Killer whales are considered a particular symbol of power and strength, and catching sight of one is considered a momentous omen. Some tribes, such as the Tlingit, view the killer whale as a special protector of humankind and never hunted killer whales (although they were accomplished whale hunters of other species.) (x)
Top photo: A pod of orca in Alaska. Bottom photo: Some members of the Tilingit tribe; date unknown. (x)
Okay I’m only gonna say this once and preface this with the fact that I am Eyak and I probably do not want to hear your opinion on the Pharah skins Raindancer/Thunderbird. This is a really soul baring post so I’m not so sure about people reblogging it, if you do just try to be respective and remember this isn’t a go-ahead to go and appropriate all native cultures.
They’re pretty damn clearly based on Pacific Northwest tribal cultures. The ones I can pick out being Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian, but we often get grouped together so that doesn’t surprise me. There are many more, but I don’t claim familiarity with all tribes and I can’t say if their art styles and myths were used.
For your comparison a little sample of the tribe’s artistic styles just to get the point across:
And I really have to get something off my chest people. I don’t have a problem with these skins, in fact I adore them. Please just chill with me for a second while I explain.
The biggest issue I see here is people (who usually arn’t ndn, let alone from pac nw tribes) yelling about cultural appropriation. Which good! I’m glad people are on guard for it! But it’s entirely possible that Pharah’s father was Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian or from another closely related Pacific Northwest tribe, so we can’t really call that yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was.
Most importantly, speaking as an Eyak. Which is all I can do despite Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian being so closely related, our tribe’s relationship with cultural appropriation is uh, not exactly the norm.
The last Eyak fluent speaker died in 2008, her name was Chief Marie Smith Jones and she was also the last full-blooded Eyak on Earth. The very last. Please appropriate Eyak culture. It’s the only way it’s going to survive. There’s less than 500 of us remaining, and we’re scattered more and more every year. Families I grew up with in Alaska converted to Catholicism. The military took my family across the globe and left us an entire continent away. The language I learned at the dinner table in 1998 now almost exclusively exists on those cassette tapes my white father recorded that night and in reconstructive attempts from a French academic that studied our language from halfway across the globe.
It sucks shit guys, it really does.
When I first saw the Thunderbird skin I cried, I cried for an hour. Because Overwatch is huge. It will live on for years if not decades. And there’s Pharah with her hair in braids I haven’t seen my mother wear in over a decade. Wearing the colors that remind me of a home I no longer have. Embodying a mythic figure that I trusted to protect me during Y2K and sought out constellations in the sky for.
So before you spew vitriol about how racist it is that they did that. Just kind of chill out and think about different perspectives for a moment. If you really want to help us? Consider taking a poke about http://www.eyakpeople.com/ and taking a look at our language revitalization project! It’s pretty fun and you could even learn a language out of it.
check out Tlingit artist Rico Worl’s gorgeous set of NW Coast-style playing cards!! get a deck by donating to his Kickstarter campaign; Rico is the founder and chief designer behind Trickster Skate Co., and is offering cool bonus gifts like the tee and skate deck above if you buy in bulk!
Tlingit people chiefs at the Dakl’ aweidi HÍt (clan house) raising ceremony 3 from the Raven moiety, (from the left) and a Wolf moiety, (far right) – Sitka Kaagwaantaan Naa Shaa dei hani, in Alaska
The leftmost and right center figural robes are woven in a technique called Chilkat weaving - it’s on the standard grid, but Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida women figured out how to weave circles into them, which is kind of a feat. Each of these robes easily takes a year to complete. They’re traditionally made from mountain goat wool and have an otter fur strip at the neck - they’re heavy, and you get the overwhelming sensation of being around a virtuoso object when you’re in the same room as one. They’re part of a category of object called at.oow in Tlingit traditional law - what other people might call an object of cultural patrimony. I can only imagine what it’s like to be Tlingit and wear one of these.
The left center geometric piece is called a Ravenstail robe - it’s made in the same way and of the same materials as a Chilkat robe, but is an older form of the robe. There are a handful of robes out there circa around 1800, I think mainly in European anthropological collections, that are called Transitional robes because they’ve got both Ravenstail and Chilkat elements, like these:
The robe on the right is a form that’s usually called a Button Blanket. Like the Chilkat robes, these tend to display clan crests. I can’t tell what that one’s made of but, before the introduction of European or Canadian or American made pearl shell buttons, some of those robes were made out of dentalium shells traded all the way up from Native California. Using those old school materials has made a comeback in the past thirty years in the Northwest Coast, which is awesome to see.
Evelyn Vanderhoop (Haida) is a major force in the renaissance of woven robes. Here’s a photo of her with a Transitional style tunic she wove:
