Tattoo (VOY)

[Crowley]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v825.php

In the video Mister Sonnenburg rhetorically asks what the hell a "Contrary" is. That is a social role in the tribe where a person deliberately acts contrary to social conventions and what others normally do. Part of their function is to show the importance of social norms by breaking them. They also use inverse speech, where "no" means "yes", "hello" means "goodbye" and so on. In the book and film Little Big Man a Cheyenne Contrary is shown doing things like bathing in sand and drying himself off with water. Contraries have only been known to exist among Great Plains Indians, so a tribe native to Central America using that term yet again goes to show what nonsense Chakotay's cultural background is. And the episode doesn't even use the term correctly.

[Nessus]

ChocolateDay's "heritage" was always a super blatant grab-bag of whatever native-american stereotypes the writer's thought vaguely applicable to a given moment, so it's not really surprising.

I'm not even that knowledgeable about native cultures, but even I could spot the wildly different stuff being Frankensteined together. His tattoos resemble the art style of pacific northwest tribes, but as far as I know face tattoos aren't really a thing in those cultures, and the underlying idea appears to be pulled from pacific islander cultures. His various spiritual rituals and paraphernalia appear to be strongly inspired by plains Indians (in the same way the design of a Disneyland castle is inspired by actual European castles). His people's geographic background is implied to be Central American in this episode, but IIRC is implied to be other places in other episodes.

To my mind, this is really damning to the producers who though this all was a good idea. Either they didn't notice, or they thought no-one else would notice: either way makes them FANTASTICALLY out of touch with even superficial pop-culture osmosis native-culture awareness in the US.

Maybe this is one of things where the people making the show are of a significantly older generation than the audience? IDK, I'm just guessing.

[Dindu]

Ah, Central America, home of the sloth, the armadillo, and the avocado. And of all the avocadoes, the great green ball-berry, the greatest must be the Devil's Avocado.

So, I don't think this was the idea, but maybe, possibly, the producers created Chakotay (which sounds more Irish to me, but hey) with the intent of serving as a reminder and virtue signal about all native american cultures. So his collectivist nature is essentially piling on everything from Navajo to the Mayincatecs so they have a story-point character whenever something pops into their heads.

Tangent warning...

To be fair, I couldn't give a single hoot, let alone two - every time Star Trek starts invoking native american / first nations / mayincatec I fall into a coma. There's only so much patronising white guilt I can take.
I mean, if you wanna do a story about native peoples, hey, fine, go for it. Lots of tales to tell in there, but if all you do is say 'Hey, these guys were totes spiritual and great' you're not telling a story, you're painting hundreds of millions of people with a single coat of paint. It's just as patronising and probably some form of ist to say 'all these guys were great' as it is to say 'all these guys were terrible'.
The original settlers and their descendants were a mixed bag, just like everyone, magnificent achievements and bewildering brutality.
To me, that's where you get story, conflict, moral dilema. On the one hand you have things like the Great League of Peace (I mean DAMN was that some balls to the wall drama), or Machu-Picu, but there's also slavery, human sacrifice, wars without end, even genocide.

So, yeah, went off on one a bit there.

Chakotay. So pointless.

[Dînadan]

The silliest thing about Chakotey's grab bag of a heritage is that there is a simple way they could have explained the mix away rather than trying to portray it as representing an actual specific tribe.

They established that he was from a colony rather than Earth, so why not establish it as having been founded by a mix of tribes and that over the two centuries since then they'd all intermarried and as a result the culture of the 23rd Century colony was a blend of all their cultures. Still cringeworthy, but better than just grabbing whatever they wanted and try to pass it off as a real tribe.

[SuccubusYuri]

The silliest thing about Chakotey's grab bag of a heritage is that there is a simple way they could have explained the mix away rather than trying to portray it as representing an actual specific tribe.

They established that he was from a colony rather than Earth, so why not establish it as having been founded by a mix of tribes and that over the two centuries since then they'd all intermarried and as a result the culture of the 23rd Century colony was a blend of all their cultures. Still cringeworthy, but better than just grabbing whatever they wanted and try to pass it off as a real tribe.

Wait you mean like that one world from TNG we know ended up on the wrong side of the border and would be prime Maquis members? That's starting to sound an awful lot like continuity.

[Dînadan]

The silliest thing about Chakotey's grab bag of a heritage is that there is a simple way they could have explained the mix away rather than trying to portray it as representing an actual specific tribe.

They established that he was from a colony rather than Earth, so why not establish it as having been founded by a mix of tribes and that over the two centuries since then they'd all intermarried and as a result the culture of the 23rd Century colony was a blend of all their cultures. Still cringeworthy, but better than just grabbing whatever they wanted and try to pass it off as a real tribe.

