“The idea is that these wonderful sort of feral creatures had lived on this planet (Crait) and had consumed the planet’s surface, and as such had become crystalline. They live within the burrows and within the tunnels beneath the planet,” Neal Scanlan, head of the Star Wars creature shop, says. “So there is a time where their ability to shine within the darkness, should provide a guiding light to our heroes.”
The creatures were designed by Aaron McBride and Pablo Hidalgo came up with their name from the Latin word for fox, and the name of the fox genus, vulpes and vertices (singular: vertex), or the corners of any polyhedron, a shape assimilated with crystals.
“We had a little dog come in and we built a little suit for it, and we covered that suit with clear drinking straws,” Scanlan said. “It was amazing to see him run around. It could run and jump, and it had this wonderful sort of movement to it. It had a great sound to it, as well, because all the little straws moved and flexed with the animal.”
Something that’s almost never covered in fantasy mediums is common names.
Like we all know fantasy names are unusual, but any name to a foreign culture is considered unusual English names to Indian people are very unusual for example. But naturally, given that it’s an entire culture, there will be some common names, it’d be refreshing to at one point here this exchange.
“So I was talking to Vicnae and-”
“Wait which Vicnae? You can’t just say Vicnae. There are ten Vicnae’s in my village alone.”
This is also a great excuse to use “X the Y” or “X of Y” type names without being pretentious. Calling someone “Thognor The Stout” goes from pomposity to practicality if he lives down the road from Thognor The Small.
my family is from a town in Ireland where everyone has the last name Ryan. literally like everyone. so they differentiated families by calling them by their professions, right?
What if there were women’s cleanliness products that were marketed the way Old Spice stuff is? Like they had names like “Lioness” and “Sycamore” and “Wildfire” and “Hunter’s Moon” and they were touted as making you smell like a warrior queen who does not suffer fools and conquers all she beholds
Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.
Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.
Not that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art history class.
The teacher told the class about how the robe was used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”
She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.
“I felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.
“I got defensive at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more of the political stuff you all say these days.’”
But Sara didn’t back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to continue that pattern in our family,” she said.
The robe had been a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of the region.
The Chilkat robe that hung over the Jacobsen dining room table for years. Credit Courtesy of the Jacobsens
“I just thought it was so beautiful, and it was like nothing I had seen before,” Jacobsen said.
The robe was a Chilkat robe, or blanket, as it’s also known. They are woven by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Alaska and British Columbia and are traditionally made from mountain goat wool. The tribal or clan origin of this particular 6-foot-long piece was unclear, but it dated back to around 1900 and was beautifully preserved down to its long fringe.
“It’s a completely symmetric pattern of geometric shapes, and also shapes that come from the culture,” like birds, Jacobsen said. “And then it’s just perfectly made — you can see no seams in it at all.”
Jacobsen hung the robe on his dining room wall.
After more needling from Sara, Jacobsen decided to investigate her claims. He emailed experts at the Burke Museum, which has a huge collection of Native American art and artifacts.
“I got this eloquent email back that said, ‘We’re not gonna tell you what to go do,’ but then they confirmed what Sara said: It was an important ceremonial piece, that it was usually owned by an entire clan, that it would be passed down generation to generation, and that it had a ton of cultural significance to them.“
Jacobsen says he was a bit disappointed to learn that his daughter was right about his beloved Chilkat robe. But he and his wife Gretchen now no longer thought of the robe as theirs. Bruce Jacobsen asked the curators at the Burke Museum for suggestions of institutions that would do the Chilkat robe justice. They told him about the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau.
When Jacobsen emailed, SHI Executive Director Rosita Worl couldn’t believe the offer. “I was stunned. I was shocked. I was in awe. And I was so grateful to the Jacobsen family.”
Worl said the robe has a huge monetary value. But that’s not why it’s precious to local tribes.
“It’s what we call ‘atoow’: a sacred clan object,” she said. “Our beliefs are that it is imbued with the spirit of not only the craft itself, but also of our ancestors. We use [Chilkat robes] in our ceremonies when we are paying respect to our elders. And also it unites us as a people.”
Since the Jacobsens returned the robe to the institute, Worl said, master weavers have been examining it and marveling at the handiwork. Chilkat robes can take a year to make – and hardly anyone still weaves them.
