NAN Fading, Has the NAN somehow faded into obscurity? Options

[Ascalaphus]

Couple of problems, even with your numbers the "Calvinists" outnumbered the NAN by at least tenfold. Secondly, the kind of social and cultural changes you are envisioning doesn't happen overnight and lastly, the indian's "culture" isn't vital or successful in the first place.

"Mother nature is on our side", and everyone else seemed to believe it. I think that the NAN represents a cultural renaissance for the FN.
Although the numbers are perhaps lower (the 1% has been argued a lot - a lot higher numbers have also been shown), their methods of convincing people are also better; actual miracles beat dry theology. And the NAN can use modern propaganda technique as well.

Never mind the fact that it is vastly harder to get people who are used to being able to vote and hold office go along with the idea of being second class citizens based along racial bloodlines. And before anyone even mutters the "one drop rule", proclaiming that you have an indian somewhere in your family tree is not going to change your beliefs or the way that you govern yourself.

I don't deny that there will be conflict, but it's not impossible. With some control of the media you downplay resistance and emphasize the people who're happy with the new nature-loving, free-of-the-fascist-UCAS lives you told them to live.

[Ascalaphus]

This. You have to greatly oversimplify Reformation politics for this argument to hold water. The Peasant's War ended in defeat, Catholicism ultimately survived and most of the bloodshed in the European Wars of Religion came as a result of major, established powers drawing lines in the sand for political reasons as much as anything. The short-lived success of Cromwell in England was actually less about religion and more about Royalists vs. Parliamentarians. A monarch was eventually put back into place regardless. These things take time.

I have to simplify if I don't want to write a book instead of a post. I was trying to give an example; and the example does hold. Any cultural shift starts with a small vanguard.
Yes, the Catholic Church wasn't destroyed. Neither is the UCAS. Rome did lose power in England, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Scandinavia and various other places.

Anyway, I just handle this with a whole metric ton of handwavium and by not using the NAN in my games very much at all. I simply assume that the SR universe Native Americans never declined as much as they have in reality to begin with. It's just not a situation that I could imagine panning out otherwise; a more thorough retcon of North American history really seems like the only option that makes sense to me if you genuinely want to make the idea work for some reason.

So what have you done then? Balkanizing the US is sort of the objective to create a nice corporate playground I suppose. But the NAN isn't the only way it could be done. I'm curious about other cool scenarios.

[Whipstitch]

I have to simplify if I don't want to write a book instead of a post. I was trying to give an example; and the example does hold. Any cultural shift starts with a small vanguard.
Yes, the Catholic Church wasn't destroyed. Neither is the UCAS. Rome did lose power in England, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Scandinavia and various other places.

They lost it to power centers that were already in place though, for the most part. Many dukes and lords saw the Reformation as a chance to get out from under the Holy Roman Empire's thumb. The principal combatants were established lords with political power who decided to convert, whereas the Native Americans make up roughly 1% of the North American population. Even then the fighting took a good century or so.


Anyway, I simply don't worry about the NAN or use it much at all. It's all NERPS as far as I'm concerned. I accept it, but as long as the subject comes up I'd side with the people who say it tends towards the silly.

[pbangarth]

The whole 1% population thing is a bit misleading.

There are large areas of North America where the percentage is way higher. For example, the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada is or soon will be over 50% First Nations (Population growth among First Nations people in Canada is about four times that of the general population), and the Province of Manitoba is getting there too. These are huge tracts of territory, each the size of Texas. The political ramifications are enormous. I imagine there are other large regions in North America that also have a much larger percentage of First Nations people.

Take out the massive conurbations (New York+, Chicago+, Los Angeles+, Philadelphia+, Toronto+, etc.) that take up relatively little geography, and even the overall percentage of the whole continent rises dramatically.

