#native designers

[hiwaaranit]

I genuinely feel like I’m going insane sometimes

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

The forest king and the postwoman

[c-rberus]

waking up from surgery🩸

the memory i have of it is so vivid & i'll never forget it as long as i live - i remember slowly coming into being, huffing in and out rapidly, feeling fire on my chest and crying all at once. it felt literally like i was finally newly born, like my life before was just in gestation.

happy pride month!

[mortemilla]

odo sketches

[aisling-saoirse]

Autumn Garden, Penn State Arboretum - September 13th 2024

[lightheal]

a new ref for riet! my dearest oc who's accompanied my art journey since the start of this blog, he's my baby boy and means more than the world to me 🥺💕

[telekitnetic-art]

☕🐇 Go ahead and take a sip!! (Magnet available)

This design was a concept that I've been working on for a while now!! It's gone through a few different phases and drafts, but I think I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!! I'd like to do similar designs with other drinks too, like tea!

[jadafitch]

New England native shrub patterns, in spring and autumn. Featuring some lepidoptera species hosted by the plants, in their larval and adult forms. For a project that's been 4 years in the works… More details soon. Mountain Holly Northern Wild Raisin American Mountain Ash Shadbush with Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly Beaked Hazelnut with Luna Moth Staghorn Sumac with Spring Azure Butterfly Red-osier Dogwood with Cecropia Moth American Witch Hazel with Eastern Tent Moth Pussy Willow with Mourning Cloak Butterfly Gray Alder with Banded Tussock Moth Big-fruit Hawthorn with Viceroy Butterfly Winterberry Holly

[thewatcher0nthewall]

Sixskins

[bigoldeels]

there's a better world that's a-comin', I'll tell you why

[hiwaaranit]

When it comes to textured hair there’s many styles, here some I’ve seen at powwows. Braided locs have to be my favorite style so far 💖

(Edit)- i didn’t communicate this very well but this is a merging of cultures. Culturally/traditionally no we didn’t have cornrows/locs these are black hairstyles, and then mixed with our hairstyles because of the influence of Afro indigenous people (the two braids)💖 having two braids for some regalia is very important and so these are hairstyles I’ve seen Afro natives wear for powwows. Not saying two pigtails are just a native thing but cultural context is important

Reminder braids are not a universal hairstyle between tribes! I’m coming from the perspective of Great Plains tribes. I just thought I might share what braided hair means to my community and people. I see people trying to make ocs or redesigns of characters who are native but don’t actually represent us too good. Reminder to always research a tribe before making a character learn their protocols and at least try to learn something new! 🌸💖🍇

I just wanna say I love our hair! It means so much to us please take care of it🥺💖

[foe-paw]

BABBLE THE SPELL THAT GETS IT DONE, BABBLE IT ON COMMAND

[image description in read more]

[Image Description: a digital drawing of three white silhouettes gathered around a black book. A multi-colored glow forms the shape of a star underneath them. At each of the five points of the star, the colorful figure of a Lord in Black stands. Pokey is in blue at the bottom left, Nibbly is in pink at the top left, Blinky in purple at the top right, Tinky in yellow at the bottom right, and Wiggly stands at the top point of the star. They loom over the white silhouettes. End Description.]

[murdleandmarot]

Cats art has stalled just a tad bc of artfight (a problem I plan to remedy soon), so I just wanted to share an old Lonzo from when I was in Germany :)

[g0ldgauntlet]

Hilichurls and "Tribal" Portrayals.

While we're talking about Natlan, I also want to mention how awful it is that a section of the fandom tried to make us all out to be crazy years ago for pointing out how racist the portrayal of the Hilichurls are.

Quick content warning for mentions of slavery, colonization, genocide, and anti-Indigenous racism. (Image description is in alt text)

Hoyo used Indigenous people as references for these in-game enemies, which we literally have video proof of, provided by the company itself (Timestamp: 1:30).

The Hilichurls were constantly belittled by Teyvat's people, with an Inazuma npc likening them to demons. I remember Paimon acting like the items they collected were meaningless or pieces of junk during the earlier parts of the game.

