Should I include a Native American antagonist?

I'm going to go ahead and say (also without getting into details) that if I were writing this, I wouldn't care very much about trying to cater to the opinions of The Fedora Pirate.

Wakanda is good for a comic book world where reality takes a backseat to the plot of the moment. The reason its so isolated is so writers can pretend in doesn't exist when dealing with everything else in the Marvel Universe.

Would it be possible to make a villain who happens to be Native American but doesn't preoccupy himself with issues specific to Native Americans? For instance, why can't you have a Native American who is, say, a corrupt oil tycoon?

I know what it feels like to start with an ethnicity and generate the character from there, but the reverse direction is at least equally valid.

Quite possible, especially in an alternate universe where Native Americans have it a bit better. As is, there's a bit of a glass ceiling (they're one of America's poorest demographics), so a Native American tycoon would be unusual, though not impossible.

Well there is that Indian casino stereotype.

Perhaps he sees the limitations of playing nice and working within the system of the laws of the country to improve the living standards of his people and thus seeks to coerce the government into meeting his demands.

@nrjxll - I'm curious what I've done to warrant that response. I think I'm being polite here but this is a rather potentially offensive writing choice and I think the OP knows that or he wouldn't have asked/had any hesitation over it.

I can tell you my honest opinion that the villain doesn't seem doing anything villainous (from what has been said) except for Villainy-By-(Cowboy movie)-Tradition, which as Madru mentions works from a stereotype or I can say what OP/most writers wants to hear in these situations, which is probably "so long as you're a Good Writer you can do whatever you want!" (which is only true in the broadest sense).

@OP - I think I'm more or less done here. But whatever you do I hope you do A LOT of research. (edit: And my decision to back out has nothing to do with you personally, I just generally don't bother answering these because they tend to be redundant, this one took a little longer to get there but it did and it's not my favourite topic to begin with so I think I'm going to go back to the Visual Arts section.)

edited 9th Oct '12 6:52:59 PM by TheFedoraPirate

I wasn't trying to be hostile either, and I freely agree that the character has high potential to be badly done. What I was referring to is your comments that stated you would view a character who attempted to cause the dissolution of the United States via attacks on government targets as a hero and his opponents as villains. I think I can say with some certainty that position would be extremely in the minority among Worlder's likely readers. As such, I don't think it's a position he needs to worry too hard about appeasing.

Hm, I suppose you are right in that. It's a narrative with old roots and that "tradition" probably makes "the U.S." the intuitive heroes and most wouldn't question that. Though, if I was the writer, well, if it isn't obvious I wouldn't be too interested in feeding into that "tradition".

Anyhow, I think I probably should just leave this one alone. Since I'm not really sure my posting in this thread doing any good for anyone.

That's, uh, not exactly what I meant.

I think it's a pretty standard reaction that anybody who plans to disrupt the lives, health and welfare of a large group of people to serve his/her own ends, or the ends of a group he/she is affiliated with, is going to be viewed as a villain. A member of a dispossessed minority trying to carve out a homeland for his people is already going to be sympathetic, however. To make him more sympathetic, you might consider simply having him conflicted about it. What are his plans for all the non-natives who are in his chosen territory? Also, who, precisely, is he calling a native? Lots of people have Native American ancestry, and a lot of them don't look even remotely like what is traditionally considered a Native American. Your guy becomes less sympathetic if he starts demanding stuff like racial purity.

Also, if your guy grew up on a reservation, it'd be a good idea to show that, and describe it. I'd say most people who don't live near Indian Reservations don;t have any idea how Natives live. I'd hesitate before making a comparison to an internment camp, however; being able to leave makes an enormous difference.

nrjxll is try to say that I'm designing a terrorist and that I shouldn't bother with worrying about appealing to the anarchists in the audience.

Actually, I was saying this, more or less:

Or, more succinctly, two wrongs don't make a right.

edited 9th Oct '12 10:42:01 PM by nrjxll

I don’t think this is a good idea at all.

Bear in mind that you are dealing with a frequently misinterpreted, marginalised minority group of diverse cultures who are seldom represented in a way which is both positive and accurate.

For decades-centuries even, Native Americans have been painted as villainous for defending their land from American colonisation. It’s only very recently that there’s been any actual public acknowledgement of the genocidal crimes committed against them, and even when these issues are addressed, there’s a tendency to romanticise or downplay them.

Native Americans would really benefit from some actually positive, accurate description for once, instead of the current romanticism mixed with demonisation.

You should think carefully about whether you want to add more negative representation to centuries worth of negative representation. There’s been centuries of representation of the conflict between Native Americans and their colonisers as just on the side of the colonisers, or as in some way a ‘fair fight’. The reality was not an equal battle between two sides equally at fault, the reality was not a case for saying ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’.

A misguidedly violent Native American antagonist trying to reclaim his land feeds into a tired old set of ideas, and it would take a monumental amount of effort on your part not to make this at best, worthy of an eye roll, and at worst, offensive and hurtful to real Native American people.

I suggest you find some actual Native American people and ask them what they think about your idea of having a Native American terrorist as a villain. I suspect you will not get very positive answers.

