OK, barring any politically incorrect speech being re-written, what would have changed? History is history. The events don't change.

Wow. Seriously?

Let's try this, then. Compare a Chinese and a Japanese history book, concerning the 1940's. You really think "history is history?" Or a German and French history book about World War One? Or a...I mean...jeeze, come on. A hundred others. You really think everyone tells the same story about every country around the world?

As a history student, I have a perfect example. The first scholars of the ancient world divided the past into three parts - rome (glorious, perfect rome), the middle ages (dark ages full of stupid peasants and vikings) and the renaissance (return to the values of great rome). Historians nowdays, while using some of the methods and terms coined by those first scholars (I'm talking 18th century), view european history differently. Ancient rome wasn't that glorious. The middle ages weren't that dark. There was the carolingian renaissance, the 12th century renaissance, things were much less clear, and a lot more complicated.

It turns out even the vikings (screaming, murdering barbarians) were pretty devious, and masters of public relations and demoralization among other things. Using archaeology we know a lot more about their weapons and tactics too, stuff like that. They didn't just use axes and spit, but used superior chain mail armor and craftily painted shields designed to mask their vulnerable points, among other things.

It was assumed that barbarians conquered rome, but modern historian know otherwise. Rome killed itself in a lot of ways. Currupt and power hungry warlords that divided the land and sapped it's strength, allowed barbarians to settle on their lands (which later declared independance), and more.

By the way, our prof. read us parts of a young christian girl's diary, written before she was sent to the arena to be executed by the romans. I swear everyone in the class got tears in their eyes. Kinda reminds me of the NAN as well.

Also, to counter your FASA hate, FASA devs were geniuses, and I love every little bit of fluff that they wrote. It's perfect and people that say otherwise are wrong.

Umm, these were the guys that wrote "Aftermath". Did you ever try to read that, much less play it?

Give me a modern example of History revision. Of course in the past they made mistakes, most of history was by word of mouth. Word of Mouth is not exactly a very accurate method of transmitting history.



Oh? How does it remind you of the NAN?



That's... interesting... Scary, but interesting none the less.


@Critias: I was going to argue, but I decided that I didn't know enough and I am going to back off.

History was not "word of mouth" in the past. Scholars researched what documents they had available, and were affected by their background while analyzing them. British historians at the height of the british empire would of course see ancient rome as an empire similar to their own, and would analyze what documents they had accordingly. With time, more documents were discovered and researched, the general mindset of historians changed with the times (you should see how flower-people from the 60's came up with "the noble savage" and utopian theories about the origins of mankind... scary), the discipline of archaeology developed further and brought to light other truths and speculations. Also, I must confess that I don't know a lot about recent history. My area of study was classic and medieval history.

The ancient christians remind me of the NAN in many ways. They "won" in their "war" against the romans. The entire roman empire was converted to christianity. Seen from the future, it looks as if there was some magic involved, especially the descriptions of ancient christians gladly going to their deaths in the roman arenas, while singing and wearing holiday clothes. This had a MASSIVE impact on the romans that watched them die, and was probably an important factor in christianity's success. At their beggining, they were the downtrodden, life's losers, but they won anyway, and converted emprors and kings. They also were assholes about it later. When chritianity became a faith of emprors, it lost a lot of it's original, optimistic and empowering message and became a tool of the rich to play with. Nobles became bishops.

[anti hate message]I love FASA and they obviously created a perfect backstory for their game. Trolls are humans too !

Historical revisionism happens all the time. The most recent one I have heard of, has dealt with Russia and the possiblity of a law being put into place to not be able to argue with the official stance of the victory conditions of Russia during the Second World War. History is abotu conflict, not wars and events but about conflicting ideas and intepretations of the events, living conditions and culutres of the time. Like most humanistic studies it is not about absolutues but discovering models that can be employed with greater accuracy.

But historical revisionism happens all the time. Dunkirk was not a success, Roosevelt insisted the United States join the Second World War only after his re-election, the reasons for the war in Iraq are unclear - although outlined in the roadmap of the administration of its time. Was Aethelred the Unready a good king of the Anglo-Saxons? What lead to the invasion of Britain by Vikings and fifty years later by the Normans?

Try this mental exercise about contexts: What events led to the formation fo the Magna Carta? Was the Magna Carta reinterpreted during the following centuries? How did it affect the formation of the Constitution of the United States? How was the Constitution of the United States used by Austrian legislators in drafting their own constitution after second world war? What were the influences on the formation of the United Nations and its charter/constitution after world war two? What is the role of the United Nations charter of human rights, and why has only recently has there been an importance in creating a United Nations charter for children's rights?

