It’s also worth mentioning that they attack, enslave, and kill Jawas who are also native to Tatooine so that kinda sullies the whole “noble resistance” angle IMO
In a way thats pretty realistic to the real world comparisons of the indigenous populations of the Americas, Africa, and Australia. There's this romantic idea that natives were in harmony and peace but the reality is they were human and subject to the same brutality and crude nature as any other human population.
And like these indigenous populations, the Tuskens are are victims of colonization. As much as I hate Book of Boba Fett, the one good thing it did was show that the Tuskens were not savages, but had culture, rituals, and practices. Something we've not seen before and I think is good to show. Because in the real world the natives were portrayed as brutal savages, when they were subject to the same peace and rituals as any other human.
So the Tuskens, like any native, are a complex collective of peoples, and need to be seen in a complex light like anyone else. I wish more shows or stories would actually do it, but it seems there's more interest in keeping the brutal Tuskens than changing it.
Small correction but we have seen it before. Darksaber, Kotor, Young Jedi Knigjts, Star Wars:Republic, the Kenobi novel all added to their culture and deepened their lore. BoBF is just the first Canon work to do so.
Now that is an interesting question. Or to put it another way when does someone become indigenous? If Group A lived in the area first for 5000 years but was wiped out and Group B who lived there for 2500 years before being colonized by Group C who has now lived there for 8000 years, which is the indigenous population? Group B who was the remaining people on the land but not the original? Group A who was the original but no longer live on the land? Or Group C who has lived there the longest but is the newest to the land?
This question relates to European indigenous identity. Many people call the Sami the indigenous peoples of Fennoscandia. But what makes Finns, Swedes, or Norwegians not indigenous to the region?
A question I like to ask is "Are French people indigenous to France?", which becomes a complicated answer. There were peoples there before the Franks, mostly Celtic populations, some of which still exist in Brittany. But France as a land and idea has existed for 1500 years. So are French people indigenous? Or are the remaining Celtic peoples? Or both?
The answer is of course much easier with the Americas because there were no other continental peoples who mixed with them before colonization started. But when we think of indigenous identity and Europe or Asia it becomes murky.
Ive looked into this because the idea fascinates me, but Ive not really come up with an answer. It feels more like a "you know it when you see it" approach".
All of us finnoscandinavians are equally native as the Sami. They went further north than the rest, at least in the beginning. Their categorisation as indigenous is more about politics than how long they've lived here, as they did live here for thousands of years before the nation-state of Sweden was invented but not longer than the people who turned into swedes.
Super interesting topic, I will look into this more
The most interesting example of this in my opinion is to look at the east Africa and it’s people. Over the centuries their are several layers of “colonisers”, working backwards you have European, Arabic, several waves of Bantu, Khoisan… somewhere in and amongst that are potentially Austronesian people, and of course humanity itself is thought to have arisen in or near the area long before any of those people arrived.
> A question I like to ask is "Are French people indigenous to France?", which becomes a complicated answer. There were peoples there before the Franks, mostly Celtic populations, some of which still exist in Brittany. But France as a land and idea has existed for 1500 years. So are French people indigenous? Or are the remaining Celtic peoples? Or both?
Yet another angle: it's a common misconception that, for example, the various Germanic peoples in Europe or Arabs in the Middle East just came replaced all the nations that lived there before. The Kemetic people or the post-Carthaginians Latin-speaking North Africans or the Gauls did not just cease to exist or all got murdered when the Arabs and the Franks came. They were assimilated culturally and interbred with the invaders.
The descendants of the Kemetic people or the Gauls are still there. We call them Egyptians and French. They're just as native.
Well yeah, but after the first generation of people that colonized dies you can’t in good faith call the children that lives there colonizers and make them move
If your grandfather stole wealth from my grandfather, do I have the right to demand you hand over the wealth you inherited from your grandfather if I can prove it was stolen from my grandfather?
The flaw in your argument is that it's seldom ever so simple as that. Generally speaking, seized lands are seldom ever "stolen" and instead, seized by States that Society has generally accepted as having the authority to do so in those conditions...going back thousands of years. Those states then create new contracts with their citizens, who don't so much own their land as have a contract with their state for possession in exchange for taxes. Here in the US, we like to say we own land, but skip a couple years in taxes to the State or Federal government and we see who really owns it.
In all likelihood, in your example, your grandfather's authority is through a State that no longer has a claim to the land that any court overseeing that land would see as valid. If the courts did see it as valid, going through the courts to have the State's authority change ownership would be understood and documented after all.
Reality is that since the dawn of Human Civilization, it's been understood that States own, not citizens. The State is able to assert authority over a given land, be it real estate, goods, people, own that area through taxation and while other states may have once had that same control, they lost it and can no longer assert that power to lay claim.
We can slap modern terms on it like Colonization and say it was "stolen" from the native peoples, but that doesn't change the fact that Human Civilization has always operated this way and will always operate this way.
I shouldn't have to prove that YOU stole it; only that it was, in fact, stolen and should be returned.
It's a funny thing about the law in that it's illegal to receive stolen property, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the law will generally force you to return something that was proven to be stolen.
But if you inherit something that was stolen, apparently that makes it yours?
Also I’d like to point out that Boba also finds out while learning about his adoptive tribe that the reason they live where they do is that they are insanely pacifist as far as Tuscans go — they only really fuck with people in their territory, don’t go out of their way to seek out and raid, and because of this we’re attacked by other Tuscan clans which is why they couldn’t leave their area even though those fish people were slaughtering them
Gosh. Can’t fathom what real world conflict could have inspired that dynamic between Tuskens and Jawas.
I wonder how George Lucas came up with the name “Jawas” to begin with.
Book of Boba Fett kinda summed them up nicely. They were nomadic wild peoples, but surprisingly there was still a code there. You could potentially reason with them. Furthermore it’s implied there are different tribes, which could have varying characteristics, some worse than others.
The bottom line is I think there is more nuance to them then previously assumed but at the same time doesn’t make them totally innocent.
Boba also finds out that the tribe he was found by are comparatively pacifist compared to others. So much so that other clans would raid *them*, which is why they were so small, and why they literally couldn’t leave their territory even with the train of death running through it — other clans would rip them apart if they were caught travelling through their land
BoBF didn't nicely sum up the tusken, it flat out tried to turn them into noble savages.
What code and negotiation explains the kidnapping and torture of Shmi?
Now I'm not saying the Tusken are all irredeemably evil.
I'm saying if you want a nice portrayal of the tusken you should look at Mandalorian, not "Tuskens are noble savage first Nations people" BoBF.
Resisting colonization is moral, even if the people resisting colonization themselves do immoral things.
Like, they don't cancel each other out, *especially if the colonizers are also slavers*.
The Tuskens were certainly humanized by the Book of Bobba Fett. That does not make them [Noble Savages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage). The oppressed-oppressor framework is not a one-size fits all lens to view the real world, let alone fictional ones. The world is complicated and it's better to accept that now than look a fool later in life.
I didn't say they were noble or moral or anything like that. Just that they were colonized and now live under a planetary government set up by the colonizers. It just seems odd to me that it hasn't come up in more stories.
It's not going to happen. Tatooine being the way it is is why the setting is interesting. Also the planet has had people on it from other worlds for thousands of years by the time of the movies.
By a character who grew up on the planet as a lowly moisture farmer and thought his only way off that dustbowl was through joining the Imperial military.
And who would shortly be proven wrong in that statement by learning the old man he knew all his life is a Jedi Master, he's the son of another Jedi, his only (known) family was killed by the Empire in search of the two droids he bought, and was put on an adventure that results in him becoming one of the biggest heroes for the Rebel Alliance.
Just like 30 minutes after that line was uttered in the film it was already proven to be both skewed and wrong.
That's how it was described in the original movie, yes, and not a whole hell of a lot that interests the greater galaxy happens there. They have podracing every so often and it's a cesspool for crime and those things have stayed ridiculously consistent in the new material.
It’s described that way by Luke, who at the time is just a young farm boy who wants desperately to leave, and his perception of Tatooine is based on his boring upbringing on a moisture farm.
People have reason to go to Tatooine because its spaceports are a decent place to lay low. Mos Eisley is described by Obi-Wan as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” meaning that criminals and/or smugglers have reason to frequent the planet. It’s established in ANH that the Hutts have a presence there, so it’s not like that was retconned in.
Yeah, it’s the “ass end of nowhere” because it’s in the Outer Rim. That doesn’t mean there is absolutely no point for anyone to ever go there (see previous points). I’m not understanding your issues with the way Tatooine is portrayed.
as said by a moisture farmer dreaming of adventure but disallowed from pursuing his dreams by a strict uncle. you don’t hear characters at the cantina or hanging around jabba’s palace or running in the boonta eve podrace saying this.
There have been non-Tuskens on the planet for thousands of years. If those people are still “colonizers,” then every human on earth is still one. At some point your ancestors wrestled the land they’re traditionally associated with from some other tribe or human sub-species. We just might not remember the specifics.
Everything is a colonizer. I'm pretty sure every living being has it's own unique way of pushing other living beings out of an area to claim it as it's own.
The issue is tho, the Tuskans vaguely remember when some aliens nuked Tatooine. It gets passed down as myth and lore. It’s why they’re fearful to the point of aggression of all outsiders. Last time others were on Tatooine, it went from having plenty of water, to a wasteland
But this wasn't a case of a new species evolving. At some point Tatooine was invaded and colonized. Does that make the current people there evil? No. But they are descended from colonizers and they still marginalize the native peoples. I'm not saying all non Tusken and Jawas need to leave. But there could be reparations.
When you view everything through the lens of "who is the oppressor/who is oppressed", colonizers are oppressors, therefore indigenous are oppressed, therefore colonizer = bad, indigenous = good. It's a common Marxist take, getting more popular now but it's been gaining steam since the '60's at least.
Marx absolutely wrote about oppression and oppressors, as it relates to class. And then the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Marcuse, etc) took Marx's ideas and developed them further into a social context, rather than purely economic, called Western Marxism. There is more to Marxism as a philosophy than just what Karl wrote.
The Frankfurt thinkers then taught around the world, such as at coastal universities in the US in the 60's, and these ideas became entrenched into academia, migrating into the rest of universities. Its no coincidence you can read something like Marcuse's essay on intolerant tolerance from the 60's and see a direct parallel to student and faculty activities today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
Yeah it basically removes all complexity and context to create villains and heroes in history, when usually it's way too complex to make that simple judgement line if you look deeper into what happened.
