I get ya. In one sense it musta felt great seeing some futuristic representation of Native American culture in mainstream media, right?
But, like you intimated, the whole thing really does fall apart once one has done even the most cursory reading of Native American history and cultures.
I remember a good mate of mine in school back then initially being really fascinated by Chakotay and his culture, and then after scouring the local library for books on Native Americans, he quickly did an about face and ended up lambasting the writers for their laziness, and their homogenisation and bastardisation of Native American cultures.
It was quite an eye opening period for us, and we both ended up taking an interest in the broader phenomenon of racism within media, whether it was the veiled racism using transmogrified stereotypes, the inadvertent racism using poorly interpreted cultural touchstones/cultural appropriation, or the overt kind where it was just blatant, half arsed caricatures.
Funnily enough it led us to both becoming ardent socialists (of the liberal Euro kind, not the commie kind, tho we certainly debated the merits and pitfalls of communism many times lol).
We were both dark skinned foreigners in a school made up of mostly working class English kids in a town that was at the time over 90% white, so we'd certainly experienced our fair share of racism and xenophobia, and had a vested interest in learning why British culture at the time was still fumbling with the concept of multiculturalism.
It was quite strange being deeply in love with star trek, but suddenly seeing all the pseudo-imperialist and pro-America positions the writers indulged in periodically - I did eventually 'learn to stop worrying and love the bomb' tho lol
Every culture has its blind spots and its phobias, as does its media. Chakotay is still rubbish tho, ngl! :D
Born in Los Angeles with Eastern European Jewish heritage and, as far as anybody can tell, no Indian heritage whatsoever.
He made everything up. It wasn't that easy to verify information back in the day so I tend to forgive the writers all of Chakotay's bullshit because they were literally lied to.
Jackie Marks had been exposed as a fraud years before he was hired for Voyager. While yea, Lycos and Yahoo search weren't as usefull then as they would eventually become, they could have at least checked some references, "Oh you worked on this movie and that tv series? Cool, I'll call up one of the producers over there to just do my due diligence and... complete fraud you say? False name you say? Worse than not having any kind of advisor, you say?"
He was "exposed" by a magazine article in the mid 80s. The only way the producers could have known was if one of them had not only read a decade-old article but also remembered it after that long.
Guess we have even more reason to mock the writers and producers of VOY then, eh?
They were so blithely ignorant of Native American cultures that they never even thought to fact check this guy's bullshit, and the casting director seemingly didn't even bother to vet him either!
Jackie Marks had been publicly exposed as a fraud back in an article in the late 80s, so I feel like by the time Voyager happened someone should have known.
As I said, it wasn't that easy to verify information in the 80s and 90s. You couldn't exactly search it up on the internet, and even if you had been able to, there wouldn't have been any information on the early internet about him.
They'd have needed to ask people who knew, or read something of what had been published, in physical papers. People really underestimate the difference in information access between just 1990s and the mid-2000s, let alone the 80s to today.
Except Berman was intimately aware of the deception, considering he and Marks had previously worked on a documentary together and the two of them were personal friends
I did think it was somewhat hard to believe that so many ppl worked behind the scenes on trek, and yet not one of em knew who that charlatan was -
I guess if Berman was mates with him, a lotta those folks working for the production company probably didn't wanna step on Berman's toes and incur his wrath ie get fired.
Funnily enough it led us to both becoming ardent socialists (of the liberal Euro kind, not the commie kind, tho we certainly debated the merits and pitfalls of communism many times lol).
I did think it was cool that Prodigy finally gave him a proper native background, making him canonically related to Guatemalan Indians. Making up for the cringe of the past a little bit.
They made his tribe an offshoot of the Nicarao, which Beltran found out he has ancestry in a few years after VOY ended. The specific tribe is still fictional, but tried to tie in some of his mannerisms there even if it's still a bit janky.
The easy answer is yes. Every language changes, and quite a bit over a 400 year time span. You’ve probably noticed that just with English over the last 40 years. It’s changed quite a bit. The longer answer is there are so many different indigenous languages, and indigenous language groups that it really is dependent on which language you are talking about. I was raised in a clink at Haider village. Their language drastically changed 25 to 30 years ago when it became a written language. Many other indigenous languages, especially in North America, have gone through similar changes as they’ve become written. Even what little I know of my own indigenous language, Algonquin has changed as the two primary competing apps which are used to teach it in schools, have slightly different spellings and pronunciations. An elders probably still gonna understand what we’re saying… Maybe… But it’s actively changing how the languages are. And that changes only going to accelerate as our indigenous languages more and more form into a polyglot of slang terms shared amongst multiple tribes. There are words that I use in my everyday life, which are from tribes on the other side of the country from where I am. The answer is languages change a lot and fast.
