Native American Cultural Content

"Jyotai;c-17901088" wrote:

"Dianesims;c-17686683" wrote:
Well as the developers are working on representation and skintones, I hope they can add things for Native American/First Nations representation too. Like hairs for instance.

This gets complicated.

There are federal laws in place that make it illegal to use elements of recognized tribes if one is not an active tribal member - put in place as a result of extreme cases of appropriation. A few large corps have gotten away with violations because of their clout, so we have things like car brands named after tribes - but this is not legal.

So everything would have to be 'generic native' - which then brings up a whole other complication that's kind of obvious just from the wording there... knockoff stereotyping that is pretty much offensive by nature.

Non-specific elements like skintones and hair are pretty much already in game. The same tones that will work for a Chicano person, and the same hair that will work for an Asian person. Anyone who is not being done as a parody stereotype would be viable with those.

(Quite a few of my Asian townies have had noses that look very Native American. A slight adjustment to skintone and eye shape for some of them, and a change in name - and there you go for any modern person).

The moment you start adding things like feathers and ceremonial gowns and drums and dreamcatchers you have landed in the hot mess of cultural appropriation / misrepresentation / stereotyping. And if you name any of it, illegal issues of tribal sovereignty.

Some of the very comments in this thread noting things like Pocahontas and Casinos and such point to how this could all easily go wrong in extremely offensive ways that could actually land EA in court.


To do what's asked would most likely literally require multiple tribal governments signing off on licensing of their culture to a video game. The odds of that happening are low.

"ravynwolvf;c-17901710" wrote:
It's in wall decorations, roughly 5 rows down. It's called good mojo macramé, and came in Paranormal. Not a great dream catcher, but it is supposed to be one. Not enough, considering how much we have from other cultures.

we need more clothing options 

This is needed in the game strongly! 

I would love a Native American EP with a sprawling American world that connects all the desert and coastal worlds with new gameplay added.  

Native Amricans do not have enough representation in this game...

Hair and horse ranches are not enough.

I've always dreamed of a native american themed pack. I don't know if it'd sell much but i can never lose hope for more indigenous representation, because i really love what they did with Island Living and the small things we got with Horse Ranch, but we need more.

I think a pack like this could have many things that aren't specific to an ethnicity but that is common to the indigenous in general and their lifetsyles and cultures. And i'm pretty sure the team is capable of referencing real life cultures respectfully and creating a new one that helps people feel represented.

Based on the knowledge i have from study and research about brazillian indigenous people, as a brazillian myself from indigenous descendency, i think a pack like this could be focused in the amazonian indigenous people, since the Amazon Rainforest is presumably (and sadly) the only way EA would feature a brazillian culture, this or Rio de Janeiro, bringing things like: Jewelery making (but with seed beads), Ceramics/Pottery (but with traditional techniques), basket weaving, archery, building ocas (indigenous house), indigenous graphism (from walls to body paintings), headdress making (this could be a locked item im CAS and only sims with an indigenous trait could have it), playing rattles and drums and traditional agriculture like agroforestry and companion planting (different from grafting, this would be different plants growing together). Also i've been seeing many indigenous people from here  entering the fashion world by modeling like Noah Alef or creating designs like We'e'ena Tikuna that would also be interesting to see.