Native American and First Nations Media scope

This ATT post asked if Native American and First Nations Media included all the Americas as opposed to being US/Canada-specific. The general feeling is that the index should include Indigenous peoples, not just in North America but Central and South America as well. I wanted to take the discussion here to see if/how that can be done to expand, as well as what happens to Native American and First Nations Creators.

Also, I proposed that whatever happens that we need to rename the index Native American And First Nations People In Media (much like African-American Media needs to be renamed African Americans In Media, etc.) I have the redirects ready to go in that case.

I think the reason it happened is that TV Tropes is based in the US, and in that country being "Native American" really does just the peoples of North America specifically, and even usually just the ones from the USA (excluding Canada and Mexico's own indigenous populations).

It's become, for lack of a better word, the politically correct way to describe people often called "Indians". There's a whole complicated history around that word (especially since many on reservations still use it to describe themselves) but that's too much to get into: For now, I think broadening the definition to include the rest of the Americas could work.

Edited by harryhenry on Jun 20th 2022 at 1:35:26 AM

Something like "Indigenous People Of The Americas In Media" would probably be clearest, but it's a mouthful. Maybe we could get away with "Indigenous Americans In Media"? On the other hand, since it's an index and not something that's going to be wicked to a lot, maybe the former is fine.

Thanks for making the thread, I was wondering if other people also thought the index could be expanded. Speaking of which, should it also include Indigenous people from all across the globe instead of just the Americas, such as, let's say, Klaus (the girl Margu and her family are Sámi, as well as her voice actress) and Princess Mononoke (Aishitaka is Emishi)? We could divide it into continents and call it Indigenous People Media.

Edited by good-morning on Jun 20th 2022 at 7:23:42 AM

Yeah, I suggested renaming to Indigenous Americans In Media in the thread because it's more trans-national for lack of a better term: "American Indian" and "Native American" are fairly US-centric terms, "First Nations" is Canada-centric. I'm less familiar with Central and South American peoples but from what I remember of my high school Spanish classes, the generally preferred term is some variation of "personas indígenas" or "gente indígeno" (or the Portuguese equivalent in Brazil), which literally just means "indigenous people".

Yes, in Brazil the usual formal term is Indígenas (Indigenous people) or nativos (natives).

Edited by good-morning on Jun 20th 2022 at 7:22:46 AM

And yeah, I would be okay with the suggestion to cover media focusing on indigenous people in general, since even though I wouldn't call it a genre necessarily, there tends to be common tropes and themes in play.

We do have Pacific Islanders in Media, I'm not sure if I would want to lump all of that in with one index.

I literally forgot I sponsored this so apologies for only weighing in now.

I (am not American lol but) initially patterned it after African-American Media and Asian-American Media. In addition to TVT being Western-minded in general, Hollywood pioneering filmmaking, and US being a melting pot and all, pages for those works emerged much earlier and with much more abundance on this site than works centered around diasporas elsewhere. Even today I am sure there are many more novels about the Chinese-American experience than about the Chinese-European experience or the Chinese-African experience.

I also think there is value in keeping Native American and First Nations Media as such to because of Hollywood's specifically shitty history of portraying natives in Westerns, etc.

In the TLP ~Twiddler has two drafts, one on African diasporas and another on Asian diasporas based elsewhere. Obviously this would be the opposite of diaspora, but if one wants an indigenous-centric media index I think that would best be done that way, with this and Pacific Islanders in Media as a sub-index.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 21st 2022 at 9:54:46 AM

That could work, leaving that index as is and then just create separate one for South American Indigenous people. and then just collect them all on one page. If there has to be an expansion, Native American and First Nations Media can include Central American Native people.

That's a good idea.

So with that in mind should I remove this from Tropes Needing TRS? I (admittedly hastily) added it and now I'm questioning whether it should be there.

Since Magical Native American's scope is being expanded, we could end up keeping the name and expanding the scope as well for Native American and First Nations Media.

Any other thoughts? I'm open to including all of North America in Native American and First Nations Media.

Edited by MegaJ on Jul 5th 2022 at 11:17:18 AM

Bump. Wanted to get feedback on expanding the page to include Central America at least.

The reasons for expanding make sense to me.

Cool, waiting on more opinions.

Bump. Who wants to add Central America to the trope as it is?

on an expansion.

me too.

I added it to the description- would that also include the Caribbean region?

Bump. Any objections to adding the islands? And would the changes extend to Native American and First Nations Creators?

It's fine by me, but I'm not versatile in north american amerindian History, so hearing others could help.

Edited by good-morning on Aug 4th 2022 at 1:19:37 PM

I removed a couple of entries there were about South American natives, just posting here about it because I know there was some inquiry about possibly making the index cover both North and South American.