@Mirilion & Chrysalis: This is the reason that I backed off from arguing with Critias about History Revisionism. I do not know enough and therefore would have problems arguing effectively.

I must admit that it is a very interesting theory, but if we use it then we are back to nazi Indians committing genocide and ethic cleansing, after all, the burb claiming that the original numbers and history was NAN propagana could very well be propagana itself. Where do we draw the line?

Wow, the US joined WW2 in 1949? They didn't cover that in my history classes....

Might I interject my own thoughts?

I really like the NAN "fluff" with regards to Shadowrun 4th, beyond its character generation reminding me of Fallout (1&2, PC Games) character generation and the use of just D6s, the whole setting I find to be attractive to play a imaginary game in - in a strange way, the NAN provide a semi counter point to a fantasy/fictional future where "democratic" governments hand over even more of the hog to corps.

So, IRL, I live in BC, Canada. My wife is a Native Canadian, so that makes my beautiful daughter "half". My dad laughs and says "Pff, BC would seperate sooner than Quebec." whenever the Quebec Separatist movement is mentioned on the CBC/CTV news. In my own talks about politics with those willing to do so, we have very little love for Ottawa (let alone Dee Cee, USA - especially thanks to Bush & co and the "Drug War") out here - Trudeau's middle finger (and some of Chretien's words) not forgotten, we still think a lot of what Harper does is far too much like USA Republican stances. I still see the affect Native Residential Schools have had on my wife's community thanks to the abuse suffered there in "reeducation". And I listen to the stories of Monsanto vs Mr. Farmer or water trying to be made a privately owned resource or the effects of farm fishing on local wild stock or the disregard for keeping local valued work in the wood industry (exporting raw lumber) or the difficulty of families who are taxed out of house and home by property assessments that don't take into account local household incomes and so turn places into blue collar ghost towns where now the rich only have a summer home but then wonder why everyone working there is only "seasonal". I got to witness and participate in the discussions about my wife's native land treaty, voted, ratified, and now being implemented so that they basicly get to become their own independent township instead of being beholden to the red tape of Ottawa through the (unintentionally?) racist Indian Act.

When I put all this together and think of what myself and the communities I am familiar with would do in Shadowrun's world with the NAN, I dare say we would welcome the Salishe-Sidhe Council with open arms, provided we were getting a better deal under them as a sort of local city states with proportional representation (the unfortunately failed BC-STV maybe) system of government to that council to improve voter turn out. That Canada would have been joined together with the USA so that we were no longer a Province but a State would make this all the more likely IMHO. And even more likely would be the IRL knowledge I have of how well natives and non-natives get along in BC, despite the deplorable third world and abusive conditions many reserves are in. Hell, throw in Salish Council making Marijuana a legal substance along with Tabacco and Alcohol, you got yourself the makings of beautiful friendship and us telling the rest of Canada and USA to go fuck themselves in SR.

Notice I don't speak for how the relations with local populations go outside of BC however, I did notice that when I traveled across Canada a few years back, the people seemed to get more "traditional" than the wild west coast and thus there seemed to be more abhorrent racism. I think some situations where the RCMP and native militants have faced off in the past in BC would be very different if there wasn't a realization by the citizenry that native people's are not the drunks and drug addicts depicted all too often in the media but family and neighborly people - not unlike that homeless hero who saved the kid who fell in the river in like Winnipeg(?) recently.

There are some things in this thread I have read that have raised my eyebrow, some comments I wondered if they were inadvertently or purposely racist and this is why they find the NAN to stretch believability. Don't underestimate native peoples (especially BC natives IRL), even when they are so called mudane, let alone SR Shaman, Mystic Adept, and Adept. With proper infrastructure, which a self government thinking long term growth could provide, their health, education, and standard of living could vastly improve, a long with all their non-perma tanned neighbors aka whitey (aka me), and with their natural resources at their beck and call, especially with their "socialist" view points, they would be a incredible force to be reckoned with. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that BC under Salish Council in SR might experience a economic boom relative to the rest of SR North America, from tech to energy to manufacturing to clean water to special security forces to clean food.

One other thing to consider with regards to population and cultural assimilation, I have encountered and seen documentaries where in people who didn't at first glance don't look native (I'm talking really "white" to "black" looking people) identifying themselves as 1/16 or 1/32 this or that tribe based on their family tree's heritage and look on this with a source of pride despite the deplorable conditions native people have experienced and are still experiencing, and this wasn't just Canadian's either. I would not be surprised if the treatment of native populations similar to that of some of USA and Canada's earlier history would not suddenly have a whole lot of people being pissed off at the governments and saying "Fuck you, I'm moving to NAN." - not dissimiliar to what happened with some people in the Bush & Co Years recently, where people so incensed at the their lies/actions/fellow citizens 'votes', that they "dodged the draft" so to speak and came to Canada, some even trying to seek citizenship here than attempting to wait for the heat to die down.

I can't speak for the condiction of Indians in Canada, but the native populations in America simply aren't doing very well even before you factor in the effects that living in honest to goodness WWII style Death Camps has on a population. In fact personally if we are going to start throwing around charges of racism, I find the "Magical Brave Theory" that we are asked to believe in order for the NAN Rebels to win to be far more insulting and racist.

Wow, old timers conceit much? For the disclaimer my first SR game wa sin the mid nineties. The "magical indian brave" that made the history work and was present as an archetype was just as offensive to me then as it is now. I remember a very distinctive conversation with my mother flipping through my second ed book and getting quite upset because it essentially made a parody of her race as an American Indian and her nationality as an American. Maybe you consider the "native" look important to SR but what i remember about the SR look in the early editions was more pink mohawk then anything.

Also the point i believe their making that your completely missing is storyline wise how much actual import have the nations had since Super Tuesday . THere was some geo-political stuff in threats and system failure but in the actual setting effecting events nations barely get a mention that isn't backdroped by a dragon/IE/something. The "mundane" movers and shakers of the setting are the corps not the nations.

I don't know, I'd have to agree that the "Urban Tribal" look and feel was very much part of the "Pink Mohawk" style both in Shadowrun and elsewhere, but of course you don't need the NAN in order to keep the styles as the new tusker craze demostrates.

Unless of course I'm misunderstanding your overall point.

Uups, I meant Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term.

OK... here is a good one for you... there have been attempts to whitewash/rewrite the history of WWII, specifically the Holocaust... fairly modern example here...

Sure, but just because the history books might change how the facts are portrayed does not change how they unfolded in reality.

But in a hundred years, will the books even accurately portray what happened? that is what revisionism is for... once time has passed, there are not a lot of individuals who remember the real story... eventually the revisionist story becomes reality...

No, the revisionist story becomes what people remember as reality. The actual events themselves stay the same. There is a difference between the two.

But in a gaming book, they don't. What's presented to us -- what's "remembered as reality" -- is the actual events themselves, in RPGs, comic books, etc. Retcons happen, and they really do fundamentally change things.

I totally agree Critias, which is one of the reasons that although I think the side discussion about real life revisionist history is somewhat interesting I find it rather silly in the context of applying it to Shadowrun.

In the long run, You are right... It is rather silly to compare Real World Revisionism to an RPG Historical Event...

Oh Well... It was getting interesting though...

Keep the Faith

"A History Lesson for the Reality Impaired" is where a lot of players would get their information about the history of Shadowrun, right? Is it written in the voice of a game developer telling you exactly what happened in Shadowrun? Or is the voice of someone in Shadowrun, recapping history that he know? If it's the latter, could the narrator be subjected to history revisionism, propaganda, or lack of expertise? Could he be leaving out details because he doesn't have the time and space to explain everything in detail? Could it be that what he left out are the crucial information needed for you to believe that NAN is possible?

If you want to argue that everything stated in a gaming book is the actual events, sure, go for it. However, Shadowrun books are typically filled with speculations, rumors, and possibly 'reality' that's actually fabricated history. Often, we only have a vague plot hooks with the gm having to fill the rest. If we can exert creativity to fill in the adventure hooks, why can't we also exert some creativity to fill in how an unrealistic event occurred, especially when we know so little about the Sixth World?

What I am saying is that, as far as it really matters, NAN exists. That's the big thing people in the Sixth World know. We have some details as to how that occurred, but that might not be the only factors to how it occurred. If you don't think a country with 94% christians in OUR world is likely to convert to Aztec in the SIXTH world. Then maybe there weren't 94% christians in the Sixth World at that time. Maybe there were other factors that weren't mentioned because there are so much more happening with the magic, dragon, and what not.

I don't know. I think sometimes we are too fixated on an imaginary setting because there are some things that we are so familiar in this world that we can't see it as being different or possible in an imaginary setting. 

For example, I have no problem with the rules for guns in firearm, but I often see people complaining about the rate of fire. I feel like this is kind of the same thing. If you must, adjust them to suit your beliefs/needs. Though it might be easier to just accept that it works because there are other factors in that world that you are not aware of. Maybe the laws of physics are different, so you can't fire as many bullets. Also if you change the rate of fire for what you believe to be realistic firing rate and speed, you might end up breaking the rest of the game as they were not designed to deal with it. There's a sacrifice that must be made between realism, balance, among other things.