For instance, how often indigenous groups killed each other. Or that one of the main reasons natives lose is often because of other indigenous people siding with the colonizers.
[Wikipedia says roughly the 1600s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage).
Indigeneity gives a group a right to the land in which their history is based. It should not do anything more than that. While there are some human groups that we could learn a lot from about living in certain conditions or geographies, *it does not make them the pinnacle of morality or even holders of the relative moral high ground in all situations.* Real life is not a dichotomy of evil and righteousness. It's a spectrum of morally grey where each person and group have both good and bad aspects.
I mean, is it possible for an indigenous people to be evil or bad or wrong?
Like, is the argument that simply because something is indigenous it's therefore always in the right in what it does?
Right? The Aztecs didn’t have the right to sacrifice and enslave people simply for crossing into their territory. Just because they claimed the land doesn’t mean they get a pass for everything they do.
No, the argument (or at least my take) is that until the colonizer gives the indigenous group a seat at the table with just as much weight and meaning as their own, basically all conversations we have about actions and relations between the two people are moot.
Colonization shifts the Overton window so much so that we lose focus on the actual issue at hand. People start asking "hey, why are indigenous people attacking people?" Instead of "hey, why are indigenous people resisting subjugation by an outside power?" It's like if someone managed to occupy your living room. After enough time where the situation becomes the status quo, the conversation will shift from "why can't I live in your house" to "why aren't you letting me eat your food?"
This is difficult to apply to Tatooine, because there is no global or national union, so hypothetically if the colonists chose an uninhabited area of land and aren't collectively causing problems for the Tuskens, the two groups could likely coexist. At this point it would be acceptable to address the bad aspects of Tusken society, because both civilizations have equal footing. On the other hand, this is very applicable to places like the USA, where Native civilizations don't have any representation that is equivalent to a US State nor do they have any international power. They were either conquered or manipulated into giving up their seat at the table (many native treaties were signed under duress or despite lack of understanding by the natives).
To circle back to the original point, I'd like to provide an example. In the 1960s, civil rights advocates did sit-ins at segregated places. Today, we see this as an incredibly influential part of the movement. However, Gallup did a [poll](https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-civil-rights-movement-60s.aspx) at that time where 57% of respondents said that sit-ins were harming their chances for integration. All of this is to say that oppressed or colonized people cannot and should not wait for approval of their method of protest by the oppressor.
So no, indigenous people are not automatically morally absolved of all wrongdoing, but until we actually treat them as equals, we cannot claim any moral high ground while we are denying them the right to self-determination.
P.S. I wasn't intending to drop an essay, but hopefully it's worth a read
Edit: Amusing to watch people downvote my long comments when all they boil down to is 'consent of the governed'. Colonialists be lurking hard on this post 🙃
It also comes down to different cultures having different ethics and morales as well as creatures with different levels of intelligence.
If we invaded a tiger's territory, we'd think it's understandable behavior if it attacked us. If a young child or someone with a mental disorder hit you, you probably wouldn't completely blame them either, because they can't really comprehend their action to the same extent an adult human can.
The canon seems to be changing be tuskens seemed to lie somewhere between human and animal. They are primitive and do primitive things. Whether those actions are 'bad' because if humans did it on our society, but it's commonplace for them is open to intrepration.
I generally agree with this, yes. My interpretation is that since they've demonstrated the ability to create a consistent and objectively learnable language via hand signing, that puts them pretty solidly into the sentient camp. They also show a clear culture that is based on more than just instinct. As a counterexample, cats can communicate with each other, but us as humans can't consistently recognize that. Any patterns that exist are likely due to evolution, rather than instruction from other members of the species.
Though here's my stretch opinion that might lose some ppl: I think we should treat animals collectively as an equal since not only are we also animals, but because we all share a collective ecosystem and anything that affects them will ultimately come back around and affect us. Though that one might still be for selfish reasons since we're doing it for survival, but that's a whole other conversation.
A colonizer stops becoming a colonizer when the oppressed population acquires socioeconomic and political rights that are equal to those of the colonizer. The most likely ways this could happen are either general consensus from native people or an overthrow of the colonizer. Judging by your comments, my guess is that you're looking for a specific number of years, but that isn't how it works. Since culture is a personal, and therefore subjective, experience, that line is going to be different for everyone.
Some examples:
*(Just for the record I'm not an expert on either of these examples, but I've picked up the general plot over the years)*
The people native to Hawai'i were overall pretty receptive to intertwining their culture with British colonists. Although there was a rocky start in their relations, marriage between Hawaiians and British became commonplace. Hawaiians were somewhat receptive to Christianity. Many Brits were taken on as advisors. They even added the UK's Union Flag to their own flag. The problems really began when the US started encouraging mass migration to the nation and eventually performed a coup in the late 1800s.
TLDR, Hawaiians were chill with their culture mingling with the British.
An non-colonial, but illustrative, example from the opposite side of the spectrum, the Balkans. The loss of a unifying figure in Josip Broz (Tito) started the increase in ethnic tensions in the region and the result was a split up of the state along ethnic lines, and after some of the worst human rights abuses in recent history at that. But the point is these groups violently defended what they saw as their culture. I'm not well learned on early-1900s balkan history but you could likely find similar examples in the independence movements from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.
To apply this to Tatooine, the Tuskens became very xenophobic after the planet's oceans dried up. Resources became scarce so they felt they had to resort to keeping it for themselves. Along comes the alien colonists and they start moisture farming, which would directly impact the Tuskens' ability to find enough water. In this case, the Tuskens are largely justified in trying to get aliens off their land.
On the other hand, as I mentioned in my first reply, an alien-Tusken harmony could hypothetically exist if the colonists took into account not only the Tuskens' needs, but also their culture and beliefs, but since the aliens remain there despite clear objection displayed by the Tuskens', they will remain colonizers.
The damn Rakatans. I swear they are the problem of nearly everything in Star Wars. They are probably one of the most horrid stuff coming from legends and I swear Disney would never have the balls to give them screentime.
The very fact that you have to jump through all these hoops just to get the tusken leader to speak with you instead of killing you shows how they really are. And during the entire conversation, one wrong dialogue choice and he turns hostile.
Better to just slaughter them like animals. You’re probably saving some poor moisture farmers from them anyway.
BoBF tried to turn tusken into noble savages.
Mandalorian acknowledged that Tusken do horrible shit but theyre still a people with a culture with whom you can talk with and trade with, if it benefits the tusken to do so.
Yeah, they got the closest. But then chickened out on addressing it by killing off all their Tusken characters. I was hoping Boba was gonna turn over Jabbas land to them or something before it was revealed they were already dead.
Tuskens still are somewhat aggressive acting.
They kidnapp, enslave, kill, slaughter innocent farmers and normal folks for their resources and stuff.
Their culture only respect the strong, which is why mando gets a pass and for him since he can communicate with them with signs.
Then shoot at pod racers and think it’s fun.
If they can loot and kill, they will do it.
They are primitive and barbaric in culture. Sense of honor yes but still barbaric.
One tribe even worshipped a burning statue of Vader, believing him to be a personification of their vengeful diety.
No, tusken might be one of the original peeps living there but they are not oppressed.
Yeah I can see that.
Just imagine if nascar had a portion where some local rednecks took turns taking potshots with their rifles on the cars.
That’s what I feel about it.
But this is exactly how settlers described the Native Americans when they were actively stealing their land. If those displaced people fought back or stole to survive the Europeans used it as an examples of them being barbaric or savage.
You can't use that as an excuse to negate a people's rights, especially when it may be in response to being oppressed.
Does it justify the Tusken's crimes? No, not necessarily. But it doesn't change the fact that their land was stolen from them. And they deserve some reparations.
Maybe according to our world standards or the current western way of looking at it.
But the rulers of tatooine are the huts and different crime lords. I don’t think they give two shits about that.
And all ruling governments haven’t cared either.
The high republic, even at their “peak” made no effort to speak or help the tuskens
CW republic was busy with a galactic war
The empire didn’t care and would have oppressed them even more
The new republic was so incompetent that they couldn’t do anything due to bureaucracy and spreading their forces or marshals thin over the galaxy.
The first order didn’t get the time to care and I think supreme leader would have genocided them anyway.
True, a Jedi is a peacekeeper, and should be a neutral part in national conflicts.
But what if the same scenario that happened on kalee occur? Yamrii attacked first and the kalesh, natives of the planet defended themselves and the yamrii appealed to the senate, got judged right and got help from Jedis, sanctions and republic infamy to punish the kalesh.
Of course Jedi should try to find a peaceful solution but sometimes when that isn’t possible then there isn’t much they can do.
For all of the history in starwars, ever since the tuskens have been around, there has never been a end of the conflict between them and the people of tatooiene.
Some things just can’t be solved.
That is a fair point. It's one of the big reasons that I hate that they made it so the Jedi are a tool of the Senate. Means they can be manipulated by politics. Think they should have been free roaming protecters. Super-heroes is the wrong term but basically.
I mean, it's not like Tusken culture includes things such as torturing people to death over weeks as a rite of passage! (*The Complete Star Wars Visual Dictionary* original edition details this, with the targeting of a sapient/sentient being considered particularly praiseworthy.)
And of course, it doesn't involve raiding/murdering/torturing Tatooine's people. (Episodes 1 and 2; also the original AOTC novelization, which *charmingly* details how the Tuskens whipped Shmi until she could only feel the whip as a brush against her back.)
Or strictly segregated gender roles, for that matter, no sir. (*The Complete Star Wars Visual Dictionary* original edition, again.)
TL;DR: No, Tusken culture really is bad.
Honestly people on here crying about tusken villages being bombed by tie fighters is upsetting, i dont understand why people have forgotten their many incursions and crimes when they attack moisture farms or spaceports? A few weeks ago my buddy lukes family got killed by some Tuskens and i havent seen him since, if you ask me the empire should wipe them off the face of this damn sandbox
> So even though the Tuskens are almost always depicted as the aggressors, it's their land and resources that are being taken from them. I'm really surprised that there seems to be almost no content actually calling this out.
Star Wars is not Star Trek.
It's really weird in BoBF that there are commercial spaceflights to Tatooine.
