I don't mean to be rude and I'm always for a more respectful and sensitive language, but I am curious:
I recently visited the First Americans Museum in OKC. I really loved their stance on these kinds of questions, which I'll paraphrase: "Asking questions [like these] doesn't mean you're dumb or insensitive. It means you, like every part of Earth colonialism has touched, grew up in a culture of erasure. You weren't
meant to know the answers to these questions. Being curious in this way is a first step in unlearning the erasure." Something like that.
I'll offer a perspective as somebody trying to unlearn this erasure myself, and as somebody who just read a museum's worth of info on indigenous Americans. (EDIT: I have added some more specifics in a
follow-up post. Thanks, Mapi, for pointing out some oversights.)
- Why is the use of the word totem more problematic than e.g. graveyard?
A major part of many American Indian cultures (e.g. Choctaw, Chickasaw) is the belief that the "spirit" of people/animals/nature persists in the physical remains of that being. So, dress your kid up in a warm lynx-fur coat, and grant your child the "spirit" of the lynx to remain warm and also inhabit the lynx's ferocity (a real object I saw at the museum, complete with lynx-ears). Similar things were done with "tiger tails" worn at the small of the back during stickball games -- the tail's "spirit" inhabits the player when they have possession of the ball, i.e. to defend their territory like a fierce racoon or puma or w/e. These are all (afaik) "totems".
However, when the First Peoples were being genocided/erased/displaced (especially the 39 tribes that ended up in OK),
white "historians" at the Smithsonians and Ivy League museums began collecting these artifacts, believing that Native cultures were close to being wiped out. (A racist and selfish conclusion, rather than simply, y'know, helping fight for Indian rights.) They often bought these items from immiserated and impoverished people at POW camps like Fort Sill, or the open-air concentration camp of Oklahoma, at fractions of what the items were worth (like, literally $25 inflation-adjusted USD for finely crafted heirlooms) -- to say nothing of their cultural value. They said things like, "Purchasing these items does the Indian good in two ways: 1) it gives them money when they need it, and 2) purchasing their old things makes the Indian less likely to go back to their old ways" (paraphrased from MR Harrington), i.e. that this was an intentional weapon to erase Native culture.
AND THEN, the owners of those artifacts put on mock peyote ceremonies for their white friends, and played dress-up in the ceremonial clothing of still-living people, as if they were just draping their towel like the toga of a long-dead Roman.
Magic's use of "totem armor" echoes some of these latter mistreatments of a sacred Native idea. Umbra Mystic has caged a part of nature; the "spirits" of nature are clearly shown behind her; her jewelry and beads are obvious on her wrists. Other "totem armor"
arts clearly show that Magic conceives of "totems" in the Native-adjacent way of calling upon the attributes of the animal. So, calling these
totems frames Umbra Mystic (and the player themself) as another "collector" like Harrington -- we're left to presume that the Natives are off-screen, languishing on Zendikar's Fort Sill, while the colonizer protagonists of the game are collecting the Native artifacts to wage righteous war against the Eldrazi.
So, it's not that "all religious terminology = bad". It's that an American toy company (that's headquartered on seized Native land) made cards where the level-one interpretation erases the Native cultural heritage of totems.
"Graveyards," by contrast, aren't etymologically attached to any specific religion, and don't carry this colonial baggage. But I guess it's a difference of degrees: if a new card's art and rules text show "Exile target creature card from a graveyard, then
carry its skull to the University of Pennsylvania Museum to support psuedoscience about whites being biologically superior," then we're in trouble again.
- Why is the use of the word tribal more problematic than e.g. shaman or priest?
Tribal is an adjective frequently (but not exclusively) used to associate a thing with the culture and identity of a group of Native people. "Tribal law," "tribal sovereignty," "tribal culture," "treaties with the 39 tribes" -- these are very common phrases in the American West and can carry immense present-day significance, as in the recent USSC decision McGirt V Oklahoma, which reinterpreted tribal jurisdiction.