In the end, it seems like we are more likely to believe dragons and magic showing up than NAN. That's kind of interesting, really. We have no dragons and magic in our world, but we do have native Americans. We can believe Dunkelzahn becoming a president and another great dragon a CEO of a megacorp, but not NAN... 






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I am not trying to say if the gaming books portrait something poorly or unrealistic, the players are responsible for filling them in for them. Rather, be a little bit more.. open minded? Shadowrun is a complex setting with many many elements. Even if the developers are all logic 6 geniuses working their butt off, there are still things that might not seem reasonable/realistic to you. I.e. the gun firing. However, it might be reasonable enough for most people. So if you don't like it, adjust it, remove it, make up reasons, but I don't think it's necessary to call the devs retarded or anything..

That was said so much more eloquently than I was doing... Thanks Siel...

Yeah, sadly conditions are poor up here too but when you consider the results of centralized government on distant locals, it makes sense that is what is going to happen with a population abused by "re-education" and poorly funded infrastructure. I'm sorry you find the NAN Rebels to be insulting and racist, I personally find it be rather empowering when faced with the SR corps taking over from the previous bunch of intentionally or unintentionally racist policy makers (aka follow the funding/money trail).

If it wasn't clear from my humble view point, I think the NAN Rebels would have had huge support from the locals, especially from many areas in what is now called BC and Salish Council in SR. Not sure how other NAN nations would go though, just pretty sure it would break "suspension of disbelief" for myself if locals in BC (not sure about Washington State) weren't big time on the side of NAN.

Oh, and something else to consider, the Inuit (aka Eskimos) and Athabaskan Council (Northern Alberta, Saskactewan, and Manitoba?) would have some serious economic clout if the Northern Passage was becoming less icy like it is in our world. There are some bad ass trade corridors in their territory, not to mention natural resources.

I can't speak for the condictions in Cananda, but I think you are sadly underestimating the racism that does exist towards Indians, another poster pretty much summed it up when he/she said that people "feel sorry" for them provided that they don't try to "take anything back". And remember this is before they tried to blow up the world by actually launching nukes in an attempt to start WWIII.

Of course with that said, although I personally believe that the rezs were the worst thing the American government could have done to the native populations, it isn't fair to blame all of their troubles or even the fact that their culture continues to slip away on the great white devils either.

And as long as my memory isn't failing me, gobal warming is largely a bust in the Sixth World.



Sorry siel but the devs lost most of their "wiggle room" when they decided to make Shadowrun an "alternate timeline" as opposed to creating their own world from stratch. We know roughly where the timelines diverged so the basic facts on the ground are known.

Fragging double post.

So it would have been okay if the devs said it's a completely different world with very similar history with our world up to where the timeline diverges?

Not really because what you said is just another way of saying "alternate timeline".

The closer the devs make Shadowrun's history to the real world's before the divergance point the less "wiggle room" they get in fudging the facts.

I think this was me when I was responding to questions about the Oka Crisis and explaining the Gustafsen Lake crisis. In the first case the city of Oka, Quebec was trying to build a golf next to Native land and the army/RCMP ended up being called in to help put them down (they didn't end up building the golf course I don't think). Some of the froggie news casters were calling for them all to be sent up north with the rest of the indians.

The Gustafsen Lake Standoff was a protest about the right for the tribe to hold Sun Dance rituals. They had been allowed to access the site on Crown Lands but the rancher who held the rights to those lands tried to evict them. So they squatted. Again the army/RCMP was called in and the Attorney-General declared that it wasn't a political demonstration but a criminal action making the participating tribes criminally liable for protesting. Surprisingly one of the native leaders actually got asylum in the US (although Oregon is more granola than even BC or WA).

The rise of SAIM was accompanied by the theft of nuclear weapons and the death of 18,000 anglos. The above has 1 dead, 1 wounded, and a presumeably dead dog. SAIM was also impeding much bigger business than just golf courses and ranching. They were actively interfering in the resource rush. A lot more was depending on that than in either of the above cases.

To echo the CAWovlerine I can say that we would probably have lots of anglos fighting alongside the natives here in BC. We have a very strong anti-Ottawa/Ontario/Toronto/Quebec bias here. People are still kicking around the idea of the nation of Cascadia enough that one of the local newspapers ran a series of articles last fall discussing what such a nation would look like, how it would work, etc.

Yeah and from my travels I would kinda expect the escalation to the east, I have noticed both sides of the fence (fed/prov/mun vs tribe/nation) seem to be equally tolerable of subversive and overt racism. That was one of the points that had me missing my then native long time girlfriend then, along with the rest of BC, I found the situation to put the lie to Canadians supposedly not being racist.



You probably wouldn't be all surprised to learn I sided with the natives on this one and was pissed off at Victoria for escalating it. I thought the precedent of sharing the land was a good one, heck, the rancher could have even been strongly encouraged to strike a rental deal or something to cover garbage pickup and other waste disposal, right?



I get the dystopian scale of the fight, in some ways kinda makes me think of that stand off in the states which IIRC was called Wounded Knee, only when I consider the mess the currently existing nations along with the help of the Corps were making of the world, it actually makes the SAIM look rosey by comparison. If the groups that were something like the Battle at Seatle when the (IIRC) WTO met there were allies or partners of SR's SAIM, I would think you would have even more reason to believe there would be anglos/asians/blacks/whatever having no problem kicking ass along side their native nation counterparts, especially with assurances that there wouldn't be the mass exodus of anything non-native in word and action. Those who die together in the struggle would be a pretty tight bond, band of brothers and all that.

Not surprisingly, I find the retcon of the forced exodus as being the opposition's propaganda a very easy pill to swallow. Frak the (IIRC) UCAS! Though mind you, I would hope if a member nation of the Council did do a forced exodus like was done to Native Nations in North America's past, that the other members of the Council would have stern words and actions encouraging refugees to move to their nations to bolster their numbers and economies - heh, another nation might even secretly encourage the racist nation to keep doing what they are doing to weaken that nation's position on the council while bolstering their own, anyone else smell a shadow run in that?

Question: How would the Natam's prove to potential recruits that they wouldn't be having a mass exodus, when a mass exodus was the stated plan. How would the be convincing the supposedly tons of non-Natam's to fight with them when their actions up until that point had been mass murder. Their further hamped by presumnably the government and corps control of the mass media and the net is in shambles at the time meaning that's not a viable recruiting front. So how did the pure light of the love and hugs indian movement get out over the deafening roar of exploding volcanos and 20 thousand people of various races and creeds at los alamos. How is it heard over the military casualties and their family members who are affected by it.

That's the problem with the NAN backstory, it can't decide if it was a unilateral use of awe inspiring magical WMD's carried out by pure native american magical braves or a peace and love movement inclusive to all that had puppies and a great PR program.

Hmm, while I am not exactly sure off hand why Lurker is so sure why all the Nations of what makes up the NAN would state a plan to their locals that they are going to kick em out - sure, some nations direct action movements might - but when you consider the time line of the events, the word of mouth of a neighbor would have more weight than the word of a national news anchor (at least that is the case when I talk to others, not a whole lot of trust for the likes of Fox News or CNN), and where the Volcanoes/Storms went off compared to the full extent of the area the members of NAN received, there was still a great deal of area that they could garner support from against what would be seen as a occupying (annexation), oppressive, centralized, and nazi-like (internment camps of undesirables) government in which the AmerInd Nations had not commited war crimes in their back yards. By Canadian or American standards of Charter of Rights & Freedoms and Bill of Rights, people would feel it was well within their rights to rise up against the Government and Corps. Other groups who had suffered similiarily to the NAInd camps, such as German, Japanese, Prison Blacks, Prison Hispanics, Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and now Meta-human - plus any WASP who had been opposed to racism as well - would all find common cause in opposing the camps and supporting the formation of NAInd Nations, not unlike some of the support behind the formation of Israel after the Holocaust. And lets also keep in mind that there would be people who still remembered the Holocaust, this isn't ancient history for that time, let alone our time IRL.

And why is Lurker making the SR NAN movement seem all lovey dovey, hippy-like? I'm not suggesting that is the case, only that the other side looks worse in comparison, so it could be reasonable the local neighbors of those Partisans trying to form what would become the NAN would think that these people who had been trading fairly with them when they were the underdog would continue to to trade fairly with them under as the top dogs of a less centralized government. And dying with your brothers in arms in this Insurgency is not exactly a case of holding hands and make love, not war. Its not unlike those of differing ethnic backgrounds and different cultural backgrounds who could even be considered racists by todays standards didn't value the strength of their fellow soldier irregardless of the color of their skin when they were fighting Nazis in Europe - The Devil Brigade was one of the most feared in WWII by Nazis for their calling cards and very Shadow Runner like unconventional moves and that was a VERY mixed group of individuals, some of who were Native.

So in the end, it doesn't have to decide between war (magical homicidal "braves") or peace (gets along with non-white hippies or whatever it was Lurker implied), for the Insurgency/Resistance/Rebels it would have been both - to their enemies they would be ruthless savages, to their family, friends, and neighbors they would have shown the utmost respect, noble one might even say, IMHO.

So again, Frak the UCAS! Long live freedom in the NAN!