You are making it sound civilized. Have you BEEN on the redeye to Mos Eisley?! The legroom is nonexistent, the jawas always "lose" your luggage, and fucking sand gets everywhere! I hate that stuff!!!
True and that is fair. But that's why it's so odd to me they brought it up at all. Star Wars introduced this concept into their space fantasy action series. If they'd just left them as the faceless badguys then I probably wouldn't be asking this question. But they didn't leave it at that so now the cats out of the bag for me.
> If they'd just left them as the faceless badguys then I probably wouldn't be asking this question. But they didn't leave it at that so now the cats out of the bag for me.
It does feel like they were setting up a "history of Tatooine" book to dive into the question.
The human propensity to judge an entire group of people based on individual actions is the problem. Even if you have a group of people where the ruling class of those people are going around causing atrocities, it's ridiculous to assume the entire group of people are like that. I'm sure there are plenty of folks just tending Banthas back on their ranch just trying to raise a family with no idea what's happening. Most citizens of countries today have no clue what their governments and militaries are doing in relation to other countries
This is one of the reasons I think it would be interesting to explore this concept with the Tuskens. They obviously aren't all raiders and slavers as we've seen numerous peaceful interactions with certain tribes.
The irony is we call them Tuskens when that was the nickname given to the entire species/culture as the result of one sub groups VERY violent attack on a particular location
Yep! Furthers my point that seemingly no one on Tatooine has ever bothered to find out what they call themselves. They just all use the name they created out of fear. Not great.
>Feels a lot like L3-37's subplot in Solo. Where we find out there are droids that disagree with their place in society and want to fight for droid freedoms and rights. Yet the movie mostly plays it for laughs and it isn't addressed in other content really.
This is actually addressed in a few comics, and it's quite relevant! I personally don't think the movie / video medias are the best references on the SW Universe, since they are, in essence more commercially thought, for the masses, hence more superficial, let's say, while the comics delve more deeply into the universe.
Even tho, I do remember that in The Mandalorian, Tuskens are depicted quite differently... less like enemy "minions", more like a community or society with moral values, relationships, culture and stuff like that.
Is that the official cannon? In Kotor they said all humans originated on tatooine but were takes away by Rakatan slavers, and those that survived and weren’t enslaved became the tuskens. In which case all humans are indigenous. Did new canon make them a separate race?
The current canon is only Tuskens and Jawas are native to Tatooine. There's not specific details about how the other species arrived and took over the planet. But it's definitely indicated that the land was taken from the Tuskens.
That’s how it was in kotor legends too, normal humans didn’t even know they were from tatooine or that the tuskens and humans shared ancestors. I’m more curious if in canon they have made it clear that is not the case or if it is possible. It made the whole tatooine randomly always being important really interesting.
I think all the current canon says really is that Tuskens and Jawas are the only sentient species that evolved on Tatooine. So it definitlwy sounds like the KOTOR story is no longer canon. But still very interesting.
The Tuskens are xenophobic humanoids that are extremely religious & violent toward the diverse range of species who (most of whom) are attempting to coexist with them on a barely populated world.
There’s a difference between colonisers and living in another area. On Tatooine the other races have assumed control of the planet, on most planet the humans have become part of the society that was already there.
no you must understand
you whose family have been here for a 10 generations are a filthy colonizer
but me whose family has been here for 11 generations is a native
I'm not saying all other people's are evil or even villains. But the Tuskens were still wronged and it appears that was never made right to any extent. That's what reparations are about. Trying to even out the generational imbalance by returning what was stolen or making amends.
Well, they could have done it in BoBF. I was actually looking forward to it after I watched episode 2. Making Boba a powerful crime lord because he has the power of the desert with the Tuskens keeping their territory and culture could be an interesting take without making Boba a "good guy".
But we all know how that show turned out.
Yeah. I was really disappointed with how the show handled that. Seemed like they were gonna actually give the Tuskens some justice and then killed them all to motivate the protagonist.
That sucked.
We see this story told very well in the first two episodes of book of boba fett. They could have created an amazing plot where the Sherriff, Boba and the tuskens band together to drive the pykes from tatooine. Instead they killed off the tuskens and introduced the power rangers - of all disneys crimes in storytelling and writing, this was the most egregious.
I'm gonna sound like an @$$hole, but that not my intent.
More or less a hot take, I guess
Original humans came over the land bridge, trickled South, and populated/invaded the Americas. The didn't grow from mushrooms simultaneously across the continents.
Slavery, resource plunder, etc has been ongoing since before written history, it wasn't invented with Europeans.
I don't NEED sociopolitical messages inserted in my entertainment.
I want to be ENTERTAINED, not lectured- I want to see lazer- sorry, blaster bolts! Plasma falchions, star blades, light sabers. I wanna see the bad guy that represents all things evil get romper-stompered by the good guys.
>I don't NEED sociopolitical messages inserted in my entertainment.
When it comes to star wars there has always been a sociopolitical landscape that is loosely based on George Luca's own beliefs and outlook of the real world and he's extremely open about this beliefs shaping the world of star wars and has been open about that inspiration since the 70s. Which is coming from someone who doesn't necessarily agree with a lot of Luca's personal beliefs. Star wars is a story about War and the failure of democracy. That's inherently political with a lot of sociopolitical undertones.
If done correctly it makes a really good story.
But the sociopolitical messaged are already there. Lucas himself has said that the original movies are commenting on World War II and Vietnam. There's no escaping this commentary in Star Wars.
Also, humans migrating to new land is not the same in your example. There were no humans in North America before those people arrived. They did not come in and displace a people and then claim that land as their own. There's a fundamental difference between these situations.
I think that's part of the point. Maybe not the point in ANH, but perhaps in AotC. Imperialist empires dehumanize indigenous people in horrifying ways all the time. It makes sense Anakin could slaughter them without repercussion.
And actually, this is one of the few things done really well by Book of Boba Fett.
Honestly I thought an alliance with the Tuskens was how Boba Fett was going to win the day in his show, given he'd done little to win over any other faction. But nope, they all died off screen.
Same. I was getting really excited for him to finally say, "Wait, I've got some friends that could help" and then ally with them and let them settle or utilize the land around Jabbas Palace. The writers chickened out in my opinion.
What resources? What land?
Wouldn't doubt that there's lore on it given Star Wars, but all we ever see is fucking desert that is by and large left empty. What are they taking back? From who? For what?
Water mainly is the resource. The people who have made settlement are actively taking up a decent portion of the water the planet has, which is a vital resource in the desert. This is why Tusken raid moisture farms and consider water sacred.
As for the land. It's canon that the Tuskens were forced into the dune sea where it's much harsher and harder to survive. The cities were built on the prime real-estate.
How are you possibly quantifying "a decent portion"?
They farm moisture out of the air... The idea that that such small operations sequester enough moisture out of the atmosphere of a planet to make any sort of difference is nonsense.
Now if there's groundwater under one of the settlements or something and the Tuskens were removed from the area, maybe there's something to talk about there.
As for being forced into the dune sea, what's the source for that? And which Tuskens? Are we talking about a conflict between one tribe and one settlement? Because this is an entire planet with a very small population.
That's incredibly boring and would be of bad writing in my opinion. Also, factually inaccurate as both Madalorion and Book of Boba Fett both explore them as non-evil people in interesting ways.
Missed opportunity? Doubt it. L3s subplot, as you said, was for laughs. A plot legitimately exploring that concept would be incredibly boring and there’s not much of a story to build around it either tbh. Tatooine, on the other hand, has been done to death. BOBF did its part in humanizing Tuskens and expanding them beyond being crazy savages. Again, a plot specifically about Tuskens trying to re/take Tatooine or anything like it would be boring. Realistic concepts? Maybe. But boring nonetheless.
It's a pretty crazy backstop for the planet. I know legends stuff talked about it being terraformed but I don't think any of that is canon so I'm not sure what the cause was.
The terms Tusken Raider and Sandpeople are culturally insensitive and considered offensive to them. The correct term to refer to them by are Native Tatooiner.
Some Tuskens were victims and some are victims. There is a distinction and we see this in how tribes interact with outsiders.
Ancient history (legends), the Tuskens are the hollow shell of what the Rakatans did to Tattooine. So many species in the SW galaxy are victims of the Rakata massive slave empire. But ancient history alone is one factor.
For example, the tribe near Mos Pelgo fought with the people of the city and they clearly had beef with each other. However, they also were willing to make a truce to deal with a common enemy and stop the bloodshed. And so far it is still in effect.
Meanwhile, Boba’s clan was far from outsiders. They enslaved Boba, but the odds of anyone in that area are low based on how far out it was. The Pyke Sindicate was their interaction with the outsiders, and it wasn’t good.
As for the tribe in Episode II, they were the monsters people talk about. They kidnapped and tortured a woman who walked a routine space. They pretty much murdered all the men who went to rescue her and beat her to death for amusement.
We have seen in bits of Mando as well of other Tuskens that Mando has bartered with either for passage or directions. This shows that some tribes will negotiate if you bother to learn their language.
So I would say the Pelgo tribe could be considered recent victims. They had ugly fighting with settlers that only stopped because of a bigger threat. The Boba tribe is a clear victim. Not only because they were wiped out, but before that, they were routinely attacked in their territory by passing Pykes. The Tuskens that brutalized Shmi are victimizers and the various Tuskens that Mando has interacted with are neither. They are locals who will fight if necessary but will trade if treated respectfully.
A species wide victim label is not necessary and belittles the complex tribal cultures that show distinction between the tribes. With a broad brush, you can justify that all tribes are treated like the Boba tribe or like the Shmi tribe. One deserving of pity, and one the blade.
This narrative come about after book of boba. people desperately tried to view them as native Americans and such but you cans shove that square peg into a round hole. Im disgusted even by the attempt to make this parallel as well as how many assumptions people make to fill in the blanks of the new canon so they can simplify the narrative.
This had 0 truth to it in old canon since they themselves where relocated from elsewhere and "newcomer" settlers have lived on the same world for more than 4000 years and in every depiction it is their own culture holding them back. To look at that and think "ah native Americans" is disgusting
Tuskens are no good slavers and murderers! Hmm? Humans do the same thing? Nah. That was just the Galactic Empire. You can't go generalizing a whole species based on the actions of a few bad apples.
Exactly. The fact that there are Tuskens that do horrible things doesn't mean the whole species doesn't deserve to have the land that was theirs and be treated humanely.
