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pikapeppa · 9 months

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Alright, why wouldn't Hekarro wanna use Carja glyphs as the Tenakth writing system? The Phincian alphabet is the basis for most of the writing systems in Western Europe - if you got a writing system that works, why not adapt it?

I'M FINALLY ANSWERING THIS ASK TWO MONTHS LATER 😂

For anyone who's curious, the context for this was a post I made a while back in response to an ask regarding whether the Quen might be able to read Chinese, since the Focuses they would have found in the Great Delta would plausibly have been formatted in Chinese. In the tags on the post, I remarked that I had a rant about Hekarro wanting to borrow the Carja writing system. Everbright has asked me to elaborate, and now I'll finally be writing the essay that's been sitting at the back of my mind for like a year LOL.

My thesis here is as follows: it's not the idea of the Tenakth borrowing the Carja writing system that bothers me, necessarily. I take umbrage with the fact that Hekarro seems to think the Tenakth are inferior to the Carja because they aren't a literate society.

This post is going to get long, so I will put the rest behind a cut to give anyone a break who wants to scroll on past LOL. Also, please note: trigger/content warning for mentions of residential schools in Canada.

First things first: I'm writing this as a non-indigenous Canadian, so I may be writing with biases of my own that I will apologize for in advance. If any members of the cultural groups I'm going to mention should read this and take issue with anything I've said, please do feel free to write me a message here on Tumblr!

Okay, let me set the context here. When Aloy first meets Hekarro, a piece of their conversation is as follows, with the transcript to follow:

Aloy: I’m sorry about Fashav. He seemed like a good man. Hekarro: More than a man. A bridge between Tenakth and Carja. No outlander ever earned our respect as he did. I had hoped he would be my voice in Meridian. That peace with the Carja might become something more. A: An alliance? H: An exchange. The Carja have much we lack. Our deeds are written in ink upon our bodies. Our memories die with our flesh. But the Carja never forget. Their deeds are written in book and scroll. A: You wanted to learn from them? H: As I learned from Fashav. He will be missed.

This conversational exchange has always bothered me, because inherent in this exchange is the idea that Hekarro views the Tenakth as being lacking compared to the Carja -- that the Carja are superior to the Tenakth because of the fact that they're able to read and write, rather than tattooing their history on their skin. This statement reflects a bias that feels very 'colonizer' to me in an icky way. Being a literate society does not inherently make you superior to a society that doesn't use writing, but that exact idea has been used tons of times in history to argue that the indigenous cultures of a place are less advanced/less intelligent/less valuable than the people who are coming in and trying to force their ideals, including literacy, on the indigenous group(s). In the context of Canada, for instance, Kirmayer et al. (2009) wrote that "aboriginal peoples were viewed as incapable of understanding and participating in democratic government, thereby motivating efforts to 'civilize' and assimilate them into mainstream Canadian society," with that mainstreaming process including residential schools: institutions that took indigenous children from their families and communities and placed them into segregated spaces where they were forbidden from speaking their native languages, practicing their traditional customs, and from contacting their families at all.

This is especially irksome to me because the Tenakth tradition of tattooing (or "ink", as they call it in-game), is based on tattooing traditions IRL with an extremely rich historical and cultural background. The most obvious similarity is to Polynesian tattoo (or "tatau") practices, which I'll focus on here, but similar methods with equally rich histories exist in the Philippines and in Japan.

One of the most striking things about Polynesian tatau practices is that it's not just the act of striking ink into the skin that matters; it's the meaning behind the act of getting a tattoo, and the embracing of community and identity inherent in the practice. As one Samoan tatau artist said, "it's important to know the meaning behind the symbols of our traditional tatau so you have a deeper understanding of the significance of what you're wearing. Each 'maman' or each pattern has its own meaning and story behind it." Polynesian artists also highlight the fact that these traditions are passed through the generations for thousands of years, and that those who wear tatau are "wearing the maps of our ancestors." As another artist said, Polynesian tatau is "a reconnection to all my ancestors and everybody behind me, because I'm not only speaking for me, but a whole generation of kids that are like me, that are getting Polynesian tattoos to reconnect."