[LurkerOutThere]

..........actually 1 percent is a bit of an overstatement (if i remember my math from the other night it's something like .89 etc etc etc repeating based on current US census figures. Also your sense of soon and mine is vastly different considering the first nations population of Sk is about .08 percent of the whole. In fact the explosive group amongst the Metis and First Nation peoples population wise is almost directly corrolated by a decrese in non-tribe affiliated aboriginals. It's not that the population as a whole has gone that signifigantly (there has been some growth) it's that more are identifying as members of a specific tribe or group. Secondly isn't SK one of the least populated places in north America per capita, saying it's a land area the size of texas doesn't mean nearly as much if it has signifigantly less people per capita then texas. Yes a miniature poodle is big in comparison to a mouse, not so much compared to a german shepherd. Likewise acting like the the disproportionate populations of a very unpopulated area is only significant if you can discount the most populated areas.

Oh look, citations!

http://www.stats.gov.sk.ca/pop/2006%20Cens...l%20Peoples.pdf

[CanadianWolverin...]

Oh look, citations!

http://www.stats.gov.sk.ca/pop/2006%20Cens...l%20Peoples.pdf

Thanks for the link LurkerOutThere, I am enjoying the reading material (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Just curious, how do you refine your searches to find such valuable real world sources?

[LurkerOutThere]

I guess my google foo is strong? In the case of that particular link i'd been building a game (another sitting) base din the far cold north so I looked at population as part of that and found that website. That i found with google. A ton of population data is availble from the census bureau in the US or the beureau of statistic ( i think?) in Canada.


As i'd like to point there can be no excuse for Japanese American's treatment during WW2. However there can be no comparison between Japanese internment camps and Nazi death camps. If the NA camps were built on the internment camps model there is no reason they shouldn't have been that bad at all (all things being relative of course) however the extermination proclamation and other items were retroactively added into the backstory to justify the NAN's actions.

[pbangarth]

..........actually 1 percent is a bit of an overstatement (if i remember my math from the other night it's something like .89 etc etc etc repeating based on current US census figures. Also your sense of soon and mine is vastly different considering the first nations population of Sk is about .08 percent of the whole. In fact the explosive group amongst the Metis and First Nation peoples population wise is almost directly corrolated by a decrese in non-tribe affiliated aboriginals. It's not that the population as a whole has gone that signifigantly (there has been some growth) it's that more are identifying as members of a specific tribe or group. Secondly isn't SK one of the least populated places in north America per capita, saying it's a land area the size of texas doesn't mean nearly as much if it has signifigantly less people per capita then texas. Yes a miniature poodle is big in comparison to a mouse, not so much compared to a german shepherd. Likewise acting like the the disproportionate populations of a very unpopulated area is only significant if you can discount the most populated areas.

Oh look, citations!

http://www.stats.gov.sk.ca/pop/2006%20Cens...l%20Peoples.pdf

Hmmm... seems I'm talking through my hat. Thanks for that citation. I will try to figure out where I got the other idea from.

In regards to your point about land area and population, that's my whole point. In some segments of North America (seems like not a whole province, after all) the small population has a higher percentage than 1% being First Nations (Hey, lets go for an official term FNMI: First Nations,Meti, Inuit). In those segments, the political/cultural will to secede into a NAN type state may very well be strong enough to carry the vote.

[LurkerOutThere]

Right but those places are few and far between the overwhelming majority of North America is populated by peoples other then NA.

That's my point, it's silly to have 1 percent of the population ursurp the will of the rest of it, no matter what their justification no matter what their powers. In the magical indian brave scenario they are not only taking control of the territory (which has been done before) but wholesale requiring the disenfranchisement and exodus of the locals, which has not.

Government weakening and balkanization is fine cyberpuunk, the NAN isn't, the nan is a combination of "stick it to the MAN!" and the isolation of seattle, nothing more nothing less. It's too bad they overlooked in the process an act that eclispes the atrocities it was supposedly righting. That is in essence my final word on the subject, the sooner the NAN fades away the better as it's pretty much vestigial to the shadowrun story as a whole.

[kzt]

In regards to your point about land area and population, that's my whole point. In some segments of North America (seems like not a whole province, after all) the small population has a higher percentage than 1% being First Nations (Hey, lets go for an official term FNMI: First Nations,Meti, Inuit). In those segments, the political/cultural will to secede into a NAN type state may very well be strong enough to carry the vote.