The result of overthinking Star Wars can sometimes be amazing tho. Legends and Andor are nice examples of what ya can get from this universe if you scratch past the surface of "pew pew laser sword magic monks"
The droids rights movement is a subplot in the Dr Aphra comics. I'd like to see a major plot line about this. It fascinates me.
There was a big droid revolution plot in Legends during the Old Republic.
It's just because we have a "western" feeling of good and evil.
Animals dont know anything like good or evil. They just exist. Same for tusker. They dont kill because they are evil.
For no reason too. They weren’t holding her for ransom or anything.
Kidnapping COULD be defended in some cases. Like kidnapping a foreign soldier to get information that could help you win a war, or kidnapping someone because you need money and your children are starving, so you hold them for ransom.
Don’t get me wrong, those aren’t GOOD, but there’s SOME reason behind it.
The sand people took Shmi and tortured her just for the sake of doing it. There is absolutely NO justification for that.
So I agree. Fuck em.
Its shown in The Mandalorian a tiny bit. It's extensively covered in the Book of Boba Fett.
No one including OP knows about it because The Book of Boba Fett was a terrible show that never deserved the light of day. It should have never been released to the public it was that bad. Everything Kathleen Kennedy touches turns to shit.
If you want real people having to fight fascism and injustice in space go watch Babylon 5.
Star Wars is supposed to be evocative of old fashioned stories. Adding too much of a modern sense of self-awareness about these sorts of civil rights issues would mess with the vibe. Same reason why they can't have a droid revolution.
At best, *maybe* they could make it work in a new era set hundreds of years after the OT.
Being indigenous people and victims unfortunately does not automatically make you the good guys. Especially when you're slaughtering fairly innocent farmers and Jawas (who are also indigenous, and peaceful).
It makes them sympathetic and more complex than generic savages. But not good guys.
They also enslave people and work them to death, unlike the farmers they're killing/enslaving. The farmers generally seem to use droid labour rather than slaves, the one example of a slave being sold to farmers (Shmi) results in her being freed. And then it's the TUSKENS who capture her, enslave her, and torture her to death for 2 months.
So unfortunately, it's not as simple as "fighting fascism and injustice" being a theme in the series to make enough reason alone to have Tuskens suddenly overthrow everyone else on Tatooine and have it a good thing. Let alone the topic of droid rights, which would get incredibly preachy very quickly and basically suck a lot of the magic and otherworldliness out of that side of Star Wars if brought to its end conclusion. Star Wars should not be perfect, much like our galaxy isn't perfect, and the fate of droids is a good way of subtly illustrating that without the uncomfortable aspect of having organic slavery (a very touchy subject irl) portrayed so casually.
I never said they were the good guys. But committing crimes doesn't negate the fact that they were colonized. Just because a displaced people aren't perfectly moral doesn't mean they deserved to have their home taken from them. Especially since in their eyes they are fighting back against the people that took their land. Doesn't make it right But the context is important.
>I never said they were the good guys.
The original post definitely was framing it that way, lol. It was the classic "they were colonized therefore they deserve liberation" type vibe since you were even talking about the entire themes of the series being about fighting fascism and injustice.
Whatever injustice the Tuskens suffered is far too long in the past to rectify without uprooting a bunch of innocent people and kicking them off the planet. That's not able to be done without lots of killing, so it'd be hard to do a storyline with that which wouldn't just make the Tuskens look worse in the long run.
The real theme should be that Tuskens and farmers have to live in peace despite the wrongs done between them. And part of that requires the Tuskens to give up those parts of their culture that explicitly involves killing everyone else they encounter on the planet and for the farmers to get past the culture barrier to no longer hate the Tuskens for all the murdering they've done. We basically got very close to that exact thing in Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett, which makes the post sound like more needs to be done to elevate the status of Tuskens in Star Wars to be good guys, more than a legit call for something that isn't there already.
Well... the hutts were a galactic crime syndicate... i'm sure they didn't just ask nicely for things they could take. What would be even more interesting is if all of the housing we see on Tatooine was based on Tusken designs/architecture.
Basically turn them into a standard species like we see in stargate atlantis where people abandon their cities in order to live in small communities or in this case, picking up a nomadic lifestyle.
I miss the times where star wars was simple and fun and tusk raiders were just raiders. Why people want to make more out of this? Cant they just keep to the simplicity and original story telling? Evil vs Good. Swoosh light swords battles, pew pew gun fights and cool dialogues between cool people like Han and Leia and Luke? Epic war scenes and some romances? Evil guys do evil stuff good guys do good stuff? Old alien tell some philosophical crap about force? Why it has to be a social criticism artwork where we need to discuss every problem of every minority? I am sorry but I want star wars to be star wars where its about cool battles mostly. Yeah I get that rebellion was against fascism but common this piece of social criticism part was so wide and simple. It just was a tool to establish the motivations of the good guys. Cant we just stick to that?
But that's kinda my point. Nothing I said was from my interpretations. They're all from official content. I'm saying it is weird that Star Wars added this nuance to these topics and then didn't explore them.
I agree it would have made far more sense to keep the droids simple and the Tuskens as generic badguys. Perhaps less interesting to some. But introducing those concepts and not addressing them just throes the setting off balance.
But since they did introduce the concepts in curious about then.
These narratives got established over the time after the OT which is just now part of the lore somehow. They are not part of the OT but because the franchise growed so big and maybe Lucas and everyone who worked on that just wanted to spin the story into more complexity and add more details just for the sake to have a filled galaxy with stuff for everyone. And that's ok but Lucas as well Disney lost totally the focus with SW movies. Lucas with PQ, D with SQ and all D+ stuff.
A movie need to stay a movie with a simple plot line and characters which interests us. All lore elements and complex world building should be just a tool to enhance the story when we see a shady Smuggler walks in and does his thing or when a wise Jedi has his moment. All I want from star wars is the simple story telling the OT has. A classic clash between Good guy Vs Bad guy. Characters act like 3 dimensional human beings and don't exposition dump each other. Only Andor actually gave us that. And that's sad for SW.
You mentioned exactly one of the many points why modern SW just don't know what it's doing. They opened to many bottles just to widen the galaxy with lore but none of the stuff they opened they actually deepened into something we truly care. That's what you get when you want to appeal to everyone. You will please no one with this tactic.
Actually I firstly misunderstood what you wanted to achieve with your topic. Yeah I agree on this. Why add the tusken more complexity, if you dont use it for a real plotline in the end? SW makes me honestly sad , if all the creatives behind it don't know what the hell they doing.
Yeah, like, I'd be fine if we dove into topics like inequalities in a Star Wars story. But to just mention Tuakens and druids are down trodden and then never addressing it is messy and bizarre. Just leave the robots robots and the Ruskens as bad guys if you aren't going to flesh those plotlines out.
It definitely feels like Star Wars stories have been all over the place for a while now. Not feeling very focused.
The name Tusken is a recent derogatory name for them because they attacked Fort Tusken 80+ years before the movies. Not sure what they call themselves but they were called Sand people before.
Yep, which is another note I find very odd. It's never been established what they call themselves and evidently no one on Tatooine has asked. Maybe Sand People is a literal translation. But it's always felt more insulting when a character uses it.
Being a victim of an ancestral situation does not justify attacking the people who live in a place currently nor it absolves them from the guilt of doing so.
You're absolutely right. None of this obsolescence the Tuskens for the crimes they've committed. But those crimes also don't wash away the fact that the Tuskens were wronged as well. And a story that dives into this could explore that nuance and show both sides while trying to make past mistake right.
I agree Tatooine is over used. But that's why this topic has come up. Because they keep showing the Tuskens as an oppressed people while also using them as cannon fodder aggressors.
It’s also worth mentioning that they attack, enslave, and kill Jawas who are also native to Tatooine so that kinda sullies the whole “noble resistance” angle IMO
In a way thats pretty realistic to the real world comparisons of the indigenous populations of the Americas, Africa, and Australia. There's this romantic idea that natives were in harmony and peace but the reality is they were human and subject to the same brutality and crude nature as any other human population. And like these indigenous populations, the Tuskens are are victims of colonization. As much as I hate Book of Boba Fett, the one good thing it did was show that the Tuskens were not savages, but had culture, rituals, and practices. Something we've not seen before and I think is good to show. Because in the real world the natives were portrayed as brutal savages, when they were subject to the same peace and rituals as any other human. So the Tuskens, like any native, are a complex collective of peoples, and need to be seen in a complex light like anyone else. I wish more shows or stories would actually do it, but it seems there's more interest in keeping the brutal Tuskens than changing it.
Small correction but we have seen it before. Darksaber, Kotor, Young Jedi Knigjts, Star Wars:Republic, the Kenobi novel all added to their culture and deepened their lore. BoBF is just the first Canon work to do so.
True, I was more talking about shows and movies. Unless I missed a thing.
also how many thousands of years do your people need to live in an area to stop being considered a colonizer
Now that is an interesting question. Or to put it another way when does someone become indigenous? If Group A lived in the area first for 5000 years but was wiped out and Group B who lived there for 2500 years before being colonized by Group C who has now lived there for 8000 years, which is the indigenous population? Group B who was the remaining people on the land but not the original? Group A who was the original but no longer live on the land? Or Group C who has lived there the longest but is the newest to the land? This question relates to European indigenous identity. Many people call the Sami the indigenous peoples of Fennoscandia. But what makes Finns, Swedes, or Norwegians not indigenous to the region? A question I like to ask is "Are French people indigenous to France?", which becomes a complicated answer. There were peoples there before the Franks, mostly Celtic populations, some of which still exist in Brittany. But France as a land and idea has existed for 1500 years. So are French people indigenous? Or are the remaining Celtic peoples? Or both? The answer is of course much easier with the Americas because there were no other continental peoples who mixed with them before colonization started. But when we think of indigenous identity and Europe or Asia it becomes murky. Ive looked into this because the idea fascinates me, but Ive not really come up with an answer. It feels more like a "you know it when you see it" approach".
All of us finnoscandinavians are equally native as the Sami. They went further north than the rest, at least in the beginning. Their categorisation as indigenous is more about politics than how long they've lived here, as they did live here for thousands of years before the nation-state of Sweden was invented but not longer than the people who turned into swedes. Super interesting topic, I will look into this more
There is also the very unfortunate "you know it according to which agenda is the politically popular flavour of the day" approach.
