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The Shawnee Nation in Civilization 7 - Plains 14
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In this episode of The Great Plains Archaeology Podcast, we dive into the history of Indigenous representation in the Sid Meier’s Civilization series. From early portrayals to the groundbreaking collaboration with the Shawnee for Civilization 7, we explore how gaming has shaped public perceptions of Indigenous histories. Our discussion unpacks the importance of authentic representation, the role of Indigenous-led initiatives in game development, and how community engagement can create more accurate and meaningful narratives. Tune in as we examine what this means for archaeology, public education, and the future of Indigenous storytelling in digital spaces.
Links:
- The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
- Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
- Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/great-plains-archaeology/14
Contact:
- Instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Email: greatplainsarchpodcast@gmail.com
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Great Plains Archaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. Join me as we uncover the rich histories of North America's Great Plains, exploring the latest archaeological discoveries and past cultures that shaped this storied region. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to episode 14 of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carlton Shield Chief Gover, and I am thrilled to have you join me on this exciting journey through the rich and fascinating histories of North America's Great Plains.
00:00:37
Speaker
Last time, two weeks ago, I bored everyone to death with an episode on the history of Great Plains archaeological taxonomy.
00:00:49
Speaker
Basically, it was an episode talking about the history of how did archaeologists come up with a system to talk about and compare and contrast and organize the archaeological record.
00:01:02
Speaker
Probably not everyone's favorite episode so far, but it was episode 13.
From Woodland Period to Pop Culture
00:01:09
Speaker
And i was planning on today's episode to be jumping back into our quick like march through time, and we're going talk about Woodland, the Woodland period.
00:01:20
Speaker
But instead, I wanted to kind of move into pop culture for today's episode. And what I mean by that is I'm i'm recording this episode February 15th.
00:01:33
Speaker
And recently, a AAA computer Microsoft game just came out called Sid Meier's Civilization VII. And for those of you who have listened to me on on a previous podcast, Life in Ruins, you may know that myself and my co-host of that show, David and Connor, are huge civilization fans.
00:02:02
Speaker
and We often play together. We've but co-op games since Civilization five and and recently Civilization VII came out. And I've been a follower of the franchise I think my first civilization game was civilization four back in the 2005, six era. So the early two thousands.
00:02:23
Speaker
um And I remember having a friend who had civilization three was my first introduction to that game, but I never
Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference
00:02:30
Speaker
owned it. And the reason why I want to talk about it today is for two reasons. Last two weeks ago,
00:02:37
Speaker
The University of Kansas, the Office of Sovereign Partnerships and Indigenous Initiatives, helmed by Dr. Alex Redcorn and Lori Hasselman, put together um an Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference at the University of Kansas. And it wasn't just museums. Like museums, we had a day, but it was how do tribes control access to data and information about their sovereign nations in a multitude of ways.
00:03:05
Speaker
And a presenter and guest of the conference was Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
00:03:18
Speaker
And that he was like a one of one of the participants in the last roundtable talk of the conference after my session on some museum stuff.
00:03:30
Speaker
And one thing he had mentioned was like, hey, you know, this is like this is a grown adult. Like, he is a chief of a major Oklahoma nation. He's like, get Civilization 7. And a bunch of other guys, like councilmen and other adults in the 40s and 50s agreed they like, yeah, get Civilization 7. I was like, what the hell?
00:03:49
Speaker
Even Alex Redcorn was talking about it. And that's when...
Collaboration with Shawnee Tribe in Civilization VII
00:03:53
Speaker
I had learned that the Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma had been reached out to by Fire Access Games, the producers of Sid Meier's Civilization 7, that they had reached out to Chief Ben Barnes to make sure one of the civilizations and leaders in the game were the Shawnee and Tecumseh were depicted accurately.
00:04:23
Speaker
And so they reached out with the Shawnee Nation and Chief Ben Barnes to do so. i had known I had known Civilization was coming out. I had known the Shawnee were a nation that were being represented in Tecumseh being a leader in this game.
00:04:37
Speaker
But I didn't know that there was a collaboration. And I wanted, its that's kind of been sitting with me. like I got the game. I've been playing it for a few days. I i got early access to the game. I went, used some of that tenure track professor money to buy early access so I could be playing it.
00:04:52
Speaker
And it started, which led me to think about native representation in general. And we don't have, i was like thinking about it, have there been Great Plains tribes represented and media, um in video games. Well, you know, video video game media. I shouldn't say in media in general, but just like i was thinking about video games and computer games, more specifically thinking more focused at the Civilization games.
