of response to crimes against Native American peoples?

One cause is neglect. Neglect from the Government and from the dominant Euroamerican society. Neglect has a hell of a lot to do with a narrative of non-existence. If you want articles that are more on point about Native American Activism I can give you plenty.

So what? That has NOTHING to due with your claims that its the noble savage ideology or aspect.

Lack of resources has NOTHING to due with your complaints about the models and and the racism. Its an entirely different problem, one that stems from the fact US authorities does not have jurisdiction on NA lands. If the money alicated isnt used or they(NA) dont pursue the avenues to beef up police and other sexual assualt related items, thats something completely different. None of which have anything to due with the models and/or game in your OP.

 pretre wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
The Liberi communicates that it is okay to see the Indian as a subhuman beast. It communicates that Indians are not real. It communicates that the the extent that they were real, they have long since disappeared.

No, it communicates that aliens or non-humans can have human characteristics. You are reading waaaay too much into it.

Did you just get out of a NA studies class last semester or something?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gymnogyps wrote:
Also I find it fundamentally racist to minimze the modern day struggles of First Peoples/Native Americans by equating a stupid miniature wargame as representative of anything relating to those issues.

This is much closer to the truth than the OP's point.

He is the one who is really the problem here. Native Americans are more than a sum of our stereotypes.

Yes and no. It really is a very small issue in the grand scheme of things. I found the things to be offensive, so I posted about it. I do think that they are offensive, and I do think that the fact that exist has to do with much more serious issues. However, I very much agree that there is not much of a point discussing such issues within the context of wargaming miniatures.

And no, I did not just get out of a NA studies course. I am a practicing trial consultant with degrees in history.

weeble1000 wrote:
However, I very much agree that there is not much of a point discussing such issues within the context of wargaming miniatures.

And on that note...

Weeble, so what part of the Liberi offends you?

Do warhammer Chaos Marauders and Chaos Warriors offend you? They are Vikings/Norse that are evil and have mutations. That seems pretty racist against anyone with Norse heritage.

What about the other faction in Fanticide, the flying monkeys? Does that offend you, they made a whole raceof monkeys magical by putting wings on them.

What about the Elves? They're like the French, only ruder. (ha! no, jk, when i was in paris this past summer everyone was really nice. and the food was amazing)

@judgedoug: Let it go. No good will come from this.

Thread is terminally off-topic.
If you want to discuss the state of Native Americans/American Indians (and yes, some tribes prefer the latter), then head to the OT forum.