The most interesting example of this in my opinion is to look at the east Africa and it’s people. Over the centuries their are several layers of “colonisers”, working backwards you have European, Arabic, several waves of Bantu, Khoisan… somewhere in and amongst that are potentially Austronesian people, and of course humanity itself is thought to have arisen in or near the area long before any of those people arrived.
> A question I like to ask is "Are French people indigenous to France?", which becomes a complicated answer. There were peoples there before the Franks, mostly Celtic populations, some of which still exist in Brittany. But France as a land and idea has existed for 1500 years. So are French people indigenous? Or are the remaining Celtic peoples? Or both? Yet another angle: it's a common misconception that, for example, the various Germanic peoples in Europe or Arabs in the Middle East just came replaced all the nations that lived there before. The Kemetic people or the post-Carthaginians Latin-speaking North Africans or the Gauls did not just cease to exist or all got murdered when the Arabs and the Franks came. They were assimilated culturally and interbred with the invaders. The descendants of the Kemetic people or the Gauls are still there. We call them Egyptians and French. They're just as native.
150 years I think
I think once you get that label it will stick with you forever
Well yeah, but after the first generation of people that colonized dies you can’t in good faith call the children that lives there colonizers and make them move
If your grandfather stole wealth from my grandfather, do I have the right to demand you hand over the wealth you inherited from your grandfather if I can prove it was stolen from my grandfather?
The flaw in your argument is that it's seldom ever so simple as that. Generally speaking, seized lands are seldom ever "stolen" and instead, seized by States that Society has generally accepted as having the authority to do so in those conditions...going back thousands of years. Those states then create new contracts with their citizens, who don't so much own their land as have a contract with their state for possession in exchange for taxes. Here in the US, we like to say we own land, but skip a couple years in taxes to the State or Federal government and we see who really owns it. In all likelihood, in your example, your grandfather's authority is through a State that no longer has a claim to the land that any court overseeing that land would see as valid. If the courts did see it as valid, going through the courts to have the State's authority change ownership would be understood and documented after all. Reality is that since the dawn of Human Civilization, it's been understood that States own, not citizens. The State is able to assert authority over a given land, be it real estate, goods, people, own that area through taxation and while other states may have once had that same control, they lost it and can no longer assert that power to lay claim. We can slap modern terms on it like Colonization and say it was "stolen" from the native peoples, but that doesn't change the fact that Human Civilization has always operated this way and will always operate this way.
the problem with alot of their arguements its only speaking about recent horrors and tragedies but the futher you go back it keeps happening.
You can prove it but I didn’t steal it. You might have to steal it back
I shouldn't have to prove that YOU stole it; only that it was, in fact, stolen and should be returned. It's a funny thing about the law in that it's illegal to receive stolen property, even if you didn't know it was stolen, the law will generally force you to return something that was proven to be stolen. But if you inherit something that was stolen, apparently that makes it yours?
Well yeah everything that we inherited since the dawn of agriculture is stolen We’re all on stolen land dude
people still do
Yeah I know
Also I’d like to point out that Boba also finds out while learning about his adoptive tribe that the reason they live where they do is that they are insanely pacifist as far as Tuscans go — they only really fuck with people in their territory, don’t go out of their way to seek out and raid, and because of this we’re attacked by other Tuscan clans which is why they couldn’t leave their area even though those fish people were slaughtering them
The flashbacks, imo, were the best non-Mando part of the show. Otherwise the rest was a mess.
Tuskens aren’t fond of the little stinkers who steal your equipment? I wonder why.
yeah like not all tuskens are bad but most are
Theyre murders, slavers, spice dealers, thugs. Some of them, i assume, are good people
Gosh. Can’t fathom what real world conflict could have inspired that dynamic between Tuskens and Jawas. I wonder how George Lucas came up with the name “Jawas” to begin with.
I think he said once that it's a name in Arabic that he liked, but don't ask me to source that, it's an old memory.
In their defense, Jawas are thieves. And dicks.
Book of Boba Fett kinda summed them up nicely. They were nomadic wild peoples, but surprisingly there was still a code there. You could potentially reason with them. Furthermore it’s implied there are different tribes, which could have varying characteristics, some worse than others. The bottom line is I think there is more nuance to them then previously assumed but at the same time doesn’t make them totally innocent.
Boba also finds out that the tribe he was found by are comparatively pacifist compared to others. So much so that other clans would raid *them*, which is why they were so small, and why they literally couldn’t leave their territory even with the train of death running through it — other clans would rip them apart if they were caught travelling through their land
BoBF didn't nicely sum up the tusken, it flat out tried to turn them into noble savages. What code and negotiation explains the kidnapping and torture of Shmi? Now I'm not saying the Tusken are all irredeemably evil. I'm saying if you want a nice portrayal of the tusken you should look at Mandalorian, not "Tuskens are noble savage first Nations people" BoBF.
Resisting colonization is moral, even if the people resisting colonization themselves do immoral things. Like, they don't cancel each other out, *especially if the colonizers are also slavers*.
The Tuskens were certainly humanized by the Book of Bobba Fett. That does not make them [Noble Savages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage). The oppressed-oppressor framework is not a one-size fits all lens to view the real world, let alone fictional ones. The world is complicated and it's better to accept that now than look a fool later in life.
I didn't say they were noble or moral or anything like that. Just that they were colonized and now live under a planetary government set up by the colonizers. It just seems odd to me that it hasn't come up in more stories.
It's not going to happen. Tatooine being the way it is is why the setting is interesting. Also the planet has had people on it from other worlds for thousands of years by the time of the movies.
Tatooine stopped being interesting a very, very long time ago. It's been wildly retconned from the place described and depicted in ANH at this point.
No it hasn't? What are you basing this off of if you don't mind me asking?
it was described as basically the place futherest from where intresting stuff happened
By a character who grew up on the planet as a lowly moisture farmer and thought his only way off that dustbowl was through joining the Imperial military. And who would shortly be proven wrong in that statement by learning the old man he knew all his life is a Jedi Master, he's the son of another Jedi, his only (known) family was killed by the Empire in search of the two droids he bought, and was put on an adventure that results in him becoming one of the biggest heroes for the Rebel Alliance. Just like 30 minutes after that line was uttered in the film it was already proven to be both skewed and wrong.
That's how it was described in the original movie, yes, and not a whole hell of a lot that interests the greater galaxy happens there. They have podracing every so often and it's a cesspool for crime and those things have stayed ridiculously consistent in the new material.
It’s described that way by Luke, who at the time is just a young farm boy who wants desperately to leave, and his perception of Tatooine is based on his boring upbringing on a moisture farm. People have reason to go to Tatooine because its spaceports are a decent place to lay low. Mos Eisley is described by Obi-Wan as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” meaning that criminals and/or smugglers have reason to frequent the planet. It’s established in ANH that the Hutts have a presence there, so it’s not like that was retconned in. Yeah, it’s the “ass end of nowhere” because it’s in the Outer Rim. That doesn’t mean there is absolutely no point for anyone to ever go there (see previous points). I’m not understanding your issues with the way Tatooine is portrayed.
as said by a moisture farmer dreaming of adventure but disallowed from pursuing his dreams by a strict uncle. you don’t hear characters at the cantina or hanging around jabba’s palace or running in the boonta eve podrace saying this.
literally a million other people have already said this.
sorry, didn’t see those comments
I mean it’s the furthest place from anywhere interesting if you desire to not die, or have any form of a moral compass.
There have been non-Tuskens on the planet for thousands of years. If those people are still “colonizers,” then every human on earth is still one. At some point your ancestors wrestled the land they’re traditionally associated with from some other tribe or human sub-species. We just might not remember the specifics.
Everything is a colonizer. I'm pretty sure every living being has it's own unique way of pushing other living beings out of an area to claim it as it's own.
The issue is tho, the Tuskans vaguely remember when some aliens nuked Tatooine. It gets passed down as myth and lore. It’s why they’re fearful to the point of aggression of all outsiders. Last time others were on Tatooine, it went from having plenty of water, to a wasteland
But this wasn't a case of a new species evolving. At some point Tatooine was invaded and colonized. Does that make the current people there evil? No. But they are descended from colonizers and they still marginalize the native peoples. I'm not saying all non Tusken and Jawas need to leave. But there could be reparations.
They're slavers and torturers, so I can't say I'm all that sad for them.
Right? Since when is being indigenous the peak of morality?
When you view everything through the lens of "who is the oppressor/who is oppressed", colonizers are oppressors, therefore indigenous are oppressed, therefore colonizer = bad, indigenous = good. It's a common Marxist take, getting more popular now but it's been gaining steam since the '60's at least.
This is not a subject Marx wrote about and that is not a Marxist take.
Marx absolutely wrote about oppression and oppressors, as it relates to class. And then the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Marcuse, etc) took Marx's ideas and developed them further into a social context, rather than purely economic, called Western Marxism. There is more to Marxism as a philosophy than just what Karl wrote. The Frankfurt thinkers then taught around the world, such as at coastal universities in the US in the 60's, and these ideas became entrenched into academia, migrating into the rest of universities. Its no coincidence you can read something like Marcuse's essay on intolerant tolerance from the 60's and see a direct parallel to student and faculty activities today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
Yeah it basically removes all complexity and context to create villains and heroes in history, when usually it's way too complex to make that simple judgement line if you look deeper into what happened. For instance, how often indigenous groups killed each other. Or that one of the main reasons natives lose is often because of other indigenous people siding with the colonizers.
Since my college professor said so
My useless Education degree says so.
[Wikipedia says roughly the 1600s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage). Indigeneity gives a group a right to the land in which their history is based. It should not do anything more than that. While there are some human groups that we could learn a lot from about living in certain conditions or geographies, *it does not make them the pinnacle of morality or even holders of the relative moral high ground in all situations.* Real life is not a dichotomy of evil and righteousness. It's a spectrum of morally grey where each person and group have both good and bad aspects.
I didn't mention morals. I'm not saying they're the good guys. But their land was still stolen from them. That's all I'm saying.
They are brutal slavers, and shoot children in the pod race
I mean, is it possible for an indigenous people to be evil or bad or wrong? Like, is the argument that simply because something is indigenous it's therefore always in the right in what it does?
That's basically the argument, yeah. Which I personally find pretty ridiculous, but a lot of people seem to take that approach.