Wait you mean like that one world from TNG we know ended up on the wrong side of the border and would be prime Maquis members? That's starting to sound an awful lot like continuity.

Shh! Don't use the C-word; this is Voyager damnit!

[StrangeDevice]

The silliest thing about Chakotey's grab bag of a heritage is that there is a simple way they could have explained the mix away rather than trying to portray it as representing an actual specific tribe.

They established that he was from a colony rather than Earth, so why not establish it as having been founded by a mix of tribes and that over the two centuries since then they'd all intermarried and as a result the culture of the 23rd Century colony was a blend of all their cultures. Still cringeworthy, but better than just grabbing whatever they wanted and try to pass it off as a real tribe.

Wait you mean like that one world from TNG we know ended up on the wrong side of the border and would be prime Maquis members? That's starting to sound an awful lot like continuity.

That sounds like some nice, erm-- *cough* "persistence" there. Shame they didn't take that route and handwave away some of the more questionable aspects as part of a distant colony's cultural evolution. Moreover that the writers didn't do some additional research into the subject. Another unfortunate by-product of Voyager's seeming lack of everything from notable cosmology to three-dimensional characters, it seems. Although come to think of it, I think the silliest aspect is that after all those years, the man never got a damn first name, unless it's like a metonym or something similar.

[Capt Dunsel]

Just as well; it probably would be "Joe".

[Karha of Honor]

Ah, Central America, home of the sloth, the armadillo, and the avocado. And of all the avocadoes, the great green ball-berry, the greatest must be the Devil's Avocado.

So, I don't think this was the idea, but maybe, possibly, the producers created Chakotay (which sounds more Irish to me, but hey) with the intent of serving as a reminder and virtue signal about all native american cultures. So his collectivist nature is essentially piling on everything from Navajo to the Mayincatecs so they have a story-point character whenever something pops into their heads.

Tangent warning...

To be fair, I couldn't give a single hoot, let alone two - every time Star Trek starts invoking native american / first nations / mayincatec I fall into a coma. There's only so much patronising white guilt I can take.
I mean, if you wanna do a story about native peoples, hey, fine, go for it. Lots of tales to tell in there, but if all you do is say 'Hey, these guys were totes spiritual and great' you're not telling a story, you're painting hundreds of millions of people with a single coat of paint. It's just as patronising and probably some form of ist to say 'all these guys were great' as it is to say 'all these guys were terrible'.
The original settlers and their descendants were a mixed bag, just like everyone, magnificent achievements and bewildering brutality.
To me, that's where you get story, conflict, moral dilema. On the one hand you have things like the Great League of Peace (I mean DAMN was that some balls to the wall drama), or Machu-Picu, but there's also slavery, human sacrifice, wars without end, even genocide.

So, yeah, went off on one a bit there.

Chakotay. So pointless.

You should watch White Buffalo just to see Charles Bronson call an Indian out on that bs.

[CrypticMirror]

Ah, Central America, home of the sloth, the armadillo, and the avocado. And of all the avocadoes, the great green ball-berry, the greatest must be the Devil's Avocado.

So, I don't think this was the idea, but maybe, possibly, the producers created Chakotay (which sounds more Irish to me, but hey) with the intent of serving as a reminder and virtue signal about all native american cultures. So his collectivist nature is essentially piling on everything from Navajo to the Mayincatecs so they have a story-point character whenever something pops into their heads.

Tangent warning...

To be fair, I couldn't give a single hoot, let alone two - every time Star Trek starts invoking native american / first nations / mayincatec I fall into a coma. There's only so much patronising white guilt I can take.
I mean, if you wanna do a story about native peoples, hey, fine, go for it. Lots of tales to tell in there, but if all you do is say 'Hey, these guys were totes spiritual and great' you're not telling a story, you're painting hundreds of millions of people with a single coat of paint. It's just as patronising and probably some form of ist to say 'all these guys were great' as it is to say 'all these guys were terrible'.
The original settlers and their descendants were a mixed bag, just like everyone, magnificent achievements and bewildering brutality.
To me, that's where you get story, conflict, moral dilema. On the one hand you have things like the Great League of Peace (I mean DAMN was that some balls to the wall drama), or Machu-Picu, but there's also slavery, human sacrifice, wars without end, even genocide.

So, yeah, went off on one a bit there.

Chakotay. So pointless.

You should watch White Buffalo just to see Charles Bronson call an Indian out on that bs.

Another good perspective is Rich Hall's documentary "Inventing the Indian" which features actual Native Americans talking about all of that. There is a lot of unpacking of how Native Americans have been handled by the entertainment industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lheXnx02JYE