See, it’s easy to think of this all in some abstract sense, what’s got acceptable amounts of ‘unfortunate implications’, and what crosses a line into offensiveness in a general sense. But you have to realise that your work would be portraying a group of people who are so seldom portrayed right and portrayed well. Representation may be an abstract matter to many of you on this thread but it really does matter to marginalised groups who are seldom well portrayed.

If you want to portray a Native American’s desire to recapture his stolen land negatively as the project of a terrorist, you are giving the message that Native American anger against their colonisers is unreasonable and potentially dangerous. That their activism would be fraught with danger for white Americans.

Considering that there have been no Native American terrorists, it seems particularly unfair to depict a fictional rising up of Native Americans in this manner.

There is a long history of this kind of fictional ‘what if they rose up against us’ idea. It plays into paranoia and I think has a kind of desire underlying it to allay guilty feelings. Sort of like it’s saying, ‘ok, so right now you’re not committing any violence in pursuit of your goals, but if you WERE then it’d be TERRIBLE and VIOLENT and HORRIBLE, TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT’. Like in many cowboy films, it's making them in fiction into a formidable, evil threat to 'American society', which is a thoroughly unfair depiction.

I’m not saying you think that way at all, I’m sure you don’t, but bear in mind, it does have some definite very strong unfortunate implications and parallels many old and problematic ideas. I'm trying to point out here the kinds of old problematic tropes and messages your work might give off- and would certainly give off to me- if you followed this idea.

Yeah I admit no matter how one cast such a character with such an ethnicity it just comes out wrong.

I think you could manage it. Maybe. But for the reasons given by Graid, you probably shouldn't try.

The thing is, I think for any Native American villain to work it would have to be at least partly a self-aware deconstruction of that sort of stereotype, with attention given to how ordinary people might realistically react to such a person if they existed, and appropriate use made of the opportunity to explore themes of colonial guilt and romanticism of lost cultures.

If you're just looking for an interesting bad guy to storm in and get beaten up, there are much better candidates that you don't have to fish out of worm-filled cans.

It all comes down to designing a Robin Hood-like figure.

Of course, the influencing character never engaged in large scale acts of destruction of property. Correct me if I am wrong.

edited 10th Oct '12 4:26:39 PM by Worlder

Hmm, perhaps this character could also be the owner of major technology firm who found out his community was wiped out during an government black ops in an attempt to curb the spread of a super plague.

His plan to take a chunk of the midwest for himself would then be payback for recent acions rather than long past actions. Of course, it is safe to throw in a "my family always got the short end of the stick" just once, right?

Basically, he lost some close friends and family in a desperate attempt by the government to handle an escalating national crisis.

So he used his resources to ensure that this doesn't happen again to the people that he loved, by making an fortified enclave out of several congressional districts of Kansas and Nebraska (metaphorically of course).

Just wanted to say that when I read the OP, I thought, "Wait, what? And how is this guy a villain? Basically, yes it has heaps of Unfortunate Implications.

edited 15th Oct '12 6:30:52 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

Look I've changed the motives and early actions.

His grudge is a result of recent the recent questionable actions by the government done against his close knit reservation community due to the possibly that everyone there could've been exposed a mutagen that usually turns people into inhuman monstrosities.

So he secretly began constructing defensive installations(remember he is essentially a Bruce Wayne or a Tony Stark) around a different reservation community where he and some of his extended family resides so to protect against the new threats that now plague world. Needless to say the government is not happy with amounts of stockpiling military grade weapons.

edited 16th Oct '12 3:29:09 PM by Worlder

As I understand it, this villain is of the diabolical, manipulates the conflict from behind the scenes type. Since the stereotypical American Aboriginal villain falls into the savage warrior stereotype, this wouldn't be stereotypical.

As far as choosing a particular tribe goes: why not say he's descended from several different tribes, like a Cherokee grandmother and Pawnee grandfather on his father's side and an Apache grandmother and Cheyenne grandfather on his mother's side?

Not the OP, but I'd say that's a great idea!

I've moved away from actual retaliation in favor of potential threat.

"Ok you might not be crazy now, but we can't be sure of that in the future. Then when you are crazy, you will hurt many many people."

edited 16th Oct '12 8:46:51 PM by Worlder

I've just mentally devised a short story character concept who is also a Native American villain. She's a capitalistic poacher from the future with an attitude more or less like the iconic 19th century Great White Hunter (think Clayton from Tarzan); her Native American identity is incidental rather than a defining gimmick. Personally I'm really fond of the concept of a Native character who acts more like Clayton than Pocahontas, but some people here seem opposed to the very idea of making a Native American a bad guy in a story.

If it reassures anyone, the protagonist and most of the other good guys are African, so I'm not advocating white supremacy.

I think the problem is that Native American characters are usually only ever called on to make some kind of political point, so even if that's not what you're doing, people assume you are. Although I guess technically 'Native Americans don't always conform to stereotypes' is a political point too, so as long as you make it clear that's the point you're making, you're probably doing the world a service.

Just whatever you do, don't break the Aesop by starting off with a non-stereotypical character and then have him 'discover his roots' and end up as some kind of spirit warrior. I've seen that done quite enough. -_-