Tenakth tattoos, like Polynesian tattoos, are a way of recording history and lore -- not only one's own stories and victories, but those of the people that are important to a warrior, as evidenced by Kotallo stating that he plans to ink Varl's deeds on his own skin in tribute. I also personally think that it's culturally fitting for the Tenakth to record important history on their bodies, since the Tenakth place such emphasis on physical strength. It makes logical sense that they would record their proudest deeds on the thing that they view with such pride, i.e. their physical bodies. Hekarro's statement that the Tenakth are "lacking" because they don't record their history "in book and scroll" feels like a devaluation of the Tenakth's culturally-specific method of recording history, much in the way that colonizing societies have devalued the oral traditions of North American indigenous groups. Oral traditions are an extremely important aspect of many indigenous cultures; a group that provides indigenous culture training has stated that "certain stories are never written down, which preserves the tradition of sharing knowledge, culture, and history orally. These stories are the fabric of the community’s history, knowledge and culture, and some are thousands of years old. In some cultures, if a story is written down it is degraded." By ignoring this rich tradition and imposing written records of those stories, they would be degraded and rendered less than what they're meant to be.

Now, some of you might be asking whether it was an oversight/mistake on the part of the Guerrilla Game writers that Hekarro made this accidentally-denigrating comment toward his own tribe. Honestly, I do think it was an oversight, and one that I find disturbing, because it seems to stem from a blind spot that GG isn't aware of. This isn't the only time that content coming from the Horizon world seems to follow this 'colonizer'-like idea of certain societies being more advanced and superior to others. In the concept art book for Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance, there's a description of the Carja as follows (p. 47), transcript below:

[Transcript: Among all the tribes of Horizon Zero Dawn, the Carja Sundom boasts the most advanced culture. Using the advantages of their geographical position, the Carja have developed agriculture and trade while other tribes still rely on hunting and gathering. The Carja's impregnable capital, Meridian, provides security for a civilized population. Artisans and traders flourish here, serving sophisticated, well-to-do citizens. Carja civilization towers over the other tribes, just as the Sun of their religion rises above the horizon of their mesa valley.]

Even worse, there’s this passage from p. 48, where the non-Carja tribes are called “primitive”.Transcript below:

[Transcript: Through ages of perfecting the techniques of machine plate-working, the Carja have developed the most sophisticated way: to apply the materials of mechanical fauna. While more primitive tribes would roughly affix more or less useful machine parts on their garments, Meridian artisans interweave fine fitted machine elements into comfortable and functional pieces.]

Quotes like this make me worry that there are people at GG who aren't recognizing their own bias inherent in the description of the Carja compared to other tribes. There seems to be a lack of awareness here about the dangerous underpinnings of seeing one culture as more "advanced" than another just because it is more dominant or mainstream. As Shaw (2001) states, "in not according recognition, let alone respect, to the distinctive linguistic and cultural identities that have shaped First Nations peoples, the majority culture continues to exert a significantly negative influence on identity, on self-esteem, on pride in one's cultural heritage, and on one's sense of self and of place in the broader society."

To summarize to some degree: I don't have a problem per se with the Tenakth borrowing the Carja writing system. My qualms come from the idea that the idea of the Carja being superior will come along with that borrowing, thereby devaluing the rich tradition of Tenakth tattoos. As Hale (1992) states, "while it is good and commendable to record and document fading traditions, and in some cases this is absolutely necessary to avert total loss of cultural wealth, the greater goal must be that of safeguarding diversity in the world of people. For that is the circumstance in which diverse and interesting intellectual traditions can grow."

TLDR: Tenakth tattoos are just as valid and important a method of recording lore and history as Carja writing, and the Tenakth are not inferior or primitive for not having a tradition of reading/writing. I think Hekarro's comment about the Tenakth being "lacking" is reflective of a blind spot at GG that I hope will be addressed in future games.

If you came this far, THANK YOU FOR READING and accept this cookie as thanks for staying with me! 🍪😂 A friendly final note: do be warned that any replies or comments to the effect of "but literate societies ARE inherently better than illiterate ones" will be removed and the writers of such comments may be blocked, depending on their intentions as I read them. 🥰

-- love from your friendly neighbourhood Pika xoxo

#i'm sorry my references are quite old #i dug up my notes and references from a class I took almost 10 years ago #horizon forbidden west #hfw #hekarro #chief hekarro #tenakth #carja #tw: residential schools #i'm sorry so many of my references are old #i dug them out my notes from a class I took almost 10 years ago #I KNEW THAT HOARDING MY STUFF WOULD COME IN HANDY SOMEDAY 😂😂😂#horizon critical #hfw critical

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