#wherein i am THAT 'politically correct' buzzkill

[phosphorescent-naidheachd]

OK, so let’s discuss this. Or rather, part of it.

(And OP, if you see this and want to talk, I’m completely up for it. I just made this a separate post because A. I didn’t want to start Discourse(TM) on what was clearly meant to be a fun post, and B. I genuinely don’t think you meant anything by what you said. BUT... I really couldn’t let this particular popular perception of the Tuskens/Sand People* in the SW fandom go by without comment either.)

We learn very little about the Tuskens/Sand People in the films, and what little we do learn is from obviously negatively biased sources (i.e. settlers).

Almost all information we have about the Tusken people is from the EU and now considered Legends. So for the purposes of this post, we’re talking more about Legends canon than we are canon proper or the new canon EU materials.

Enjoy it though I do, the EU is inconstant and unwieldy. Only a few SW materials say that the Tuskens tortured settlers “just because they could” and because “they believed that all other sentient life was a blight on the planet”.

One thing that the EU does largely agree on, however, is that the Tuskens were on Tatooine long before any “civilized” settlers arrived from other planets.

Hmmm, what could this possibly remind you of?

The Tuskens are pretty clearly coded as “savage” indigenous people -- they’re nomadic tribal warriors who live in tents, they have less technology than the settlers (ex: gaffi sticks rather than blasters), their stories are oral rather than written, they have a “mystical” bond with certain local animals, and so on. They’re “easily frightened” and fooled, but are also shown to possess a certain brand of cunning, and frequently commit acts of seemingly random violence against settlers. 

The abduction and torture of Shmi is a classic captivity narrative, with the role of the Tuskens played by indigenous peoples (Native Americans, First Nations peoples, Bedouin, etc.) and the role of Shmi played by any innocent white woman. Captivity narratives -- which also include variations where the abductee eventually becomes part of the tribe -- were exceedingly popular in the U.S. and in Europe from the late 17th century up through the mid-20th. Sometimes these narratives were based on true events, but sometimes they weren’t... and even when they were, they generally (albeit understandably) didn’t provide a lot of context for their captors’ actions and often sensationalized everything for better sales and/or to serve a settler agenda.** 

The Tuskens are canonically dehumanized (debeingified? desentientized? language is tricky when dealing with a universe that contains sentient beings besides humans!) throughout the films and EU materials. They’re referred to as “animals” and “vicious, mindless monsters”, as well as made visually foreign -- and thus presumably frightening -- with their masks and wrappings, all of which hide any trace of who or what might be behind them. (This also, incidentally, codes the Tuskens in such a way as to play into Orientalist and Islamophobic tropes.) Whether the Tuskens are literally humans or are some form of sentient alien lifeforms -- which Legends canon suggests at multiple points -- is beside the point.

With all of this in mind, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that fandom often dehumanizes the Tuskens too (ex: “those things”), but... that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

Long story short, the Tusken people have been majorly screwed over within the Star Wars franchise both from a Doylist and a Watsonian standpoint.*** If we go by Legends canon, they were enslaved at one point in their history but survived and managed to gain their freedom, only to later have their planet “discovered” and subsequently colonized****, with its limited resources -- some of which the Tuskens held as sacred -- raided by the settlers. As if that wasn’t enough, they were studied by the colony’s Bureau of Ethnicity and Socialization (and I don’t know about you, but that name sets off a lot of alarm bells in my mind) and betrayed by settlers who had pretended to be their allies. With this kind of a history, is it any wonder that the Tuskens are, to quote the Wookiepedia article, “extremely xenophobic & territorial of their native resources”?

I’m not saying that every piece of fanfiction set on Tatooine needs to deconstruct the treatment of the Tuskens or delve into their society and motivations, but it would be nice if fandom as a whole was slightly more aware of the tropes that they’re evoking when they uncritically accept and repeat what Star Wars -- both canon and Legends -- tells us about the Tuskens.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

*I use the term Tusken(s) throughout this response instead of Sand People partially because that’s the term OP used, but also because Sand People sounds way too close to some real life derogatory terms for desert peoples. That said, if we go by Legends, the Sand People seem to call themselves the equivalent of “Sand People” in their own tongue, while “Tusken Raiders” is a term that came into use for them (by settlers) after their raid on Fort Tusken. YMMV for which terminology you prefer to use for them; neither is exactly ideal from both a real life and in-universe perspective, so I’ve erred on the side of respecting real life peoples over fictional ones in this instance. That said, if I ever write fic that includes Tusken characters and/or culture, I’ll probably have them use the term Sand People, if that makes any sense? Once again, I make no judgments on whichever term you prefer to use. For all I know, my own opinions on this subject may shift over time! 

According to Wookiepedia, “specialists studying the past of the Tusken Raiders” also used the term “Ghorfa” for the Tuskens, but #1. Very few people in the fandom would have any idea who I was talking about if I used this term, and #2. this brings us back to the alarm bells that went off for me the moment I heard the phrase “Bureau of Ethnicity and Socialization.” Once again, YMMV.

**This isn’t to say that Native Americans, First Nations, or Bedouin never acted as oppressors themselves -- life isn’t as straightforward as that, and these are very broad terms that encompass a wide variety of different peoples who had very different relationships with outsiders and fell and rose in power at different points in their respective histories -- but for the sake of this post, we’re talking about their relations with white settlers and about racist Western (European) captivity narratives, which certainly don’t make any such distinctions. I’m not wording this as clearly as I’d like, but I hope you take my meaning?

***Star Wars does occasionally show glimmers of realization of the unfortunate implications of this kind of in-text treatment of the Tuskens. Probably the closest the series ever comes to addressing it is in John Jackson Miller’s novel Kenobi (and to a lesser degree in the Dark Horse Star Wars: Republic comics).

****According to Star Wars Propaganda (which is a part of the new canon EU), 

“With eyes toward expansion into the uncharted reaches of the Outer Rim, the traditions of the Core became passé. Opportunity beckoned from beyond the borders of the Mid Rim worlds. The congested planets of the interior were saturated with messages of promise lying outward, a reversal from long-held notions that Coruscant represented the icon of advancement. Republic wordsmiths and artists collaborated to create a sense of civic duty, of manifest destiny, and of deep obligation to spread the Republic banner from Rim to Rim.

For the well-settled and wealthy elite of the galaxy’s most crowded centers, such notions were quaint but uninspiring. It was the citizens of the Inner Rim, those who had been crowded out of opportunity in the Core, who answered the call for new life in the frontier of the Outer Rim.”

Here’s an image from the book that strongly evokes those Manifest Destiny vibes:

[A poster that bears the words “The OUTER RIM. Begin Again In A Golden Land of Opportunity! Republic incentives for the brave and hardy! New colonies and adventures await!” The poster depicts two humanoid figures -- presumably a man and a woman -- standing under a canyon arch on a desert planet. Two suns are visible in the wide sky in front of them.]

#a week and half later i FINALLY post this #wherein i am THAT 'politically correct' buzzkill #sorry... but also not sorry #tatooine #tuskens #sand people #ghorfa #star wars meta #sw meta #fantastic racism #critical analysis is always relevant #meta #star wars #things done by phos #long post #torture #dead mother #death #murder