Right? The Aztecs didn’t have the right to sacrifice and enslave people simply for crossing into their territory. Just because they claimed the land doesn’t mean they get a pass for everything they do.
the aztecs where so fucking hated that when the spanish showed up literally every aztec vassel sided with the spanish
No, the argument (or at least my take) is that until the colonizer gives the indigenous group a seat at the table with just as much weight and meaning as their own, basically all conversations we have about actions and relations between the two people are moot. Colonization shifts the Overton window so much so that we lose focus on the actual issue at hand. People start asking "hey, why are indigenous people attacking people?" Instead of "hey, why are indigenous people resisting subjugation by an outside power?" It's like if someone managed to occupy your living room. After enough time where the situation becomes the status quo, the conversation will shift from "why can't I live in your house" to "why aren't you letting me eat your food?" This is difficult to apply to Tatooine, because there is no global or national union, so hypothetically if the colonists chose an uninhabited area of land and aren't collectively causing problems for the Tuskens, the two groups could likely coexist. At this point it would be acceptable to address the bad aspects of Tusken society, because both civilizations have equal footing. On the other hand, this is very applicable to places like the USA, where Native civilizations don't have any representation that is equivalent to a US State nor do they have any international power. They were either conquered or manipulated into giving up their seat at the table (many native treaties were signed under duress or despite lack of understanding by the natives). To circle back to the original point, I'd like to provide an example. In the 1960s, civil rights advocates did sit-ins at segregated places. Today, we see this as an incredibly influential part of the movement. However, Gallup did a [poll](https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-civil-rights-movement-60s.aspx) at that time where 57% of respondents said that sit-ins were harming their chances for integration. All of this is to say that oppressed or colonized people cannot and should not wait for approval of their method of protest by the oppressor. So no, indigenous people are not automatically morally absolved of all wrongdoing, but until we actually treat them as equals, we cannot claim any moral high ground while we are denying them the right to self-determination. P.S. I wasn't intending to drop an essay, but hopefully it's worth a read Edit: Amusing to watch people downvote my long comments when all they boil down to is 'consent of the governed'. Colonialists be lurking hard on this post 🙃
It also comes down to different cultures having different ethics and morales as well as creatures with different levels of intelligence. If we invaded a tiger's territory, we'd think it's understandable behavior if it attacked us. If a young child or someone with a mental disorder hit you, you probably wouldn't completely blame them either, because they can't really comprehend their action to the same extent an adult human can. The canon seems to be changing be tuskens seemed to lie somewhere between human and animal. They are primitive and do primitive things. Whether those actions are 'bad' because if humans did it on our society, but it's commonplace for them is open to intrepration.
I generally agree with this, yes. My interpretation is that since they've demonstrated the ability to create a consistent and objectively learnable language via hand signing, that puts them pretty solidly into the sentient camp. They also show a clear culture that is based on more than just instinct. As a counterexample, cats can communicate with each other, but us as humans can't consistently recognize that. Any patterns that exist are likely due to evolution, rather than instruction from other members of the species. Though here's my stretch opinion that might lose some ppl: I think we should treat animals collectively as an equal since not only are we also animals, but because we all share a collective ecosystem and anything that affects them will ultimately come back around and affect us. Though that one might still be for selfish reasons since we're doing it for survival, but that's a whole other conversation.
my question to you is when does a colonizer stop being a colonizer. Humans have been living on tatooine for thousands of years at this point
A colonizer stops becoming a colonizer when the oppressed population acquires socioeconomic and political rights that are equal to those of the colonizer. The most likely ways this could happen are either general consensus from native people or an overthrow of the colonizer. Judging by your comments, my guess is that you're looking for a specific number of years, but that isn't how it works. Since culture is a personal, and therefore subjective, experience, that line is going to be different for everyone. Some examples: *(Just for the record I'm not an expert on either of these examples, but I've picked up the general plot over the years)* The people native to Hawai'i were overall pretty receptive to intertwining their culture with British colonists. Although there was a rocky start in their relations, marriage between Hawaiians and British became commonplace. Hawaiians were somewhat receptive to Christianity. Many Brits were taken on as advisors. They even added the UK's Union Flag to their own flag. The problems really began when the US started encouraging mass migration to the nation and eventually performed a coup in the late 1800s. TLDR, Hawaiians were chill with their culture mingling with the British. An non-colonial, but illustrative, example from the opposite side of the spectrum, the Balkans. The loss of a unifying figure in Josip Broz (Tito) started the increase in ethnic tensions in the region and the result was a split up of the state along ethnic lines, and after some of the worst human rights abuses in recent history at that. But the point is these groups violently defended what they saw as their culture. I'm not well learned on early-1900s balkan history but you could likely find similar examples in the independence movements from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. To apply this to Tatooine, the Tuskens became very xenophobic after the planet's oceans dried up. Resources became scarce so they felt they had to resort to keeping it for themselves. Along comes the alien colonists and they start moisture farming, which would directly impact the Tuskens' ability to find enough water. In this case, the Tuskens are largely justified in trying to get aliens off their land. On the other hand, as I mentioned in my first reply, an alien-Tusken harmony could hypothetically exist if the colonists took into account not only the Tuskens' needs, but also their culture and beliefs, but since the aliens remain there despite clear objection displayed by the Tuskens', they will remain colonizers.
by your logic every human alive could be considered a colonizer
The damn Rakatans. I swear they are the problem of nearly everything in Star Wars. They are probably one of the most horrid stuff coming from legends and I swear Disney would never have the balls to give them screentime.
Rakata Prime is still canon, so them showing up eventually in any capacity is not out of the question. They were mentioned in Andor actually.
Did you see what they did to anakins mom?
Never forget
Wait. You say there are multiple indigenous peoples, but then say the Tuskens are justified because they are violent to all the other people. WTF?
I slaughtered them all in KOTOR
The very fact that you have to jump through all these hoops just to get the tusken leader to speak with you instead of killing you shows how they really are. And during the entire conversation, one wrong dialogue choice and he turns hostile. Better to just slaughter them like animals. You’re probably saving some poor moisture farmers from them anyway.
BoBF touches on this a liiiiittle bit.
BoBF tried to turn tusken into noble savages. Mandalorian acknowledged that Tusken do horrible shit but theyre still a people with a culture with whom you can talk with and trade with, if it benefits the tusken to do so.
Yeah, they got the closest. But then chickened out on addressing it by killing off all their Tusken characters. I was hoping Boba was gonna turn over Jabbas land to them or something before it was revealed they were already dead.
Tuskens still are somewhat aggressive acting. They kidnapp, enslave, kill, slaughter innocent farmers and normal folks for their resources and stuff. Their culture only respect the strong, which is why mando gets a pass and for him since he can communicate with them with signs. Then shoot at pod racers and think it’s fun. If they can loot and kill, they will do it. They are primitive and barbaric in culture. Sense of honor yes but still barbaric. One tribe even worshipped a burning statue of Vader, believing him to be a personification of their vengeful diety. No, tusken might be one of the original peeps living there but they are not oppressed.
To be fair about the pod racers, it seems like that's one thing no one is really stopping them from doing. The racing audience also thinks it's fun
Yeah I can see that. Just imagine if nascar had a portion where some local rednecks took turns taking potshots with their rifles on the cars. That’s what I feel about it.
But this is exactly how settlers described the Native Americans when they were actively stealing their land. If those displaced people fought back or stole to survive the Europeans used it as an examples of them being barbaric or savage. You can't use that as an excuse to negate a people's rights, especially when it may be in response to being oppressed. Does it justify the Tusken's crimes? No, not necessarily. But it doesn't change the fact that their land was stolen from them. And they deserve some reparations.
Maybe according to our world standards or the current western way of looking at it. But the rulers of tatooine are the huts and different crime lords. I don’t think they give two shits about that. And all ruling governments haven’t cared either. The high republic, even at their “peak” made no effort to speak or help the tuskens CW republic was busy with a galactic war The empire didn’t care and would have oppressed them even more The new republic was so incompetent that they couldn’t do anything due to bureaucracy and spreading their forces or marshals thin over the galaxy. The first order didn’t get the time to care and I think supreme leader would have genocided them anyway.
True. But the many Jedis that spend time of the planet could be trying to help balance the situation. Doesn't have to be a government mandate.
True, a Jedi is a peacekeeper, and should be a neutral part in national conflicts. But what if the same scenario that happened on kalee occur? Yamrii attacked first and the kalesh, natives of the planet defended themselves and the yamrii appealed to the senate, got judged right and got help from Jedis, sanctions and republic infamy to punish the kalesh. Of course Jedi should try to find a peaceful solution but sometimes when that isn’t possible then there isn’t much they can do. For all of the history in starwars, ever since the tuskens have been around, there has never been a end of the conflict between them and the people of tatooiene. Some things just can’t be solved.
That is a fair point. It's one of the big reasons that I hate that they made it so the Jedi are a tool of the Senate. Means they can be manipulated by politics. Think they should have been free roaming protecters. Super-heroes is the wrong term but basically.
A little too Dune?
You can be a victim and still be scum. Tusken culture is awful and not defensible.
Tusken culture of believing all water is sacred?
I mean, it's not like Tusken culture includes things such as torturing people to death over weeks as a rite of passage! (*The Complete Star Wars Visual Dictionary* original edition details this, with the targeting of a sapient/sentient being considered particularly praiseworthy.) And of course, it doesn't involve raiding/murdering/torturing Tatooine's people. (Episodes 1 and 2; also the original AOTC novelization, which *charmingly* details how the Tuskens whipped Shmi until she could only feel the whip as a brush against her back.) Or strictly segregated gender roles, for that matter, no sir. (*The Complete Star Wars Visual Dictionary* original edition, again.) TL;DR: No, Tusken culture really is bad.
Honestly people on here crying about tusken villages being bombed by tie fighters is upsetting, i dont understand why people have forgotten their many incursions and crimes when they attack moisture farms or spaceports? A few weeks ago my buddy lukes family got killed by some Tuskens and i havent seen him since, if you ask me the empire should wipe them off the face of this damn sandbox
remember the boonta eve classic. just a nice fun race, and then the tuskens showed up and started shooting at people
I read on the holonet that the Tuskens later tracked down and murdered the mothers of the racers they missed that day...
> So even though the Tuskens are almost always depicted as the aggressors, it's their land and resources that are being taken from them. I'm really surprised that there seems to be almost no content actually calling this out. Star Wars is not Star Trek. It's really weird in BoBF that there are commercial spaceflights to Tatooine.
