For thousands of years, the Wiyot people were the stewards of Duluwat Island, situated in the marshes and estuaries of what’s now Humboldt Bay along California’s northern coast. Then in 1860, a group of White settlers interrupted the tribe’s annual world renewal ceremony and massacred scores of Wiyot women, children and elders.
In the years since, the island had been transformed into a shipyard. By 1990, it lay vacant, scattered with scrap metal and contaminated with toxic chemicals.
Last year, the Wiyot had reclaimed almost all of Duluwat Island — the culmination of decades of efforts to get back their ancestral land.
CNN, Harmeet Kaur
Tag: native_people
Open Letter to Sony and Guerrilla Games
Thank you for Horizon Zero Dawn. The game was important for me personally. The story’s science fiction was astounding; Aloy is complex, heartful, and a powerful lead.
I eagerly await Forbidden West. Now that the secret behind the first game has been revealed, I think that it would be in Sony’s benefit to acknowledge the story’s debt to Native communities in America.
The dress, the face paint, the ceremonies, the weapons, the religions, the communities all reference Native peoples in the Americas. Also, the land in the first game, from Utah through Colorado, is a part of the sacred land of many peoples. While Horizon is a computer generated artifact, its land is a facsimile of Native land.
I bring this request to you because Native communities, like many across the United States, are suffering during the pandemic. A similar pandemic led to societal break down in Zero Dawn. This is the time for companies who have vocalized a commitment to equality and inclusion, like yours, to provide some concrete steps to demonstrate this.
Reaching out to Native communities in the West would provide a great opportunity to acknowledge your game’s appreciation of their cultures and also lend support where requested as they manage this public health challenge.
Think and Feel
Pilgrims were on an economic venture
English venture capitalists funded the pilgrims. Pilgrims had to provide material (fur, fish, forests) for seven years to return that investment. Then, capitalists gave the pilgrims a deed to the land. A deed that the Crown provided, but had no jurisdiction over.
Pilgrims had to survive and thrive to pay back the investment. They ended up incurring and capturing native land and so shrank natives’ place in the world.
For more, watch this PBS Newshour feature: Were pilgrims America’s first economic migrants?
A calendar to link the sky and the earth
Cahokia was a pre-Columbian city laid out on a celestial grid. People who lived there created solar calendars as landmarks. Archeologists found the remains of one such calendar. It stood as a ring of wooden posts. (So, the name Woodhenge).
Through observation of the position of the sun at sunrise, the people designed it such that the sun seemed to rise from one post at one time of the year and then another later in the year. One post corresponded with the winter solstice, another the equinoxes, and another the summer solstice.
With this calendar, observers could tell when to plant and harvest crops and when to gather for festivals. With tools, human ingenuity link the sky and the earth in a productive and commonplace way.
Click here to a clip about Woodhenge from the PBS special Native America.