But in Magic, "tribal" is trivialized (race or class is equated with tribe), not to mention the most frequently used "tribal" cards are for "subhuman" fantasy races like Goblins and Elves and Kithkin. This can easily be construed as white-supremacist-coded.
I can imagine alternative worlds where Magic uses the same Tribal mechanic, but simply chooses to do things like "Tribal - Mardu" or "Tribal - Golgari" instead of flattening it down into "your race is your tribe -- and btw tribal cards
are exclusively nonhuman." And in that world, it's probably fine, much the same as the way Magic has treated Shaman or Priest. But that's not the world we live in. (And, btw, Shaman [a Russian-borrowed word for Turkish/Mongolian priests] and Cleric are both DND classes, and DND inspired Alpha, so Magic has never been shy about being a pulpy pastiche of European myth/fantasy. Again, a difference of degrees -- see later, too, for criticism of these tropes.)
- What is the problem with Naga being a creature type?
Confusingly, it seems that not all of these errata are for inclusion/sensitivity. In this case, I think it's simply a Hound -> Dog type of change. Snakes are more ubiquitous and better-supported mechanically. It was confusing to me, too, because it was bundled alongside the inclusion errata.
- Why can't we have the Tarkir version of Rakshasa be cats? Don't they often do their own twist on mythological creatures like gnomes being robot like?
I think this is somewhere between the extreme of "real cause for concern" and "mechanical QOL change". Rakshasa on Earth can look kinda cat-like, but aren't inherently cats. But Tarkir's demons are
sometimes not cats and
sometimes they are. So it might just be a confusion/forwards-compatibility thing (aren't we revisiting Tarkir soon?).
It seems they're operating out of an abundance of caution. ...
Who knows where they're finding these consultants or what they were hired to do.
PR disasters can really hurt WotC's bottom line (imagine if some of the flagrantly racist arts were still tournament-legal). Also worth noting, as you mention, that the PR consultants aren't really optimizing for true inclusivity; they're optimizing for enough progressive virtue signaling to please their core audience without getting the Bud Light treatment.
I'd love to hear from someone who isn't playing devil's advocate and was genuinely upset and put off the game prior to any of these changes, but I suspect those people are extremely difficult to find.
You don't need the presence of a stick for a carrot to be a reason to move, right?
I've not been oppressed in these ways, personally, but I can empathize with those hurt by the oppression that enabled these less-than-sensitive card designs in the first place. So I'm not sad to see them go, even if I know these are a far cry from actual equity/justice. Speaking of which...
Wizards baffles me. They are sensitive enough to avoid terms like witch, but not enough to do the same with the "wise Abuelo" wearing a "poncho".
Yeah. So, like, despite being overall approving of the way WotC's worked to increase inclusion, it's tempered with the knowledge that they're a for-profit capitalist behemoth. They couldn't even afford to distribute Magic worldwide if they weren't benefitting from the twin legacies of exploitation and colonialism. Hell, there wouldn't even be a "collectible card game" without the capitalist belief that everything is worth what someone will pay for it. WotC's corporate worldview (as communicated by their card designs) must justify WotC's existence as Good, and therefore, if you dig into Magic's lore deeply enough, it will
always be reactionary and shallow.
For example, there's this demonstrated sensitivity to religions like Wicca and Buddhism, while
Sanguine Sacrament and
Glorifier of Dusk are OK because "it's only depicting
Christianity as bloodsucking vampires". There's the
superhero-like morality of the Gatewatch, where the planeswalkers just function like a SWAT team and solve all their problems with policing (if they're so powerful, why didn't they restructure Ravnican society so that the Golgari didn't need to
revolt?) There's Urza, a techno-fascist. There's New Capenna, which perpetuates troubling myths about real-world organized crime, as
Rhystic Studies has eloquently argued. And so on.
So... maybe it is both. Maybe these changes to Kindred and Umbra are both real improvements
and also virtue signaling that doesn't change anything essential about WotC's exploitative business model. For me, the real challenge is how
I ought to behave, once I perceive the paradox.