Unfortunately Wolverine none of your statements are supported by the actual canon history. These same people who would supposedly feel peace and brotherhood towards the racist NAN were the people who one way or another condoned or allowed their segregation following lone eagle. When, lets not forget the Natam's tried to END THE WORLD as a protest action.

Secondly, why would the above same people who given that the foundation of the NAN cause is relegating non Natam's to a second class citizen status join them? THat's not something i'm making up, that's actual fact in the material. You have less then 1 percent of the population trying to declare sovereignty over the rest of the population, you brought up the nazi analogy but like it or not, your applying it to the wrong people. Sub out Blond haired blue eyed and substitute Nan and you've got it. Secondly the US went practically INSANE following.

Put simply the SAIM movement isn't non-racists vs racists it's one set of arguably racists against another. The only difference is one side (natams) are a much much smaller portion of the population and then decides to go on to commit mass atrocities to get what they want. There is no noble accepting band of brothers warrior it is a collection of guys who kill 20k people at a time because they can.

Well, not much else to agree to disagree Lurker, reading the same canon material I see it differently, especially considering examples given in this thread of the retcon of the forced exodus being propaganda and of non-natives joining the fight. My posts have all been from the point of view that once the mass exodus is proven to be a lie (propaganda retcon), the only other points that need to be shown as not a shared opinion are the ones of the lack support for the Natives and the population of the Natives being only Full Blooded Indians (FBI) to make the story believable and a fun piece of fantasy fiction for myself. The death of people due to the Volcanoes and Storms really doesn`t faze me any in a fictional world that has far worse done to it and the attempt at WWIII was not fully detailed - rogue or shadow group and what other forces were at play that it didn`t start a nuclear exchange or even go off.

I only bring up the nazi thing because of the internment (death) camps which strikes a similarity to the Auschwitz or whatever. To the best of my limited knowledge the SR NA Natives weren`t the ones throwing other races in those but having it done to them, that would garner them support.

And really, when you look at SR, being a second class citizen is not the worst that could happen to you, it may even be a better offer than what the other side is offering. Even then, the barriers for entry to first class citizen are not terribly detailed, they could be as simple as claiming partial ancestry, marriage, adoption, or even just some method of certification - and what method would be used could very well be different from one NAN member nation to the next.

I love your first paragraph, CW! And this is also exactly how I've chosen to interpret the NAN. I say chosen to interpret because, from this thread, I've gathered there's a lot of material I haven't read, and some of it supports a much narrower Ghost Dance War rebel movement. But I guess I'm not as concerned with what's more canon, as I am with what's more interesting and cooler, and I think this is that, for sure.

Having read the whole thread it seems to me that the simple answer is that we don't have enough/any unbiased resources to answer the question of how NAN formed; all the sourcebooks are written from *someone's* point of view and for that *someone's* benefit, thus the history is distorted and misleading.

The SIAM (or someone claiming to be them) took over a silo and lobbed a nuke in the chaos as the bunker was seized. Who pressed the button? The natives or the Corps/Feds looking for an excuse to stop the resistance to the Corp takeover of Indian lands?

What really stopped the Natives begin effected by VITAS as badly as the rest of the country? What exactly was VITAS anyway? Didn't one book suggest *someone* engineered it?

Trying the NAN to Aztech to Blood Magic to the Horrors tells us there was a plan to bring the Scourge early. Who exactly benefits from this? *Someone* taught Daniel and his crew the rites, someone gave them the knowledge of the Advanced magics- who?

Could the mysterious sponsor of the SIAM/Great Ghost Dance have also ensured it worked? Not just the actual KABOOM of the volcanoes etc but the attacks on American forces, the propaganda war, the crafting of the Treaty? The numbers where against Daniel and co yet they won - Aztech where there sure, but who else? Awakened forces took Brazil and Siberia, could some of "those types" be behind NAN too?

Was the USA (and by extension Canada) destroyed to ensure that the *someone* behind all this had a base of their own? or that the resources of the USA (corrupt and weakened as it was) could not be brought to bear against them in the future?

Who plans like this?

My my, what a thread. It does get me thinking about the possibilities for old grudges in de Seattle campaign I'm starting. I'll have to summarize the cool ideas about just how the NAN did it.

What I particularly like is the idea of corporations playing both sides, letting the NAN win, then making them both economically dependent puppets. The NAN wanted an utopia and instead the corporations just sliced up a nation state that they felt might be too powerful to easily plunder. (Of course, it didn't work out perfectly, but all in all, quite a profit.)

And while the UCAS has some right-wing fanatics that want to reconquer the NAN, the corporate lobby tells them it'd be bad for bussiness.