They become a lot more sympathetic later due to their actual origins in-game (which I'm sure @phoenix-creates can confirm for me because I know you're farther ahead in Genshin than I am right now), sure, but I always found it strange that Hoyo used Indigenous cultures to portray these "monsters" who have lost their sense of selves (meanwhile their human forms are white), as if to imply that Indigenous cultures are more "wild" or "savage."

Genshin fans of color, since 2020, have pointed out the racist undertones that Teyvat's people were perpetuating against the Hilichurls due to them acting the same way that racists irl act towards non-White cultures, but they were told that they were overreacting and this was swept under the rug as a result. The very next year, it's brought up again with more people finding out about it, and we were still being told that we're overreacting.

So now that we're at Natlan, is it seriously that hard to believe that Hoyo straight up just doesn't respect Indigenous cultures? Black (and many brown) cultures too, because it's very telling that Iansan, the Natlan character with the darkest skin so far, is given a more stereotypically "tribal" look on her design with a bunch of bones used as her accessories despite that not being what her actual inspiration looks like.

(Artist for picture on the right: vieirapx on Instagram)

Sucrose has confirmed in her "Something to Share" voiceline that she collects Hilichurl bones, which is similar to colonizers taking the bones of dead Indigenous people with this added context.

Also, please read or reread the Teyvat Travel Guide Vol. 1. Alice basically confirms that she wants to enslave the Hilichurls for labor and also feed the weaker ones to the stronger ones.

That latter point is cannibalism. I know that many people are fans of Alice, but a lot of what she talks about in the first guide is why I don't like her.

Yes, it can be argued that Indigenous cultures are not the only inspiration for the Hilichurls, as it's been said that they may take inspiration from goblins, Bokoblins from the Zelda franchise, and the Amanojuku from Japanese mythology. Answer me this question, though.

Why is Hoyo capable of referencing a creature and not a human being when it comes to the Japanese inspiration for the Hilichurls, but this does not apply to the Indigenous references? It's dehumanizing, and it feels like another double-standard that needs to be addressed.

Hoyo has casually made black and brown cultures in Genshin appear to be less civilized and more "tribal" compared to our White and East Asian peers, both with the human characters and the non-human ones. Sumeru's quests and enemy npcs had multiple examples of this, with the Traveler and Jeht even destroying almost the entire Tanit tribe with the narrative justification being that, conveniently, most or all of them were selfish, bloodthirsty, and manipulative (Jeht's profile on the wiki page goes into what happened with more depth). They had to die because the tribe was dangerous - even though the main problem seems to be Babel - and Jeht's white, blonde companion needed to help save everyone from these evil, power-hungry savages.

(Sidenote: I think this is the second time overall that Hoyo has come up with an excuse to justify Traveler committing genocide on an entire group of people, with the first being the Iwakura Clan.)

I'm sure that the same thing is going to happen with Natlan's quests and npcs because Hoyo has always been weird about the portrayal of black and brown-inspired characters. The question is not whether any of the creatures or humans from specific groups are bad, suspicious, or designed to fit a specific image. We know the answer to that. The real question is why they are portrayed like this, and why it keeps happening more commonly to the black and brown cast members compared to our lighter peers.

[mindscapr]

Re-design of my tribes flag, thoughts?

Did this just for fun, and also because I thought our original flag is kind of ugly. I like the seal, but a flag shouldn’t be a seal slapped onto a rectangle, especially with just our name at the top in bold white.

CGP grey taught me better than that.

So here we are.

Explanation for everything:

The large eagle in the middle is there because eagles are very important to my tribe, messengers of prayer. We also own an eagle sanctuary for injured birds and distribute their sacred feathers.

The fire has two meanings, one for our name and role, Fire Keepers/People of the Place of the Fire, and the fire has seven points for the seven fires prophecy. (A very important part of our tribals history migrating across turtle island)

The eagle has a three pointed crest on their chest, one for each tribe in the three fires council that makes up the Nishnabe

The crest is in a circle, not just as a reference to the original seal but also for our dancing circles at powwows.

And finally the boarder is a medicine wheel for the four directions, seasons and sacred medicines.

Thank you for reading!!

[1emon-ice]

Mikusona Monday!! I tried to do a native themed one, most of my references based off of makah outfits and my own experience seeing and wearing native dance outfits!