Virtual Powwow was a living museum in Second Life, proposed as a final project in Bernie Dodge’s graduate-level Exploratory Learning through Simulation and Games class. By recreating a powwow, the simulation visualized an environment hosted by Native Americans where students could experience Native American culture and dance.
Although not exactly roleplaying, Virtual Powwow and living museums in Second Life offer a starting point for future discussions of the educational uses of historical roleplaying in virtual worlds. It may also bring together the seemingly disparate topics of this blog, including Wild West and Native American roleplaying in Second Life, visualizing history, and educational roleplaying games. The powwow itself can be contextualized within two pertinent discussions: the shifting of knowledge from experts to amateurs, and innovation vs imitation.
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As previously mentioned, Native American roleplaying in Second Life is a very popular. In order to understand the Sigil Tribe, I’m exploring active Native American RP sims. Last night I visited La Tribu for the first time, a French-speaking Native American roleplaying sim. (Some background: I don’t speak French, so the entire time I was toggling Altavista Babelfish translating what was being said and responding. Thankfully I’ve found an in-world translation HUD that should make this much easier.) Although my French was embarrassing and my computer froze, deleting the chat logs I hoped to archive, I found a level of sophistication in the sim that’s alluring.
When teleporting to the sim, I was given a free visitor’s outfit that’s meant to historicize my character with appropriate clothing. This is a common practice in historical roleplaying sims – however there’s a social stigma associated with this clothing, it instantly identifies you as a newbie. (In a similar vein – in Sigil one of the first things I had to do was purchase a virtual horse. It was a status symbol that, once I had one, allowed me to speak to others more freely.) With tacky pants and paw print tattoos on my chest I explored.
My initial impression of La Tribu (from what I could gather with my limited comprehension of French) was that it has very rigid gender roles. My guide frequently described the activities of virtual natives in terms of gender – men do this, women do that. A first hand account from a citizen historian confirms my reactions by writing:
We are standing on top of a small hill, where a little cascade of waterfalls runs into a few, deep blue pools. This place is for women only. “Men are only allowed up here if the women invite them.” Women are not oppressed in this small French speaking tribe I’ve been invited to visit. They each have their own teepees, with which they are free to do whatever they wish. The teepees are loosely arranged in the vicinity of the common campfire, around which household chores are performed.
I have to brush up on my French, but I hope to explore this further in the near future
The most recent addition to the Sigil Archive introduces Native American roleplaying in Second Life, specifically the Sigil Tribe. There are several Native American roleplaying tribes in Second Life, including one that speaks entirely in French. I’ve uploaded a set of guidelines, as well as tribe rules that were used by the Sigil Tribe. Here’s an interesting snippet from one of the documents:
The Whites. We don’t like them. But we arn’t savages and out of control either. Whites are good for trade and weapons so we have to keep a balance to get guns and supplies. One thing though is we believe in a life for a life and this could be an issue is someone from the tribe gets themselves killed in town. Any Armed Whites coming into our lands is fair game and most likely won’t survive an encounter unless they choose to leave naked and humble. White woman often were playthings for single braves and found their womanhood a bit battered from the encounter but rarely were they killed. Children often were adopted if their parents were dead and made full members of the tribe so no mistreatment of our adopted children. All soldiors entering our lands are killed outright unless there is a treaty made. They travel in groups so once again for safty sakes don’t ever travil alone. Alone and armed is a fast way to die. Don’t expect the white men to talk first if you’re armed. Don’t go into town armed, an armed Indian is fair game in town. Going unarmed means you’re there to trade in peace.
Note: Any grammatical or spelling errors haven’t been changed from the original documents.