That is true, but as the dudes who wrote SR1 didn't do ANY research and just let the stream of consciousness flow onto the page the tribe that actually could do this doesn't exist in SR. There are over a quarter million Navajo in a very sparsely populated area of NM, AZ, CO & UT. however the supergeniuses who wrote SR ignored the Navajo and decided that the less than 10,000 Utes took over the area.....

Just to consider the reality, there are only eight Native American tribes in the lower 48 that have over 50,000 members. Most of them are missing from SR due to the above mentioned supergeniuses. As a matter of fact, only the Pueblo people and the Sioux actually make it into SR as far as I can tell. Many of the "important" tribes in SR couldn't actually fill a city high school football stadium.

There are 270,000 Navajo, 110,000 Sioux, 60,000 Pueblo, 52,00 Lumbee, 45,000 Iroquois, 41,000 Creek, 87,000 Choctaw, 106,000 Chippewa, 281,000 Cherokee, and 57,000 Apache.

[CanadianWolverin...]

Right but those places are few and far between the overwhelming majority of North America is populated by peoples other then NA.

That's my point, it's silly to have 1 percent of the population ursurp the will of the rest of it, no matter what their justification no matter what their powers. In the magical indian brave scenario they are not only taking control of the territory (which has been done before) but wholesale requiring the disenfranchisement and exodus of the locals, which has not.

Government weakening and balkanization is fine cyberpuunk, the NAN isn't, the nan is a combination of "stick it to the MAN!" and the isolation of seattle, nothing more nothing less. It's too bad they overlooked in the process an act that eclispes the atrocities it was supposedly righting. That is in essence my final word on the subject, the sooner the NAN fades away the better as it's pretty much vestigial to the shadowrun story as a whole.

That would make me sad, I would most likely fade away from SR if NAN faded from SR, it simply is that big of a draw for me to the setting as a place of fiction and fantasy.

[Particle_Beam]

Particle_Beam think about what you said for a moment, if things are really so bad that the corps can get away with paying shit wages to oilfield roughnecks then the mere fact that there are jobs at all is going to uplift what must have been a really, really bad econamy.

But people don't want miserably paid jobs that doesn't even cover their low living expenses. And if the government isn't even willing to adress such blatant issues, it leads to a deep resentiment towards the president and his cabinet. After all, the southern regions seceeded from the UCAS because whoever's sitting in the White House is a weak, utterly corrupt, and despicable person who is so far detached from reality, that they might as well go crazy too and halve whatever country still belongs to the anglos.

People continue to starve, the corporations that exploit the lands get richer, while their worker have barely enough to afford food, and the government sells beneficiel laws for the corporates in an obvious way.

Especially then if the corporations are allowed to keep paramilitary security guards who are allowed to kill whoever's complaining about their working condition. Literally.

[Ravor]

*sighs* I take it you've never researched the working conditions and power dymantics that have existed for most of our country's history have you?

[Megu]

Wow, this has gone on for quite a while, hasn't it?

The way I see things, it makes perfect sense to say that these magical revolts weren't nearly as "racial" as most people make them out to be. The people who ended up living in the NAN territories weren't only "pureblood american indians" who kicked anybody else off their new country. There really wouldn't be enough of them to hold that much land. So what I do is decree that the "NAN" movement actually included anyone who was dissatisfied enough with the government to oppose it, which considering everything that was going on at the time would be a pretty broad section of the population, spread all across the country.

From hearing comments here, looks like a lot of people start talking about secession when a new American president is elected just because he doesn't belong to the "right party". What do you think would happen if you actually had a government that went around locking people up in concentration camps and generally siding with big money corps in clear detriment of the civilians? I don't mean "here, have some bailout money", I mean "oh, your paramilitary armed forces killed two hundred people last week? You're not only cleared of all charges, but you're also commended for being a civic-minded hero! Here, have some extraterritoriality!"

The peace agreement for NAN war probably had a lot of people moving into the NAN as well as out of it, and not because of their "native blood".

I guess I missed your comment earlier, Bira, but I think you and I are on the same page. That said, I mean, I can see where Lurker and Ravor are getting their ideas from in the early canon, but I portray the NAN in the same spirit in my games as you, I think.

[Saint Sithney]

*sighs* I take it you've never researched the working conditions and power dymantics that have existed for most of our country's history have you?