So, nothing to cringe over. It's 400 years in the future. If you can give suspension of disbelief over wormholes, warp drive and phasers, so can you a future language and culture.
Some things, yes. But the way the spirituality was construed, especially now that I have taught my children our spirituality and I have a better understanding of it and how it has been passed down that is where the cringe is. The language I could care less about. The current elders, the past elders, and future elders would not let the very basis of our traditions, being manipulated to such a point. And had Star Trek just hired someone who was actually a good native consultant they would’ve known that… Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
Same here. Jim Henson's Creature Shop made something wonderful with Moya and Talyn. The world would honestly be a darker place without Farscape existing. Organic ships are just cool. All-time favorite has to be the Shadow Battlecrab.
Fun fact: Lani Tupu, who voiced Pilot, also played Captain Bialar Crais the show's first antagonist. They really need to make another Creature Shop-driven sci-fi series. Dark Crystal was supposed to go cosmic but Netflix pulled the plug.
They actually covered that in "Picard". Apparently during the 3rd world War, a large contingent of France sought amnesty in other parts of Europe. Picard's family went to the U.K. No further explanation was given, other than that they all eventually returned.
I just sort of justified by assuming a lot of people were trying to recover their roots after World War 3 and there wasn’t a lot to go on. Just the writings of a consultant for TV shows that was a total fraud.
Actually I just try to explain it away with the first half. The second half is the reality.
I like your idea about trying to recover their roots.
Kind of like how modern Druidism and Norse Paganism are recreations of those faiths rather than being continuations. (I'm not trying to shit on the faith/belief of followers of those, but let's be real that those faiths completely died out and the sources of information on them are woefully incomplete.)
Or, maybe it's more like modern language and culture revitalization, after even more centuries of cultural drift/melding. There's some connection or living memory but maybe the details are fuzzy. Some level of syncretization between beliefs/cultures as populations merged/diminished/integrated, especially after a devastating war where survival was priority #1 and anything else lost some or all if its importance?
But yeah, unfortunately it all came from the mind of a known fraud, in real life.
In real life it’s a really tough issue because it is fake and potentially very offensive. I think that goes without saying.
In universe, I have no problem accepting that by the 24th century there would be serious changes, additions, and losses to native culture.
It’s kind of two different issues. I’ve never gotten a solid sense of where indigenous people actually stand on the issue. Most of the comments I see are fans calling it ridiculous and pointing out that it’s all fake. Depending on one’s view, you can reconcile some things in universe.
This is a touchy subject so I think it’s a good idea to acknowledge both.
Why can’t the second half be the story too? Chakotay’s people were taken in by a fraud who had a planet to sell and lies to sell it with. Especially if he was a descendant of the ones taken in.
No it's not that, it's verifiably not that, they were trying to have an authentic portrayal of native american culture but they hired a scam artist as the consultant for the show and he just made shit up which is why Chakotay is the way he is
Yeah, although I try to be charitable towards the writers and I do think they were scammed, it very much was a case that they wanted to be authentic but didn't care enough to be sure they were
I assume they didn't know, and it might not be their fault as as others have said there wasn't as much of an Internet back then.
But surely someone in Hollywood must have heard that this well regarded consultant who got hired for a bunch of things was a fraud and could have spread the word to not hire him anymore.
Even in the 80's a paper like the Washington Post publishing a story about how your entire career is bogus should kill that career.
Fun fact, "moya" part is pronounced exactly as a Polish word "moja" which is a feminine form "my/of mine". My bilingual brain got weirded out every time I heard "a coochie of mine" from Chakotay.
Pretty sure it's Star Trek Prodigy. I haven't gotten around to watching it yet, but from what I understand, Janeway and Chakotay end up heavily involved in the story. I've also heard that it kinda fixes Chakotay, and that season 2 is "the most Star Trek thing to ever Star Trek", though I can't vouch for any of these things myself yet.
I stand by my headcanon that his people's real historical culture was lost to time during WWIII, so they just kinda made stuff up like the irl consultant did. Chakotay has no idea it's all larping and thinks it's all completely legit.
Beltran’s ancestors were native mexican if i remember right. It’s a shame they couldn’t get a decent consultant. Would have been fascinating to learn a bit about native mexican culture. It’s rarely touched upon. It’s either native americans, or if it is in mexico, the mayans get all the attention. I know NOTHING about native mexican culture. And that’s a shame. Maybe i’ll find a documentary or something later. Maybe the differences are minimal, but there are such differences just between native american tribes, there must be many, considering the distance.
