Square Enix: Please reconsider putting the Native American war bonnet attire in-game.

[Hyperia]

Several people in my family are Native Americans and none of them have issues with this.

[Masquerade]

I admit I too am a little surprised it did take about 40 pages of consistent hateful, sarcastic, accusation aimed at the OP for her to bring it up. Had it been me, I probably would have said it after the 4th comment. Let alone waited tell the 40th page.


Tho I strongly disagree with some of the points the OP has made, in her defense she has been treated like chew toy. It's Pack Mentality. If an alpha dog in a group attacks or shows aggression towards another dog, the others will join in even without knowing that offense the other dog has done.

Cesar Millan, back me up on this.


So with people coming in right at the start saying negative things about the OP and the entire subject, it strongly encouraged others to do that same. At the very least gave the impression that if someone says otherwise it would be at the risk of the angry villagers to turn their attention on that poster.

So even if they came to the thread thinking there could be a hint of truth in the statement, after seeing the type of comments that were getting a lot of praise, became the deciding factor for I bet a lot of people. - I think most of us here are adults, but it can be very easy for some to fall back into that High School style hierarchy system.

I just encourage people to be a little more Punk-Rock. "Be heard, not herded" and "Question Everything"

If someone says the headress is offensive, - ask why?
If someone says it's not. - ask why?


To hit you with a little Skyrim now..
" One sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything that falls outside his experience as being impossible." ―Farengar Secret-Fire

[Naunet]

There is a big difference between racism and offensive. Racism takes thought and energy. It's premeditated.

It actually doesn't, which is the unfortunate thing and why racism persists through so many threads of society despite outward opposition to it. Racism can occur because of someone's conscious, active thought and decision, and because of a subconscious association that the person committing the racist act doesn't even recognize.

I largely agree with what you've said so far, but I did want to nitpick a little here.

[Verius_Nox]

As a Native American, I am only offended because I think it could be made to look better.

[Arrelaine]

I have my doubts about it being a war bonnet. They use eagle feathers in those, as the eagle is a very important (in fact it's the most sacred) symbol in their culture. Those feathers are black, not white or two-toned like the eagle feathers they use. They're not even brown, or an off color black. They're black. Using anything else makes it not a war bonnet, considering the horns and eagle feathers are what makes it so symbolically important (at least with the Plains, each tribe has their own unique spin). Different feathers are used for different things, and have different meanings. Not to mention they don't droop or curl at the ends like it does in the screenshot. Again, if anything, this is a mix of different tribes, including other aboriginal tribes likely from other parts, as most of them share some resemblance to one another.

[Brycisaur]

As an actual Native American, to me, I don't find this all that racist and offensive.

Just disrespectful.

Yes, they are earned through acts of heroism, but we play as a character who does many heroic deeds throughout the entire Main Scenario..

But I honestly think they shouldn't remove it only because few people find it offensive.

[Pheryx]

Why are people assuming that a head dress like that is automatically North American Native?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

This whole appropriation thing makes no sense... Did they appropriate Shinto customs by having the traditional garb included in game? How bout cowboy culture? Persians? What about European culture with coats of arms and knights and nobility? Why is one hat more important than the rest of those?

[ExKage]

Why are people assuming that a head dress like that is automatically North American Native?

I honestly do not know of all and every aboriginal peoples with headdresses that have feathers in them to make the most educated guess of where SE took inspiration from. From what I have seen, its closest resemblance is to some of the war bonnets from the Plains of Native Americans. It's not quite exact of the images I have seen and, yes considering how people have appropriated the war bonnets I cannot tell which tribe's it is. I do feel that the most likely inspiration is Native American but I wouldn't say I am 100% sure. Native Americans certainly are not the only peoples with feathered headdresses. It wasn't my knee jerk reaction but I haven't seen non Native American that resembles it closer.

So far the closest I've gotten to the headwear piece everyone is talking about for non Native American is this headwear that I found attributed to Taiwan's Thao/Ngan tribe.

[Yurimi]

While I do not care one way or the other what happens with this particular item I will say if they remove it they would then to be fair to ALL cultures and people remove anything religious or from a culture and not of their own minds, which means removal of the game as a whole as almost everything in some way is an appropriation of some culture be it Christianity, Catholic, Norse, Pagan, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Persian and many more. The entire game is a mesh of different cultural items, beings, and other stuff. If you find this offensive what if I told you I found the entire HW storyline of the betrayal of the church in poor taste due to the past decade of issues within the roman catholic church? Will you champion the complete deletion of this expansion? How about the Primals we are slaying? Should we remove all of those as they are almost (if not all) based on various gods of other cultures and we are sitting there killing them? Will you champion the removal of those too? I guess we could just delete the whole game and the whole series. At that point I would kindly ask you to just quit because you are no longer supporting the game as a whole.

If you are going to champion your cause but ignore the others by continuing to play the game if this item is removed then you yourselves are nothing more than bigots and racists as you cant view anything outside of what directly affects you as important. You can stomp your foot all you like at this item but in the end its shown that there are people from the culture it comes from excited to see it. You would deny them the ability to see it?

I don't support the removal of anything even if I find it personally offensive because if my heritage and culture are being added to a platform that promotes people taking an interest in it and I see my heritage passed on in popular media in a positive way in this day and age where so many traditions and cultures are dying out simply due to the passage of time.

I ask those of you who wish to stamp out the depiction of cultural items one thing. How many people know about Odin? A lot of people. How many know the actual stories behind him? More than a handful because people go "this seems like something cool lets look into it." How many WOULD know about it if it werent for him being displayed in various media? Probably like 6 historians who specialize in dead cultures. Cultural segregation is the way cultures die out and get forgotten to time.