Miniatures for First Nations/Native American Characters (Or Lack Thereof)

It was payday, and I regret nothing.

Flush with satisfaction at my earlier purchase of Cthulhu-suitable minis from Canadian company Pulp Figures, I splurged on pre-ordering sets of Huron and Iroquois warriors from Crucible Crush's Flint and Feather line. (Bob Murch is the sculptor for both.)

Needless to say, mine won't look as nice, what with my ham-handed painting.

 I also ordered the Spirit Creatures set because, what the hell. The Stone Coat Giant looks awesome.

"You hear something?"

Because Flint & Feather is a skirmish wargame, the miniatures are specifically tailored to warbands. You'll note, therefore, that while there are a couple of minis that aren't entirely martial, most of them represent warriors, and they're all male.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not really much for wargames and my main interest in miniatures is for their use in role-playing games. (Though I might try Flint & Feather at some point; the playtest rules are available for free.) And I've often thought that a game setting inspired by the history and mythology of the Iroquoian peoples of the Great Lakes Region - especially the Five (later Six) nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, or their great rivals, the nations of the Wendat (Huron) Confederacy - could be pretty great. Difficult to do right, for sure, but with tons of potential.

(Note: "Iroquoian" refers to a group of related languages, which included those spoken by the Iroquois, the Huron, and others; where "Iroquois" refers to the Haudenosaunee specifically.)

So I went looking for miniatures for various First Nations (I'm Canadian so I tend to use "First Nations" to refer to the original cultures of North America), to see what was out there. And the selection is pretty limited.

I'm going to limit myself here to miniatures. One topic I'm not going to get into in depth - at least not in this post - is how one should approach crafting a role-playing game based on another culture. Suffice to say, especially with First Nations cultures - which Canada has an appalling history of attempting to eradicate - cultural sensitivity is a must. Witness the criticisms of J.K. Rowling's rather ham-handed use of "Native American" magic in Pottermore, for instance. If your setting will have mystical powers, it's not really appropriate to place traditional cultural beliefs under the rubric of "magic". One wonders, for instance, if Rowling - not to pick on J.K. - would have included transubstantiation in the Catholic faith as Hogwarts "magic".

"Transformus Sanguinus!" (Picture: dailymail.co.uk)

That said, as a secular humanist-type chap, I tend to view all religious beliefs as, effectively, magical thinking. But that, too, is a topic for 'nother time.

Further, there's a long history of stereotypes and overgeneralization, on the one hand (there were hundreds of distinct cultures in North America prior to contact with Europeans), and erasure or invisibility, where indigenous cultures just don't appear, on the other. Finding a middle ground can be tough. And, there are precious few role-playing games that deal with First Nations-inspired cultures as anything but a sideshow, or that have First Nations-inspired protagonists. Ehdrigohr is one, a recent FATE-based system where the human cultures are all based on various real-world First Nations cultures, including those beyond the Great Lakes or Great Plains. How We Came to Live Here is another though it is, interestingly enough, not currently available because Galileo Games is revising it with the assistance of cultural consultants. New Fire (which, as part of its Kickstarter campaign, did consult with linguistic and cultural experts) presents a fantasy empire and cosmology inspired by the Aztecs, with nary a Conquistador in sight. But these are exceptions.

Point is, it's really difficult to find a game with First Nations-style cultures that isn't set post-European contact - that is, games that are actually set in settings based upon First Nations cultures and myths.  Deadlands and other Old West games often have the option of playing a member of one of the Great Plains nations, of course, and you could certainly create, say, a party of Apache warriors in such a setting. But the bulk of material is about the settler cultures and technologies, and (as in Shadowrun) the power of the Plains First Nations in Deadlands arises in reaction to the settlers' encroachment.

Which, um, brings me back to miniatures.

Depending on the setting, you'll want at least the option of female characters - either PCs or NPCs - and, one assumes, female characters that go beyond traditional female roles, just as you see in many games based on other cultures, whether the "castles and knights and, fuck I dunno, Romans and Elves and laser guns and shit" of Dungeons & Dragons, the "Japan + the rest of Asia in a blender, hit 'puree'" of Legend of the Five Rings, or the pseudo-Old West of Deadlands. And you'll probably want a range of character roles, too, not just warriors.

When I went looking online for miniatures suitable for non-martial characters - especially female ones - in an Iroquois-inspired setting, or indeed any First Nations/Native American setting, I had a lot of trouble finding, well, much of anything.


(A quick note, just to reinforce: This isn't about Crucible Crush, whose Flint & Feather line is, as I noted above, perfectly suited to the role for which it was sculpted. I am talking more generally here. And, for that matter, Bob Murch notes that he is "uncontrollably sculpting Heroes, Warriors, Shaman, medicine women and whatever else strikes my fancy", so we might see some more non-martial minis in the future from CC. Which would be awesome.)

And in an RPG setting based on the Haudenosaunee or the Wendat, this is a real issue. Because while the nations within each confederacy had strict gender divisions, both were matrilineal (families and inheritance went through the mother) and women had significant political power, including the power to appoint (or depose) chiefs. And in an RPG setting, it's open to further relax those divisions. So we'll need some female minis too. I was surprised at just how few female First Nations minis - from anyone - there were. Never mind the general lack of minis for non-warrior characters.

Beyond gender and social role, there's not a real range of cultures available, either. First Nations minis are generally of two types: Haudenosaunee and/or Wendat warriors for the Seven Years War (what Americans tend to call the "French and Indian War"), or Great Plains cultures (especially the Apache) for "Old West" lines. Flint & Feather, being set pre-contact, is an exception. Another exception is the Aztecs, for whom there seem to be more options available (see e.g.this line from Outpost Wargame Services). Again, most of  these seem mostly aimed at either the wargame or diorama hobbyist - not RPGs. And good luck finding minis that are suitable for the nations of the West Coast, like the Haida or the Kwakwaka'wakw; or more southerly cultures like the Cherokee or Navajo.

 Reaper does have a couple of nice minis, for sure; though the use of "Native American" (rather than specifying a particular culture or nation) kind of makes my teeth itch. Very specific to the Great Plains, though, and only the Shaman mini really says "Player Character" to me.

"Native American Chieftan".  (Reaper miniatures)

"Female Indian Shaman".  (Reaper miniatures)

Now the limited selection can be easily explained: As I mentioned above, there just aren't that many games where First Nations cultures are in the spotlight, so there's not much call for a broad range of First Nations characters. And as far as wargames are concerned, the bulk of attention is either the Seven Years War or the Old West. And, to top it all off, any minis (at least non-warrior types) that are suitable for an RPG like Ehdrigohr probably wouldn't then be suitable for "historical" minis, further limiting their market. The female shaman from Reaper, for instance, would be fine for Deadlands; but it's certainly not "historically accurate".

I'm not criticizing miniatures companies here (nor the gaming community or industry, either). But it is notable that in miniatures as in Hollywood, the vast majority of First Nations people are either antagonists or, possibly, allies within the broader settler, post-European contact, context. They're not protagonists, and the setting isn't theirs - they just happen to exist within it.

But all of that said, I'm certainly looking forward to receiving my impulse buy well-thought-out and entirely justifiable purchases from Crucible Crush. Especially the Stone Coat Giant.

(And if anyone - and I'm not foolin' myself that this blog gets much traffic - happens to know of any mini lines that do have a broader range of characters available, do let me know!)