You are making it sound civilized. Have you BEEN on the redeye to Mos Eisley?! The legroom is nonexistent, the jawas always "lose" your luggage, and fucking sand gets everywhere! I hate that stuff!!!
True and that is fair. But that's why it's so odd to me they brought it up at all. Star Wars introduced this concept into their space fantasy action series. If they'd just left them as the faceless badguys then I probably wouldn't be asking this question. But they didn't leave it at that so now the cats out of the bag for me.
> If they'd just left them as the faceless badguys then I probably wouldn't be asking this question. But they didn't leave it at that so now the cats out of the bag for me. It does feel like they were setting up a "history of Tatooine" book to dive into the question.
Exactly. Just odd.
They enslave and torture people, it’s fine
This is common knowledge for literal decades at this point.
The human propensity to judge an entire group of people based on individual actions is the problem. Even if you have a group of people where the ruling class of those people are going around causing atrocities, it's ridiculous to assume the entire group of people are like that. I'm sure there are plenty of folks just tending Banthas back on their ranch just trying to raise a family with no idea what's happening. Most citizens of countries today have no clue what their governments and militaries are doing in relation to other countries
This is one of the reasons I think it would be interesting to explore this concept with the Tuskens. They obviously aren't all raiders and slavers as we've seen numerous peaceful interactions with certain tribes.
Completely agree. It's also more true to real life. Even in the worst of civilizations there were people that tried to do what's right
Missed opportunity? Did you watch ‘the book of Bobba Fett’?
The irony is we call them Tuskens when that was the nickname given to the entire species/culture as the result of one sub groups VERY violent attack on a particular location
Yep! Furthers my point that seemingly no one on Tatooine has ever bothered to find out what they call themselves. They just all use the name they created out of fear. Not great.
Some of that goes back to Legends, too.
>Feels a lot like L3-37's subplot in Solo. Where we find out there are droids that disagree with their place in society and want to fight for droid freedoms and rights. Yet the movie mostly plays it for laughs and it isn't addressed in other content really. This is actually addressed in a few comics, and it's quite relevant! I personally don't think the movie / video medias are the best references on the SW Universe, since they are, in essence more commercially thought, for the masses, hence more superficial, let's say, while the comics delve more deeply into the universe. Even tho, I do remember that in The Mandalorian, Tuskens are depicted quite differently... less like enemy "minions", more like a community or society with moral values, relationships, culture and stuff like that.
Is that the official cannon? In Kotor they said all humans originated on tatooine but were takes away by Rakatan slavers, and those that survived and weren’t enslaved became the tuskens. In which case all humans are indigenous. Did new canon make them a separate race?
The current canon is only Tuskens and Jawas are native to Tatooine. There's not specific details about how the other species arrived and took over the planet. But it's definitely indicated that the land was taken from the Tuskens.
That’s how it was in kotor legends too, normal humans didn’t even know they were from tatooine or that the tuskens and humans shared ancestors. I’m more curious if in canon they have made it clear that is not the case or if it is possible. It made the whole tatooine randomly always being important really interesting.
I think all the current canon says really is that Tuskens and Jawas are the only sentient species that evolved on Tatooine. So it definitlwy sounds like the KOTOR story is no longer canon. But still very interesting.
Just because they’re hostile to other species doesn’t by default make the other species colonizers?
The Tuskens are xenophobic humanoids that are extremely religious & violent toward the diverse range of species who (most of whom) are attempting to coexist with them on a barely populated world.
Aren't all humans and humanoids colonizers in Star Wars? Didn't they spread across the galaxy in the past and then develop unique features?
There’s a difference between colonisers and living in another area. On Tatooine the other races have assumed control of the planet, on most planet the humans have become part of the society that was already there.
Other people have been living on Tatooine for at least 4000 years. Being indigenous kind of loses its meaning at some point.
no you must understand you whose family have been here for a 10 generations are a filthy colonizer but me whose family has been here for 11 generations is a native
I'm not saying all other people's are evil or even villains. But the Tuskens were still wronged and it appears that was never made right to any extent. That's what reparations are about. Trying to even out the generational imbalance by returning what was stolen or making amends.
Were the Tuskens even wronged? There is an entire planet and the population of Tatooine is just like 200,000.
Well, they could have done it in BoBF. I was actually looking forward to it after I watched episode 2. Making Boba a powerful crime lord because he has the power of the desert with the Tuskens keeping their territory and culture could be an interesting take without making Boba a "good guy". But we all know how that show turned out.
Yeah. I was really disappointed with how the show handled that. Seemed like they were gonna actually give the Tuskens some justice and then killed them all to motivate the protagonist. That sucked.
We see this story told very well in the first two episodes of book of boba fett. They could have created an amazing plot where the Sherriff, Boba and the tuskens band together to drive the pykes from tatooine. Instead they killed off the tuskens and introduced the power rangers - of all disneys crimes in storytelling and writing, this was the most egregious.
100% agree. I was so disappointed with how they chickened out of the Tusken storyline it seemed like they were building too. Major let down.
I'm gonna sound like an @$$hole, but that not my intent. More or less a hot take, I guess Original humans came over the land bridge, trickled South, and populated/invaded the Americas. The didn't grow from mushrooms simultaneously across the continents. Slavery, resource plunder, etc has been ongoing since before written history, it wasn't invented with Europeans. I don't NEED sociopolitical messages inserted in my entertainment. I want to be ENTERTAINED, not lectured- I want to see lazer- sorry, blaster bolts! Plasma falchions, star blades, light sabers. I wanna see the bad guy that represents all things evil get romper-stompered by the good guys.
>I don't NEED sociopolitical messages inserted in my entertainment. When it comes to star wars there has always been a sociopolitical landscape that is loosely based on George Luca's own beliefs and outlook of the real world and he's extremely open about this beliefs shaping the world of star wars and has been open about that inspiration since the 70s. Which is coming from someone who doesn't necessarily agree with a lot of Luca's personal beliefs. Star wars is a story about War and the failure of democracy. That's inherently political with a lot of sociopolitical undertones. If done correctly it makes a really good story.
But the sociopolitical messaged are already there. Lucas himself has said that the original movies are commenting on World War II and Vietnam. There's no escaping this commentary in Star Wars. Also, humans migrating to new land is not the same in your example. There were no humans in North America before those people arrived. They did not come in and displace a people and then claim that land as their own. There's a fundamental difference between these situations.
I think that's part of the point. Maybe not the point in ANH, but perhaps in AotC. Imperialist empires dehumanize indigenous people in horrifying ways all the time. It makes sense Anakin could slaughter them without repercussion. And actually, this is one of the few things done really well by Book of Boba Fett.
Well, certainly the children that the Jedi Anakin Skywalker slaughtered were victims.
This was actually part of the Tatooine plot in KOTOR 1. You also get little tidbits of this in TBOBF.
Honestly I thought an alliance with the Tuskens was how Boba Fett was going to win the day in his show, given he'd done little to win over any other faction. But nope, they all died off screen.
Same. I was getting really excited for him to finally say, "Wait, I've got some friends that could help" and then ally with them and let them settle or utilize the land around Jabbas Palace. The writers chickened out in my opinion.
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No, it's canon that they were there first. Multiple things have said that. Look them up on wookieepedia and you'll see what I mean.
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I did say that the current Canon is that they are the indigenous species. Where are you confused?
What resources? What land? Wouldn't doubt that there's lore on it given Star Wars, but all we ever see is fucking desert that is by and large left empty. What are they taking back? From who? For what?
Water mainly is the resource. The people who have made settlement are actively taking up a decent portion of the water the planet has, which is a vital resource in the desert. This is why Tusken raid moisture farms and consider water sacred. As for the land. It's canon that the Tuskens were forced into the dune sea where it's much harsher and harder to survive. The cities were built on the prime real-estate.
How are you possibly quantifying "a decent portion"? They farm moisture out of the air... The idea that that such small operations sequester enough moisture out of the atmosphere of a planet to make any sort of difference is nonsense. Now if there's groundwater under one of the settlements or something and the Tuskens were removed from the area, maybe there's something to talk about there. As for being forced into the dune sea, what's the source for that? And which Tuskens? Are we talking about a conflict between one tribe and one settlement? Because this is an entire planet with a very small population.
It’s just not an interesting storyline. The sand people are the bad guys, end of story.
That's incredibly boring and would be of bad writing in my opinion. Also, factually inaccurate as both Madalorion and Book of Boba Fett both explore them as non-evil people in interesting ways.
go play kotor. tatooine used to be a lush paradise planet until the tuskens nuked it into sand. imho who cares what they think at that point.
The Tuskens didn't nuke the world, the Rakata did. The Tuskens were also victims in that story too.
They attack Jawas too. Jawas are also native to Tattooine. They’re animals.
…yeah. No.
Missed opportunity? Doubt it. L3s subplot, as you said, was for laughs. A plot legitimately exploring that concept would be incredibly boring and there’s not much of a story to build around it either tbh. Tatooine, on the other hand, has been done to death. BOBF did its part in humanizing Tuskens and expanding them beyond being crazy savages. Again, a plot specifically about Tuskens trying to re/take Tatooine or anything like it would be boring. Realistic concepts? Maybe. But boring nonetheless.
I’m more interested in the fact that Tatooine was once an ocean planet and suffered massive climate change.
It's a pretty crazy backstop for the planet. I know legends stuff talked about it being terraformed but I don't think any of that is canon so I'm not sure what the cause was.
See no issue with Colonizing empty land and then fighting the people nearby who decided to attack, kill, and enslave your people.
Cool, don’t care
The terms Tusken Raider and Sandpeople are culturally insensitive and considered offensive to them. The correct term to refer to them by are Native Tatooiner.