Some other things I'll use in my campaign to make it fit:
* Those senators from "lost" states were paid off by the rest through a compensatory amendment tacked onto the treaty, as long as they voted for it.
* One of the reasons the UCAS took its time signing Denver was because they were trying to remove their nuclear arsenal from states they felt weren't defensible/worth holding.
* The UCAS traded those states for not sinking California into the sea. When California became CalFree there was a lot of muttering about ingratitude.

Sure, early FASA was cliched. So are most game lines from the nineties, really. I got a bit nauseous from Shadows of Europe; they basically took some famous historical aspect of a country and planted it into the setting. Of course, as a GM you can try to reason out why it'd actually work. (My particular gripe is stone circles popping back up on ley lines in England. I'll have it my way: those ley lines were dangerously unstable until someone rebuilt the stone circles. But they don't just magically grow back, stone circles are a "human" construction.)

I have to agree that Aztlan is rather strange though. I'd expect a lot of syncretism; a blend of Aztec elements and Christian themes (much like it looks like now, maybe with the Aztec side more dominant.) And definitely more Maya elements, particularly since most of the magical circus starts in 2012. But I don't think the 2012 hype mattered in the nineties.

Clearing something up real quick.

According to the text, the NAN didn't kick all the anglos out after they formed. They offered citizenship to any skilled person who wanted to stay on and reserved the right to expel anyone they didn't want or like. I interpret that as them slowly emptying the slums and prisons into places like California and Seattle, (which explains how those places got so crowded with poor, angry, SINless people,) while USA loyalists left of their own accord. The Ute Nation was the only strongly anti-anglo AmInd spot in my recollection, and they got absorbed by the fully tolerant PCC in the latest timeline (guessing hardcore racism hurts the tourist trade.) So, basically the real difference between the NAN and the UCAS, as far as the composition of populous, is just more of a cultural difference than a straight up racial difference. I like to envision it as an amalgamation of cultures like was found in early Plymouth. Certain traditions are shared across the board, while others are exclusively Native/Anglo.

However remember that you are referring to the NAN after a retcon, that wasn't the orginal case, hell, I remember reading about the Indians pushing Anglos onto rezzes of their own and then treating them as second class citizens at best if they refused to pack up and move back to "their own kind" in America.

When do you place the retcon?
I remember the NAN books mentioning some of what he listed above.

BlueMax

That is pretty close to how I see it as well, though in my own experience in what would become the Salish-Sahide, there would be extremely very little in the way of traditions that would be exclusively Native or Anglo. Exclusivity would be frowned upon, the dominant culture driven by politics and power would wonder why any particular group desires to see itself as traditionally separate from everyone else even if multiculturalism is desired as a strength for the society.

I can't believe I'm actually re-entering this thread... but the last couple posts have been so thoughtful and polite, I figured I'd give it another go (Yes, this WAS my own thread once upon a time).

My reading on the whole "integration" issue was that they'd accept anybody with a trace of provable ancestry. That covered an awful lot of people; Heck, even these days, you'd be shocked the number of people who can legitimately claim 1/16 Blackfoot or Souix or something. Combine that with stop-loss (vomits in their mouth using a Bush-ism, but it's too good a fit) on brain-drain letting technical, education and medical specialists remain behind, rapid inter-mariage of the two sides, and you have a solid recipe for a well-integrated society. In many parts of what became the NAN in our own real-world, there's a surprising level of integration of cultures and bloodlines already.

So, yes, you kick out the hyper-nationalists and racists, incentivize to stop brain drain, and swiftly meld cultures, re-emphasizing your own supressed historical culture, of course. The success of places like the Souix Nation are firmly grounded in an embracing of modern technologies and methods while insisting without compromise on environmental activism while refusing to become a complete economic dependent on your neighbors or the Megas. They turn out some of the most advanced software on the planet, high tech electronics, green technologies like they're going out of style and, oh yeah, they're still the 6th World's bread basket. Add in a strong military and you've got a first rate nation-state, as such things go in the 6th World. Do strong tribal elements get emphasized and strengthened by cusom and law? Yes. Does that mean they refuse to allow ouside points of view? Not as long as they don't go against the core tennets they established at the founding.

As a side thought, people seem to pigeonhold Native American Indians as primitive savages in a lot of cases, at least subconciously. What should not be forgotten is that in the battles for the Western Frontieer, the tribes successfully embraced new technologies that worked for them, including the same firearms technology their opponents used. The thing that lost for them in the end, despite in many cases superior demonstrations of leadership, skil and tactics is the same thing that doomed the first Confederated American States: logisitcs and overwhelming material superiority. Come to think of it, that's what won World Wars I and II as well. The NAN books pointed out that many NAN citizens are outwardly indistinguishable from other North Americans except for phenotypical diferences and a much higher incidence of environmental awareness. The beads and deerskins and moccasins and feathers are largely reserved for the same things as the "traditional" Anglo Easter Outfit: special occasions and holidays. They watch he boob-trid the same as everybody else.