00:05:24
Speaker
And so I've been playing Civilization since, like I said, Civilization 4. four And there haven't been
00:05:37
Speaker
Too many. So in the Civilization games, there's seven of them. Technically there's eight if you count. There is eight. There's Civilization Alpha Centauri, which is a branch off from the franchise. But if we think about who's being represented in...
00:05:51
Speaker
ah this game. So civilization, i should probably explain a little bit of it. So my civilization is a turn-based strategy game where you, through Civ one through six, you choose a leader who's associated with a nation and you start from the dark ages all the way into the future era.
Understanding Civilization Game Mechanics
00:06:09
Speaker
And these games take hours to do when you compete for resources and land with other civilizations chosen throughout time with leaders chosen throughout time, different civilizations kind of, they have an era,
00:06:21
Speaker
that they excel in where they might have a special unit, a special building that you could build these things in. Civilization deviates from that a little bit, and I'll i'll talk about it. But since the first civilization,
00:06:37
Speaker
the first civilization, the only like Western Hemisphere civilization represented were the Aztecs. In Civilization two they had the Aztecs and the Sioux, which I didn't know.
00:06:48
Speaker
And I can't remember... but ah how old that game is I didn't play Civ 2 at all so I don't like probably not great Civilization 3 there's the Aztec Inca Iroquois and Mayan Civ 4 where I started playing you would just have the Aztec Inca and and Civ 5 They reintroduced the Iroquois and then they added the Shoshone as a DLC.
00:07:20
Speaker
So like thinking through the entire time of civilization, we've had two great planes nations represented, the Lakotas and the Shoshone who were in the Northwest plains in Wyoming.
00:07:31
Speaker
And i was curious about, I will get to admit. And in civilization, they had the Cree, Aztec, Inca, Mapuche, Mayan. Those are the ones represented.
00:07:42
Speaker
And in Civ VII, we have the Inca, Maya, Mississippian, Shawnee civilizations. And so ah it's not just the Shawnee, but Mississippians are represented. I'll get to that here in a bit. But I thought the Aztecs were represented, but I may be mistaken.
00:07:56
Speaker
They might come out as a DLC. But in Civilization VII, there were articles coming out early on about like When Civ VI came out and Cree were a civilization you can pick and that your leader was Poundmaker, the Cree were pissed because Fire Axis did not reach out to the Cree.
00:08:16
Speaker
The Cree leader at the time of the nation that a Poundmaker came from, you know they said the way that they were depicted in Civilization VI and Poundmaker was inaccurate and detrimental to the image of the Cree.
00:08:32
Speaker
and didn't go so well. I wasn't aware of this. like Usually if I play these Civilization games, I was always playing the Shoshone, but sometimes with Iroquois, I played the Korean Civilization 6. I kind of gravitated towards them. Oftentimes though,
00:08:45
Speaker
My go-to is Germany so I can get those Panzer tanks in the modern era or the atomic era. And just, you know, anyways. And so when Civilization 7 was coming out, the Fire Axis already had the idea that they're going to go with the Shawnee. And apparently people internally were telling Fire Axis, like their higher-ups, like a little bad idea.
00:09:03
Speaker
But they went ahead and reached out to Chief Ben Barnes. So I just saw a couple weeks ago and I've known about him. And apparently Chief Ben Barnes is a civilization fan. And so he was delighted and made this work. And I thought that was like really interesting. And um I highly doubt the Shoshone were...
00:09:22
Speaker
reached out to at all about being represented in this game. And so when I just wanted to laud, not that and not that anyone from, I imagine, FireAxis listens to this podcast or or folks who are listening to this podcast, like Carlton, we thought we're talking about Great Plains Archaeology, what the hell's going on?
00:09:42
Speaker
Why are we talking about a computer game? And part of that reason is that Sid Meier's did change things. And for those that are Sid Meier's Civilization fans what I'm talking about, in previous games, one through six in Alphonse and Zari, you chose a leader who was associated with a country or a civilization.
Era System and Mississippian Civilization in Civilization VII
00:10:01
Speaker
Now, you could have multiple civs, but with different leaders. So, like, sometimes the Russians, the Germans, even the Americans, there was a time in Civilization IV, each civilization had two different leaders you could choose that had two different bonuses.
00:10:14
Speaker
than two different units you could pick. In Civ 7, rather than having like this long game that goes from Dark Ages to where have to, your first thing you gotta discover is pottery to future tech is you chose a leader And then they broke the game down into basically three sub games of, they made three eras and you had like ah early or antiquity, age of expiration, now you have modern.