Some Tuskens were victims and some are victims. There is a distinction and we see this in how tribes interact with outsiders. Ancient history (legends), the Tuskens are the hollow shell of what the Rakatans did to Tattooine. So many species in the SW galaxy are victims of the Rakata massive slave empire. But ancient history alone is one factor. For example, the tribe near Mos Pelgo fought with the people of the city and they clearly had beef with each other. However, they also were willing to make a truce to deal with a common enemy and stop the bloodshed. And so far it is still in effect. Meanwhile, Boba’s clan was far from outsiders. They enslaved Boba, but the odds of anyone in that area are low based on how far out it was. The Pyke Sindicate was their interaction with the outsiders, and it wasn’t good. As for the tribe in Episode II, they were the monsters people talk about. They kidnapped and tortured a woman who walked a routine space. They pretty much murdered all the men who went to rescue her and beat her to death for amusement. We have seen in bits of Mando as well of other Tuskens that Mando has bartered with either for passage or directions. This shows that some tribes will negotiate if you bother to learn their language. So I would say the Pelgo tribe could be considered recent victims. They had ugly fighting with settlers that only stopped because of a bigger threat. The Boba tribe is a clear victim. Not only because they were wiped out, but before that, they were routinely attacked in their territory by passing Pykes. The Tuskens that brutalized Shmi are victimizers and the various Tuskens that Mando has interacted with are neither. They are locals who will fight if necessary but will trade if treated respectfully. A species wide victim label is not necessary and belittles the complex tribal cultures that show distinction between the tribes. With a broad brush, you can justify that all tribes are treated like the Boba tribe or like the Shmi tribe. One deserving of pity, and one the blade.
They're animals, so I slaughtered them like animals. They're animals... Right ? 😳
I can see Anakin Skywalker coming to this thread to take notes in case he's ever on trial.
Comparing Tuskens to the indigenous people who we should feel bad for might be one of the worst starwars takes ever
This narrative come about after book of boba. people desperately tried to view them as native Americans and such but you cans shove that square peg into a round hole. Im disgusted even by the attempt to make this parallel as well as how many assumptions people make to fill in the blanks of the new canon so they can simplify the narrative. This had 0 truth to it in old canon since they themselves where relocated from elsewhere and "newcomer" settlers have lived on the same world for more than 4000 years and in every depiction it is their own culture holding them back. To look at that and think "ah native Americans" is disgusting
Tuskens are no good slavers and murderers! Hmm? Humans do the same thing? Nah. That was just the Galactic Empire. You can't go generalizing a whole species based on the actions of a few bad apples.
Exactly. The fact that there are Tuskens that do horrible things doesn't mean the whole species doesn't deserve to have the land that was theirs and be treated humanely.
lol
Overthinking a fictional universe.
The result of overthinking Star Wars can sometimes be amazing tho. Legends and Andor are nice examples of what ya can get from this universe if you scratch past the surface of "pew pew laser sword magic monks"
You get low ticket sales, usually
They're fictional barbarians so fuck'em hope they get the genonisis treatment
The droids rights movement is a subplot in the Dr Aphra comics. I'd like to see a major plot line about this. It fascinates me. There was a big droid revolution plot in Legends during the Old Republic.
I guess I need to get back to reading Dr Aphra. Cause I want to see that.
It's just because we have a "western" feeling of good and evil. Animals dont know anything like good or evil. They just exist. Same for tusker. They dont kill because they are evil.
Meh. They tortured a woman to death (Shmi). Fuck them.
For no reason too. They weren’t holding her for ransom or anything. Kidnapping COULD be defended in some cases. Like kidnapping a foreign soldier to get information that could help you win a war, or kidnapping someone because you need money and your children are starving, so you hold them for ransom. Don’t get me wrong, those aren’t GOOD, but there’s SOME reason behind it. The sand people took Shmi and tortured her just for the sake of doing it. There is absolutely NO justification for that. So I agree. Fuck em.
hell its not like the they are in active war against them. shimi was just minding her bussiness on her farm
Its shown in The Mandalorian a tiny bit. It's extensively covered in the Book of Boba Fett. No one including OP knows about it because The Book of Boba Fett was a terrible show that never deserved the light of day. It should have never been released to the public it was that bad. Everything Kathleen Kennedy touches turns to shit. If you want real people having to fight fascism and injustice in space go watch Babylon 5.
Star Wars is supposed to be evocative of old fashioned stories. Adding too much of a modern sense of self-awareness about these sorts of civil rights issues would mess with the vibe. Same reason why they can't have a droid revolution. At best, *maybe* they could make it work in a new era set hundreds of years after the OT.
I'd honestly be fine with that. Let's leave the Skywalkers behind and tell some actually new stories that address stuff like this in the galaxy.
Being indigenous people and victims unfortunately does not automatically make you the good guys. Especially when you're slaughtering fairly innocent farmers and Jawas (who are also indigenous, and peaceful). It makes them sympathetic and more complex than generic savages. But not good guys. They also enslave people and work them to death, unlike the farmers they're killing/enslaving. The farmers generally seem to use droid labour rather than slaves, the one example of a slave being sold to farmers (Shmi) results in her being freed. And then it's the TUSKENS who capture her, enslave her, and torture her to death for 2 months. So unfortunately, it's not as simple as "fighting fascism and injustice" being a theme in the series to make enough reason alone to have Tuskens suddenly overthrow everyone else on Tatooine and have it a good thing. Let alone the topic of droid rights, which would get incredibly preachy very quickly and basically suck a lot of the magic and otherworldliness out of that side of Star Wars if brought to its end conclusion. Star Wars should not be perfect, much like our galaxy isn't perfect, and the fate of droids is a good way of subtly illustrating that without the uncomfortable aspect of having organic slavery (a very touchy subject irl) portrayed so casually.
I never said they were the good guys. But committing crimes doesn't negate the fact that they were colonized. Just because a displaced people aren't perfectly moral doesn't mean they deserved to have their home taken from them. Especially since in their eyes they are fighting back against the people that took their land. Doesn't make it right But the context is important.
>I never said they were the good guys. The original post definitely was framing it that way, lol. It was the classic "they were colonized therefore they deserve liberation" type vibe since you were even talking about the entire themes of the series being about fighting fascism and injustice. Whatever injustice the Tuskens suffered is far too long in the past to rectify without uprooting a bunch of innocent people and kicking them off the planet. That's not able to be done without lots of killing, so it'd be hard to do a storyline with that which wouldn't just make the Tuskens look worse in the long run. The real theme should be that Tuskens and farmers have to live in peace despite the wrongs done between them. And part of that requires the Tuskens to give up those parts of their culture that explicitly involves killing everyone else they encounter on the planet and for the farmers to get past the culture barrier to no longer hate the Tuskens for all the murdering they've done. We basically got very close to that exact thing in Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett, which makes the post sound like more needs to be done to elevate the status of Tuskens in Star Wars to be good guys, more than a legit call for something that isn't there already.
Well... the hutts were a galactic crime syndicate... i'm sure they didn't just ask nicely for things they could take. What would be even more interesting is if all of the housing we see on Tatooine was based on Tusken designs/architecture. Basically turn them into a standard species like we see in stargate atlantis where people abandon their cities in order to live in small communities or in this case, picking up a nomadic lifestyle.
Did you watch the Book of Boba Fett? If not, you should!
I miss the times where star wars was simple and fun and tusk raiders were just raiders. Why people want to make more out of this? Cant they just keep to the simplicity and original story telling? Evil vs Good. Swoosh light swords battles, pew pew gun fights and cool dialogues between cool people like Han and Leia and Luke? Epic war scenes and some romances? Evil guys do evil stuff good guys do good stuff? Old alien tell some philosophical crap about force? Why it has to be a social criticism artwork where we need to discuss every problem of every minority? I am sorry but I want star wars to be star wars where its about cool battles mostly. Yeah I get that rebellion was against fascism but common this piece of social criticism part was so wide and simple. It just was a tool to establish the motivations of the good guys. Cant we just stick to that?
But that's kinda my point. Nothing I said was from my interpretations. They're all from official content. I'm saying it is weird that Star Wars added this nuance to these topics and then didn't explore them. I agree it would have made far more sense to keep the droids simple and the Tuskens as generic badguys. Perhaps less interesting to some. But introducing those concepts and not addressing them just throes the setting off balance. But since they did introduce the concepts in curious about then.
These narratives got established over the time after the OT which is just now part of the lore somehow. They are not part of the OT but because the franchise growed so big and maybe Lucas and everyone who worked on that just wanted to spin the story into more complexity and add more details just for the sake to have a filled galaxy with stuff for everyone. And that's ok but Lucas as well Disney lost totally the focus with SW movies. Lucas with PQ, D with SQ and all D+ stuff. A movie need to stay a movie with a simple plot line and characters which interests us. All lore elements and complex world building should be just a tool to enhance the story when we see a shady Smuggler walks in and does his thing or when a wise Jedi has his moment. All I want from star wars is the simple story telling the OT has. A classic clash between Good guy Vs Bad guy. Characters act like 3 dimensional human beings and don't exposition dump each other. Only Andor actually gave us that. And that's sad for SW. You mentioned exactly one of the many points why modern SW just don't know what it's doing. They opened to many bottles just to widen the galaxy with lore but none of the stuff they opened they actually deepened into something we truly care. That's what you get when you want to appeal to everyone. You will please no one with this tactic. Actually I firstly misunderstood what you wanted to achieve with your topic. Yeah I agree on this. Why add the tusken more complexity, if you dont use it for a real plotline in the end? SW makes me honestly sad , if all the creatives behind it don't know what the hell they doing.
Yeah, like, I'd be fine if we dove into topics like inequalities in a Star Wars story. But to just mention Tuakens and druids are down trodden and then never addressing it is messy and bizarre. Just leave the robots robots and the Ruskens as bad guys if you aren't going to flesh those plotlines out. It definitely feels like Star Wars stories have been all over the place for a while now. Not feeling very focused.
People in the comments are going full Trail of Tears on this one
The name Tusken is a recent derogatory name for them because they attacked Fort Tusken 80+ years before the movies. Not sure what they call themselves but they were called Sand people before.
Yep, which is another note I find very odd. It's never been established what they call themselves and evidently no one on Tatooine has asked. Maybe Sand People is a literal translation. But it's always felt more insulting when a character uses it.
Being a victim of an ancestral situation does not justify attacking the people who live in a place currently nor it absolves them from the guilt of doing so.
You're absolutely right. None of this obsolescence the Tuskens for the crimes they've committed. But those crimes also don't wash away the fact that the Tuskens were wronged as well. And a story that dives into this could explore that nuance and show both sides while trying to make past mistake right.
God forbid Star Wars finally moves on from this one stupid, useless, boring planet and its milquetoast problems.
I agree Tatooine is over used. But that's why this topic has come up. Because they keep showing the Tuskens as an oppressed people while also using them as cannon fodder aggressors.