Which is why the 20s saw the rise of Anarchism and the whole Propaganda by the Deed set. That's totally the climate I run games in.

Aggressive corporate masters holding a choke chain on an increasingly belligerent or stupified public. I like the "corps are evil" mindset.

[Ravor]

True, I probably run the setting as a whole, especially the corps just as dark if not darker than anyone here, but it is important to note that the powers that be have both the motivation and the means to ensure that they stay on top, and a resource both as rare and as fickle as magic isn't going to change the way things work much, especially when the rules that govern magic doesn't play favorites.

[Ascalaphus]

So I'll assume that most people had the US balkanized somehow. If you're not using the NAN, what did you do? I'm curious as to your alternatives.

I keep thinking about Jericho all during this thread.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I keep thinking about Jericho all during this thread.

LOL! Me too. I wonder, any news on the tv-movie thing or is it definitely six feet under?

[TheWanderingJewe...]

One of the things I've run with over the years with Shadowrun is a long term conspiracy run out of the CAS by those who still consider themselves "Americans" and not CASans backed by the Great Spirit of America (much reduced) that calls itself Uncle Sam. They've sent in agents to the UCAS and bordering nations to promote 'Cultural Exchange' (read: political indoctrination) to lower tensions among the North Am nations and promote the concept of reunification. it's been slow going but in the long term the idea has been planted. A series of runs was for this Cabal....with the players none the wiser

[sgt1480]

This actually easy. The UCAS govt was faced with a grave choice: capitulate or nuke their own people. Cede some land back to the original owners or forever be known as Hitler's relief. The original concept was great. Choose a large land mass to give back but in theory did not displace many people. It introduced magic with a cork pop and became plausible for the rest of SR canon.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Ok, to avoid bringing back stuff from here to the NANers thread I'm bringing back this thread.
And now I make a different question.
The whole point of the NAN was to bring a HUGE balkanization of the America. The Native American Nations are all part of a council (which I think is not even close to a European Union) but some nations have issues with others.
I think that simply making a "south will rise again" would not be balkanization enough, you would have two countries that most likely would behave just like the South and North Korean do, they wouldn't have a Peace treaty, possibly just some kind of cease-fire and a hot borders.
Now, here is the question? How else would YOU guys make a balkanization of America? One that you think would make sense INSIDE Shadowrun's universe, not necessarely in Real Life®.

[kzt]

Why do need that? It's always seemed pointless.

[Warlordtheft]

Some ideas on alternatives to the NAN balkanization:

A panel of supreme court justices that severely limit the elastic clause (I.E. the part about regulating interstate trade and commerce), and cause the federal government to become a powerless entity.

With the awakening, many of the awakened formed their own fiefdoms (using mind control and other tricks), sparking widespread riots. This eventually leads to the collapse of the US.

The US government loses its financial footing and goes bankrupt. Debts to foreign nations are not paid, leading to an escalation of conflicts, and eventually a limited nuclear war. This causes civilization to breakdown into a hap hazard array of city states.

[kanislatrans]

You could always have space alien refugees crash land in the Four Corners Area and through their superior technology take over the middle of the continent as their new homeland. of course, statistically, there is no way you could get enough aliens into a RL space ship to hold that much land... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

*Kanis grins for Coyote is pleased* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Saint Sithney]

As the polar ice caps begin to melt, the 30% of the world's natural gas held within them starts being released into the atmosphere. This huge burst of methane, which is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide, accelerates the Earth's climate change so drastically that everything falls to shit in short order. The increased heat absorption and decreased heat reflection (since there's less ice left,) means that both poles are free of ice within less than 3 years. Global sea level rises significantly, aquifers are either depleted or polluted with salt, and major population centers must be abandoned. 80% of the Earth's people are made homeless. Meanwhile, the huge rush of fresh water from the melting poles changes sea currents in the Atlantic. Europe begins to freeze over. Huge wind destruction, famine, floods, everything is falling apart. Native Americans say, "I told you so," then take another slug of hooch.

That wouldn't really leave us with a very recognizable world though. I guess when it actually happens to us, Catalyst can retcon it in to bring the 6th World in line with reality.