This is what happens when you "hire someone" to "help" you cross the river:
And when your wagon is attacked by "bandits" (granted, sometimes white guy bandits attack you too).
While iChatting about this, Zuzu, Kleine and I decided I should retaliate by giving the game a crappy review. Here are their suggestions on what I should write, followed by what I actually wrote.
ZUZU
Subject: Educational...if you want an education in racism
Review: This is a fun game, but it depicts American Indians inaccurately.
KLEINE
Subject: RACIST-ASS GAME!!!!!!!
Review: DO NOT SUPPORT RACISM BY BUYING THIS GAME!!!!!! They make Native American Indians look like COMPLETE CARICATURES!!! IF YOU PAY FOR THIS GAME THE TERRORISTS WIN!!!!
COMPROMISE
Subject: Supposed to be educational, actually racist
Review: It's a fun game, but the depiction of American Indians is wildly inaccurate and disturbing. As an educator, [who doesn't lie on these?] I'm concerned that this is a program aimed at young people in order to inform them of American history, but in reality propagates racial stereotypes.
A snippets of our conversation:
"Oh I see, so you have to upgrade to racism."
[after waiting for example of racism to come up during the game for a while] "If some racism doesn't happen in 5 minutes I'm going to get upset."
I'm Native American, and I support the stereotype that we can lift wagons with one arm while walking through a river.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it was the blatant caricatures they created for American Indians that I had a problem with (all say "Hau", speak in broken English, have feathers in their hair, shoot arrows, carry tomahawks, etc). There seemed to be a lot of room for a more intelligent approach to the difficult relations between the native peoples and the settlers that they didn't touch on at all, making it simplistic and consistently demonizing/dumbing down the American Indians without regard to the differences in tribes. Hardly appropriate for a game with the intent to educate (albeit superficially) on this period of American history. It felt very dated in this aspect -- as if they had done nothing to the script concerning American Indians since they created the game 40 years ago.
ReplyDeleteDodo, slow your roll. He was joking and he's my friend and he's awesome and he's Native-American (for realsies) and Mom thinks he's handsome and he can actually lift a wagon over his head.
ReplyDelete