“Our master artist, Delores Churchill, said it was absolutely a spectacular robe. The circles were absolutely perfect. So it does have that importance to us that it could also be used by our younger weavers to study the art form itself.”
Worl said private collectors hardly ever return anything to her organization. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate significant cultural relics to Native tribes. But no such law exists for private collectors.
Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen hold the Chilkat robe they donated to the Sealaska Heritage Institute as Joe Zuboff, Deisheetaan, sings and drums and Brian Katzeek (behind robe) dances during the robe’s homecoming ceremony Saturday, August 26, 2017. Credit NOBU KOCH / SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE
Worl says the institute is lobbying Congress to improve the chances of getting more artifacts repatriated. “We are working on a better tax credit system that would benefit collectors so that they could be compensated,” she said.
Worl hopes stories like this will encourage people to look differently at the Native art and artifacts they possess.
The Sealaska Heritage Institute welcomed home the Chilkat robe in a two-hour ceremony over the weekend. Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen traveled to Juneau to celebrate the robe’s homecoming.
Dorothy: You probably don’t remember me, but you told me I wasn’t sick. Do you remember? You told me I was just getting old.
Dr. Budd: I’m sorry, I really don’t–
Dorothy: Remember. Maybe you’re getting old. That’s a little joke. Well, I tell you, Dr. Budd, I really am sick. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. That is a real illness. You can check with the Center for Disease Control.
Dr. Budd: Huh. Well, I’m sorry about that.
Dorothy: Well, I’m glad! At least I know I have something.
Dr. Budd: I’m sure. Well, nice seeing you.
Dorothy: Not so fast. There are some things I have to say. There are a lot of things that I have to say. Words can’t express what I have to say. [tearing up] What I went through, what you put me through—I can’t do this in a restaurant.
Dr. Budd: Good!
Dorothy: But I will!
Dr. Budd’s date: Louis, who is this person?
Dr. Budd: Look, Miss–
Dorothy: Sit. I sat for you long enough. Dr. Budd, I came to you sick—sick and scared—and you dismissed me. You didn’t have the answer, and instead of saying “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” you made me feel crazy, like I had made it all up. You dismissed me! You made me feel like a child, a fool, a neurotic who was wasting your precious time. Is that your caring profession? Is that healing? No one deserves that kind of treatment, Dr. Budd, no one. I suspect had I been a man, I might have been taken a bit more seriously, and not told to go to a hairdresser.
Dr. Budd: Look, I am not going to sit here anymore–
Dr. Budd’s date: Shut up, Louis.
Dorothy: I don’t know where you doctors lose your humanity, but you lose it. You know, if all of you, at the beginning of your careers, could get very sick and very scared for a while, you’d probably learn more from that than anything else. You’d better start listening to your patients. They need to be heard. They need caring. They need compassion. They need attending to. You know, someday, Dr. Budd, you’re gonna be on the other side of the table, and as angry as I am, and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.
They took us on a field trip to the Everglades
Where we visited big cypress reservation
Most of them died out, teacher said
Precious few left on the rez
I remember marveling at the beadwork and artifacts in the museum
And the chickees amongst the cypress trees
wondering why these things were locked up behind glass,
Why this was “just history”, relics of the past
Reading the words on the museum plaques;
the Seminoles and Creeks
were once one people
Something in me lit up,
That’s me! That’s me,
Wayward Indian without a culture,
forced by the whiteness of public education to view colonizers as explorers,
My own people as savages
Well, the word creek was said
But still, “those Indians, they’re dead”
In fourth grade we had to pick a conquistador to do a project on
Picking a Native American was not an option
Pick your favorite Spaniard,
Who civilized this stinking swampland
And saved it’s savage people
So I picked desoto
That fabled hero who brutalized us
Hungry for the riches of our land
This is what my education taught me;
That my people no longer really exist,
savages swallowed up by European refinement
That our land is not ours, and never again will be
That an Indian is an Indian is an Indian,
Until the white man decides the Indian is white enough that their Indian blood is meaningless
That our culture can be summed up in a museum plaque,
That no one among us was ever great, when held up next to the blessed colonizers
I grew up thinking that my indigenous blood was meaningless,
that whiteness had even won the war within my own body
The Indians are dead, they said
Except for the few who run the museums
and hog our tax dollars
The Indians are dead, they said
And if that’s true,
I must be dead too
- kelsie marina (2017)
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