Anyhow, those're my thoughts on the matter.

Yeah, everyone knows how extremists who just won a bloody fight are noted for their moderation and rationality in dealing with the enemies they created in their minds. Just look at the moderation, reasonableness, and focus on economic recover shown by Mao, Pol Pot, Lenin, Robespierre, Khomeini, Castro.....

I would have given this post more points if you had listed Che.

But thankfully, this is fiction. So all bets are off and Utopia can be achieved.


BlueMax

Well, I never said it was done without attrocities or anything. The difference is that in the end, the process that occured in the Souix Nation (the one I specifically mentioned) wound up being described as surprisingly effective. Other nations, as mentioned above, went about it so poorly that two generations later they were in turn absorbed into another nation.

Note also that I DID mention tossing out the Ultra-Nationalist elements, which I expect went on probably has a lot of commonalities with what KZT described. I expect that most civilians, if today's patterns can be any metric, would have sat things out, leading to a lot less of the tit-for-tat retaliation that lead to the purges described above.

If I'm both 1/16th Blackfoot and an American hyper-nationalist, do you think they'ed let me stay? Somehow I doubt it... I'm to white. When I think about how often white poeple are called racists and the other side gets an automatic pass, because everyone knows how much more evil we white people are, especially us ultra-nationalist Republicans (I'm not saying you called anyone racist so don't go there), it kinda makes me laugh. Last time I was in Grove Oklahoma, a poor white tourist was stabbed 119 times (yes, that's right one-hundred and nineteen times, he lived though, after they removed a kidney, half his liver and several feet of intestine) because he accidently wandered into a Blackfoot bar. Somehow I don't think he'll visit Grove on vacation again. Of course, I'm so white the same would happen to me, there is a lot of racism against whites and non-full blooded indians. In fact, all the extreme racists I've met in my life were non-whites.


You mean like, computer controlled slot machines and video poker? Cha-ching.

No nationality has a corner on the racism market but one of the things that I still find amusing is that idea that the majority of Indians would agree to side with the NAN, I live fairly close to a rez and the majority of Indians are just working SOBs like the rest of us, hell, very very few know or even care about their tribal culture anymore than most other Americans care about our various tribal heritages in Europe.

And before anyone talks about death camps, well if they were actual Death Camps then how come so many "Magical Injun Braves" were able to survive and be in good enough shape to wage war?

*EDIT*

Yes, as a disclaimer let me repeat myself and say that yes, I'm well aware of the poverity and other problems that plague the rezes, but I don't think that it is relevant to the point I'm trying to make at the moment.

According to Jerry, my best friend's father, a full-blooded Blackfoot, that's mostly the ones whose elders are still holding out on the whole 'cultural purity' thing, or are, according to them, 'not in a good place for casinos' (as if there was such a thing, Jerry can't even say that with a straight face), the others all put in casinos and have the money to both force people to leave them alone and develop their culture. I agree with you though, most of them are VERY normal Americans, Jerry was a mechanic for the County Shop for 25 years, always owned 10+ cars, that he sold or traded almost weekly (he bought crap, fixed it up and sold it). One thing that has often irritated me (and Jerry) though, is that the government will pay for them to go to college, which would improve their lives, but they don't take advantage. Even if they didn't have the grades for it when they were younger, like many people I know, they could still take night classes for free if they wanted. Hell, I wish I had enough Indian blood for the government to pay for my college. My best friend (Jerry's son) is 3/4 Blackfoot and refuses to go to college, he's not stupid, he just has no ambition. That's not a frame of mind I can even begin to understand (neither can Jerry). I'm not saying it's invalid, I just don't understand it.

Well it all comes down to what you want to do with your life, me personally, I was born and raised in the oil and ranching lifestyle and if I have my way I'll die on my ranch, perferably surounded by the love of a good woman, my children, grandchildren, and many, many great-grandchildern. (What can I say, I come from a long lived family.)

So despite having the grades to qualify for scholarships when I was younger I simply didn't have an interest in going forth and forging "a better" life for myself and still wouldn't change my decision, sure having more money and more options for employment would be nice at times, but it isn't where my goals and dreams lay.

*EDIT*

Also something to note is unless something changed since the last time I checked, not all states allow the rezes to build casinos, I remember my state fighting with the local Indians on the issue several years back.