Ben Madilynn
In 2018, Firaxis announced that the Cree Nation was being added to Civilization 6, a move that did not sit well with the leader of the real-world Poundmaker Cree Nation, who said the game’s portrayal of Indigenous people is “very harmful.” To help avoid that kind of misstep in the next game, the studio established a partnership with the Shawnee Nation to ensure a proper and accurate portrayal of its famous leader Tecumseh.
Firaxis was warned against adding Tecumseh to Civ 7 by academics, according to a new AP report (via Game Developer), so Civ 6 writer and historian Andrew Johnson recommended the studio reach out directly to the Shawnee tribe instead. It turns out that Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes is a big fan of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and he was enthusiastic about the proposition.
“For us, it’s really about a cultural expression of cultural hegemony,” Barnes said. “Why not us? Why not? Of course we should be in a videogame title. Of course we should see ourselves reflected in every media. So we took advantage of the opportunity to make our star shine.”
Producer Andrew Frederiksen said the result was a months-long collaboration to “make sure it’s an authentic, sincere recreation” of Shawnee culture within the game, including not just the tribe’s past but also what a Shawnee library or university might look like in the future, and how its language might evolve. “Firaxis was asking questions about language we never would have thought to ask,” Barnes said.
The Civilization games at their heart are about conquering the world, and they’ve historically played fast and loose with leaders, who typically have special abilities in line with their real-world personas but are otherwise without constraint: The most famous among them is probably Gandhi, thanks to his propensity for nuking the bejeezus out of everything that moves. But times have changed—the original Civ is more than 30 years old—and so have understandings about cultural appropriation and the importance of representation.
Firaxis ran headlong into that when it added the Cree to Civ 6. “It perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land,” Headman Milton Tootoosis said at the time. “That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and world view.
“It’s a little dangerous for a company to perpetuate that ideology that is at odds with what we know. [Poundmaker] was certainly not in the same frame of mind as the colonial powers.”
“We never realized people would take it as seriously as they do,” series creator Sid Meier told AP. “We always kind of felt, ‘Here’s a way that you can change history. Maybe we can make Stalin a good guy. But that might have been stretching things a little too far.”
As part of its deal with the Shawnee Nation, Firaxis and 2K Games are donating “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to programs and facilities aimed at preserving and revitalizing the Shawnee language, which is at risk of extinction; Tecumseh will also speak the language in Civilization 7, voiced by Shawnee actor Dillon Dean. Barnes hopes that will help spark a resurgence of interest in the language: “What I do know is that with the efforts we’re making here today, I expect Shawnee to be spoken in 2500.”
