Having done more research and not found this in the tags... What can be done to respectfully write a fantasy novel with indigenous cultures in it, as a non-indigenous author? Specifically ones that have suffered in the ways that those in the continental USA have? I've heard it's better to choose one tribe as a basis, I've heard it's better to use no tribe as a basis, I've heard you can use some aspects but not the whole, I've heard use nothing unless it's the whole. What's the best approach?
Coding Fantasy Indigenous Peoples
You’re getting conflicting answers because there is truly no right answer to this question, as with most things when it comes to representation. Some people will prefer one thing, others something else. If you’re trying to find the Perfect Path Without Backlash, it doesn’t exist. Sorry.
Also, just as a note, a lot of nations cross the border between Canada and the United States, because that border is artificial and colonial. So you might very well be looking at Canada even if you’ve picked an “American” tribe.
In my personal, singular Indigenous opinion, my process would look something like this:
1- Pick A Region First
Region will give you the environment that the tribe(s) live in (I’ll get to that plural in a second), which will then inform basically everything about how they built their customs. A lot of Indigenous beliefs are tied to natural resources and constrains of the land, so it’s very hard to code an Indigenous society without figuring out what sort of land you’re working with.
This applies even if you’re working outside of the Continental US, because even just within the States they’re subjugating wide swaths of Polynesia (including Hawai’i), Alaska, the Philippines, etc. Not to mention how many Indigenous groups there are around the globe being erased by their local states.
Indigenous peoples are everywhere. You don’t have to include them all the time, but they exist beyond Turtle Island.
2- See Who Lived There
And now, the plural. Because unlike a lot of Western places, there’s a lot more nomadic groups when it comes to Indigenous peoples.
So the region you picked could have multiple groups that cycle through the same landscape, and this will also inform the representation. Did they like each other? Or were they traditionally enemies?
How about in lands that changed hands a lot? Because the borders of what Native population owned what lands are flexible, and you can find areas where the region changed hands a dozen times over even just a couple hundred years. How will you handle that?
Now here’s your first fork in the road: You can combine the groups that were friendly (key word: friendly) with each other into one large group, or you can have multiple Indigenous groups in the worldbuilding that are mentioned in passing, like how x cycles through in certain seasons, and y in another.
I would not follow this fork if they were traditionally enemies. Because it’s just… not respectful to have two cultures that were incompatible enough they were enemies for large swaths of their history together. It does happen where traditional enemies sometimes live together for awhile, but if you’re an outsider, I’d keep them separate.
This does mean that if you’ve picked a region with traditional enemies, you’re going to need both groups. Because the “enemies” part will have also shaped the culture, like how many men were alive in ages where men were expected to be warriors. Cultures adapt for certain percentages of the population to die in war, after all.
This also provides an interesting avenue for your non-Indigenous population, because are they allied with one group? Both? How do they maintain relationships? If these non-Indigenous people are not colonial, then be very careful not to have them try to play both sides too hard, because helping both sides kill the other is a tool of colonialism. If they are colonial, they’re going to be doing this and it’ll be a villain move.
Personally, I’d toss more diversity instead of less because it helps avoid tokenism. Instead of having this One Token Nomadic Group, the One Token Indigenous Group, you have two, or three, and you’re showing a diversity of cultures instead of just throwing in Natives because you feel like you have to in order to be diverse.
But if you do want to blend (which might be useful, even if you just want to make a new culture that mixes “European” with Indigenous as people intermarry), I’d read this post: Pulling From Multiple Indigenous Legends
3- See what exists and what’s open
A lot of Indigenous practices are closed, meaning we don’t tell them to outsiders. At all. This doesn’t mean that those practices aren’t out there as appropriated pieces of “folklore”, but you need to be aware that some folklore is Indigenous and therefore should be closed.
Putting these closed practices in fantasy is generally considered a bad move (see: almost every non-Indigenous use of the w3ndigo ever), unless you can work closely with the tribe to figure out how to do it respectfully (see: Teen Wolf doing a Skinwalkers episode with the Navajo; ironically enough they did not work with the Cree when they had a w3ndigo episode, as far as I can tell)
I’d suggest reading this post: All Myths Are True, Native Spirits Invisible to Outsiders for how to include closed practices.
4- Magic gets its own point
The thing about fantasy is that you’re dealing with the supernatural, and in my experience on WWC, some of the biggest “uh” moments are whenever people don’t realize how culturally Christian their magic systems are, and how incompatible they are with Indigenous beliefs.
So you’re going to need a degree of research into Native mindset, and then extrapolate what sorts of things that make sense for them. This can fill in some blanks for not touching Native spirituality with a ten foot pole, but you are going to need extensive research to have it actually make sense.
Read through the tag and note every time I poke at the concept that Natives are more magically attuned, that there’s something like “the gods told me to”, or other little tiny “basic” things in a lot of fantasy that just don’t feel like they fit.
Or, come back after you’ve gone through steps 1 to 3 and can be more specific!
Still, I would suggest you do this sort of research anyway just to be respectful. Figuring out how magic works and dovetails with Native populations is just a nice side benefit.
Overall:
To very directly answer your questions:
Best way to respectfully include Indigenous cultures in fantasy: I’d prefer very little colonialism if any; no such thing as noble savage (aka: we are not “better” because we live closer to nature and don’t have the humdrum of Western society); complex, rich societies with social rules and the same level of care you’d give Western cultures; just generally considered valuable, complex, and sustainable.
Better to use one tribe and hard code or no tribes and blend: Whatever makes sense for the story, but I’d err on the side of trying to capture the feel of the area with the peoples who already populated it. Like, if you’re trying to work with an area that has a confederacy of tribes, you’d be better off coding multiple tribes within that confederacy because being part of a confederacy is usually pretty important to tribe leadership and general functioning of the group; if you’re writing an area with a lot of roaming nomads, you’d be better to have multiple nomadic groups; etc.
Some aspects but not whole vs the whole: Keep closed practices closed, and figure out where magic and your unique worldbuilding breaks how an Indigenous group would function in the world.
What’s the best approach: If you’re attempting to make Indigenous people feel seen in fantasy, then whatever means to that end is the best approach—while understanding there’s not going to be a solidly unified opinion that everyone will agree on, but at best broad generalities. In my opinion that is nailing down coding enough that the peoples from the region you picked can spot their own practices and mindset and know somebody cares enough to have found those details.
I personally err on the side of closer coding to irl than looser at least to start, just because the way my brain works I need a lot of details from the culture in the early stages of research, just so I can gain the confidence in what to put on the page and have it feel real.
Especially if you’re trying to unlearn a colonizer mindset through writing, and really trying to broaden your worldview, going towards an initial goal of closer coding will really help break apart the base assumptions about How Things Work, and you’ll develop the mental flexibility to write about differences more easily.
You can loosen up coding later, if you want to, once you’ve learned enough to know what you’re consciously adapting to your fantasy world instead of just throwing your ideas of how you think the culture works into the plot and expecting it to be accurate.
Hope this helps!
~Mod Lesya