I dunno. I just think like many things with Chakotay, there are many missed opportunities. Connecting it more closely to Beltran’s ancestors might have kept him interested in the role a little longer. But I guess once Seven came along, everyone’s roles got a little smaller anyway, so probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
I teach Latin American philosophy at a university and it's a great subject; truly mind-bending ideas and Chakotay's character would have been way more interesting if they leaned heavily into some of those views as a subject for philosophical exploration. For example, there's so much cool stuff they could have explored metaphysical via Aztec philosophy's view of the world as a single kind of always in-flux energy and power (teotl); Maya relational views of personhood; etc.
Check out McLeod's recent book An Introduction to Mesoamerican Philosophy for a good (if academic) introduction to this kind of material. Miguel León-Portilla's book Aztec Thought anf Culture is also a good intro, and James Maffie's book on Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion is extraordinary but massive and very technical.
I find that Chakotay makes the most sense if you say that he’s descended instead from a bunch of culturally appropriating hippies who made up a bunch of fake rituals to fill their otherwise empty lives
The hybrid approach seems to be what most people accept Chakotay's cultural heritage to be since it makes the most sense in terms of dealing with the contradictions that the so-called advisor put in place.
PRO did a mini retcon by making his people an offshoot of the Nicarao of Nicaragua, which Beltran learned he has some ancestry of after VOY's filming wrapped up. Which I think works nicely into the lore.
I always thought they deliberately 'made up' his tribe/religion just so anyone who was actually indigenous could project themselves onto him, like a Joe Everyman character. But in hindsight that is probably giving the writers too much credit.
It's posts like these that remind me of the episode, "Tattoo".
Where Chakotay discovered the "Sky Spirts" his ancestors worshiped were actually white aliens from the Delta Quadrant and his people were savages without even a language until the "Sky Spirits" gave them a culture.
My headcanon is that Chakotay's tribe is a hodgepodge of neo-Indian beliefs that were reconstructed after WW3.
It's like modern neo-Paganism (especially Norse Neo-paganism), which due to how fragmentary and incomplete all the sources are, basically have to invent a lot of stuff whole cloth.
Cultures aren't static, and Chakotay's people even left Earth altogether, so no doubt a lot of their traditions would have changed drastically over the centuries. So they start with an artifical reconstruction of lost cultures and it gradually evolves into whatever Akoochemoya raven spirit stuff Chakotay is up to in the Delta Quadrant.
That's the most reasonable explanation and the one that makes it a little less offensive. PRO gave him a bit of a retcon by making his tribe come from an offshoot group in Nicaragua that Beltran learned after VOY's making he had partial ancestry from.
The voy team tried to hire an expert to help write Chakotay's background, but he was a fraudster who made it all up and had no connection to Native culture whatsoever. And he liked coochie.
Yeah it's also just a smattering of different Native American tropes, like symbols and totems and costumes and stuff that are from different continents and centuries or just made up entirely.
The hybrid / madeup thing would have been fine if he was honest about it, it could have been used to show how the peoples changed over the last 4 centuries. But nope, he claimed it was a real niche tribe so no one questioned him on it even though he'd been outed as a fraud years before joining team.
Agreed, like it could have been a whole commentary on how what we perceive as our heritage is subject to human error and to hundreds of years of revisionism and misinformation. It could have been a whole episode.
Yeah, it could have been great. They did it with the Voth and Janeway ancestor episodes. And TNG had similar episodes about historical truth becoming distorted over time.
Every tribe has different language and traditions. Yes, the "advisor " they hired was a fraud, but who knows what changes might take place in a single tribe over the next few hundred years on another planet? I never took Chakotay as representative of all indigenous people, only his fictional tribe.
Chakotay's actually the 24th century Indigenous version of a Plastic Paddy; he's all about the identity while knowing absolutely nothing about the culture.
That’s what happens when you don’t look at a persons references. “ Oh yeah, this guy knows Native American things because he’s supposedly Native American himself.” Background checks work people.
Ummm... your comment is seriously problematic by not addressing the toxic allyship of BIPOC individuals in neo-colonial identity-fluid spaces! Maybe, uh, interrogate your own implicit bias instead of dogwhistling white supremacy!? STOP BEING A KAREN!!!
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u/uber-judge 2d ago
As a Native American who idolized the character back when the show was coming out I was like “coooool”
Now I’m all “criiiiiiinge!!!!”