#yeah i think your best best is just keeping them Quileute but also discarding the racist shit Smeyer wrote

[neechees]

Hey! I have some questions that i would like to get an indigenous persons perspective on though I'm not sure how much I can fit in an ask. But basically it pertains to me wanting to write twilight fanfic but being vastly uncomfortable with how the Quileute are depicted, their culture & history misused, appropriated etc etc. Personally i would prefer to just like...make up a fake tribe? And do my research on what to avoid. But I want to know if that's like a big no-no, or if there's a different way you think I could go about it. Or if you know anyone who mayhaps could if you don't? I don't want to just use & rehash that Bullshit S.M. did. So yeah, thoughts/advice/etc? TIA, if you don't feel like answering no worries!

Personally, I think that's a big no-no & a lot of other Natives would also probably say the same. I think it's a rather lazy solution & cop out for writing, because people often assume "what I write & worldbuild for this group can't be racist because they don't exist and I don't have to worry about appropriating beliefs, research, or writing inaccurate information about a specific tribe because I made them up". Inventing fictional tribes & inserting them into the real world (or stories that are close to irl & our world) is super duper iffy for me, & the only time it doesn't make me feel weird is for like fantasy worlds. It kinda reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Lisa decides to write an essay on the plight of Native Americans, but instead of writing about any actual tribe & their issues, she just makes one up. & obviously people can use this in gross ways, like brushing off any criticism of possible racism as "its fictional so it doesn't matter" while also still potentially acceptinf praise for writing a fictional tribe sympathetically or even at all.

I find that people just inventing tribes doesn't even dodge being offensive anyway, because they either STILL end up writing something racist (because of lack of effort and research or failing to recognize how their worldbuilding may be offensive despite being fictional, staring at YOU GRRM writing Dothraki), or it's just weird how they COULD have represented an actual tribe & clearly spent a lot of time in research, & the effort (& resources available) might even have been easier just focusing on an actual tribe & writing THAT accurately, but they just. Didn't.

A similar thing happened irl in different medias as well, where the character Night Wolf in Mortal Kombat was originally a stereotyped character with (afaik) no specified tribe, but over the years the games decided to build upon him more & make him less offensive, such as making him specifically Lakota & having his character designs, spiritual beliefs, dialogue, motivations, and backstory reflect this. Except later they retconned this & changed his heritage to a fictional tribe called the "Matoka", even though they literally didn't need to, & they were headed in the right direction. Mortal Kombat has also established there's people and characters from OUR world or the "normal" world and not just AU Earth (like Rambo), so they literally didn't need to do this under the reasoning that Mortal Kombat already has its own fictional world and universe. I think they did this, again, so they wouldn't have to put in effort in making sure their writing of his backstory and character in the future was accurate & inoffensive to Lakota people.

The exact same thing happened with the Native characters in Red Dead Redemption 2; the Native characters in the first game are largely either enemies you have to kill, or the Noble savage that you help out, with no specified tribe(s) & a stereotyped "Indian" look. But in the sequel, they made up the fictional tribe "Wapiti" (the word itself actually being a Shawnee word), who speak the Lakota language & largely seem to be heavily Lakota coded. Some people might disagree with me on this one because the Wapiti aren't the only ones who get this treatment in rdr: for the most part the rest of the world is also like an alternate universe for the United States, with places like Saint Denis being analogous for New Orleans, Sisika penitentiary being based on Louisiana state penitentiary, and so on. But there's also mentions & incorporations of real life places & ethnicities that are the exact same too, like the island of Tahiti, Cuba, and Ireland. So if we acknowledge there's the Native Tahiti population, and Irish characters from Ireland like Sean MacGuire, then why not also just say the Wapiti are Lakota? If they wanted to make the Native characters more sympathetic & accurate to rectify the wrongs of the first game (which I think they largely did!), and they even went so far as to have their Wapiti characters speak Lakota in-game, based most of their culture and looks on the Lakota, then why not just make them Lakota?

But even if you mean well, I feel like the lore and location of Twilight is too tied up with the Quileute to just try and change it to a completely different tribe, and would be erasing them in order to just dodge potential offensiveness. The Quileute are Native to Forks, Washington & that's THEIR land, not a fictional tribe. Stephanie straight up stole the Quileute mythology as a main plot point for her characters and worldbuilding, so you'd still be using Quileute beliefs but applying it to a fictional tribe (just like with the Night Wolf & Wapiti situation) anyway. If you intend on doing a lot of research in order to try make this not offensive, I'd say it'd be even more worth the effort to just research Quileute history etc because you'd essentially be putting in the same amount of effort in anyway. Like, there's already an established tribe, why not just use it? I'd say do what Stephanie Meyer SHOULD have done and just portrayed the Quileute respectfully with research & Native sensitivity readers instead of taking what is seen as the "easy" way out.