00:10:48
Speaker
So that's how they did it. And I finished a game super quick the other, relatively in terms of Civ, super quick, but within those ages, you can pick a new civilization that your leader can run.
00:11:00
Speaker
which has caused some controversy. I've enjoyed it. But part of that, though, is in this new era system. So Tecumseh, if who's the who is the Shawnee,
00:11:12
Speaker
He led the Shawnee people, which is a age of exploration civilization. You get bonuses if you match those two up. But in the age of antiquity, that first age, they added the Mississippian civilization, which I thought was really, really interesting.
00:11:30
Speaker
And so it also introduced wonders. Their mechanic in the game, their special... tiles you produce or buildings you produce that give you different bonuses. And like you can build Monk's Mound as part of that. And you can have these Mississippian bonuses and playing as Tecumseh.
00:11:49
Speaker
you It like matches well to play the Mississippians, then the Shawnee, and then you play as the Americans in the modern empire. And like the tagline for that was, like you know, Tecumseh lived in the country that would later become the United States. And that's kind of how they kind of move it through.
00:12:08
Speaker
But playing as the Mississippians, I thought, was like really... really really cool addition to the game that was an interesting addition that i I don't think I've ever seen the Mississippians, right? That culture from way back when, Cahokia being a prominent example, nearest modern day in St. Louis, and we have Mississippian influences in the Great Plains going up the Missouri River, the Ohio River, up the Mississippi proper.
00:12:37
Speaker
Seeing them represented felt really good. Like as, as a indigenous person coming from, and coming from a tribe that isn't Mississippian or is not an ancestor of the Mississippians, but had interaction with them to see them in parts of that, you know, prominent community.
00:12:53
Speaker
period of time represented felt just incredibly wonderful. And it definitely made me like really want to text my tribal start preservation officer, my cultural resource division be like, can we send a letter to fire access to have the Pawnee nation represented as a DLC in this game? Cause I think that'd be cool. But with that, we'll be right back with the second half the episode. So we'll stay tuned for episode 14.
00:13:16
Speaker
And we're back to episode 14 of the Great Plains Archaeology podcast, where this time we're talking about video games on a civilization from the southeastern United States. It's technically Midwest.
00:13:29
Speaker
Anywho, that's just where I'm at. This is what happens when I have my own podcast. And hopefully for those of you that are Sid Meier's fans, you're kind of going along with this. As I was saying in the last segment, being the Mississippians as an early Civ and like anybody...
00:13:44
Speaker
who chooses a leader, I think can choose the Mississippians as that first age civ. You get bonuses if you're like close, you know, by do it, or it's a civilization that was like near the Mississippians or leader that is from a civilization that had some sort of relations to it.
00:14:00
Speaker
And then you can also unlock during a different points in that age, that era doing certain things allows you to unlock the a civilization to be used in the next era. So like, I believe I unlocked the Polynesians at some point, because I think I had a couple cities on the, on a coast and that unlocked, like, you know, four cities on a coast, you can unlock the Hawaiians in the, uh, age of exploration era and and stuff like that. And what was cool for at least the Mississippians, things that you got to deal with is,
00:14:34
Speaker
It was considered a goose ah society. it was this unique ability that all buildings receive a food adjacency for resources. You can make a pot cop unique improvements, which gave you production towards constructing builders.
00:14:48
Speaker
you can unlock shell temper pottery as a so and like gave you a plus culture, plus one culture, plus one gold to certain resources that came in. And, uh, so they had, they brought in like concepts and,
00:15:06
Speaker
history from the Mississippians and introduce them as part of the game, which was like really cool. And also you got as part of the Mississippians access to unique ranged, uh, bow and arrow unit that shot fire arrows, which was really cool.
00:15:19
Speaker
I did find it annoying at one point where I'd be like, I used a lot, like in Civ six, I realized very quickly that there are three kinds of units. You have like melee ranged and siege, and then you have like Calvary and anti-calvary.
00:15:32
Speaker
But in Civ VI, ranged units kind of dominated a lot of combat. And so like in Civ VII, I produced like a lot of ranged units. And that that Flaming Arrow unit like made the tile burn for like two turns so you can continue to do damage.
00:15:49
Speaker
But if your own units walk through it, they'd catch on fire. So like I was like wiping out other units who was at war with and then like also denying access to their two places because I was burning it down. Anyways, just a whole...
00:16:01
Speaker
Whole different thing. And then you got Monk's Mound as the associated wonder, which is the big mound at Cahokia, the famous one. but got that name because in the 19th century, built there and not like a a residence on top of it. That's how it got its name.
00:16:19
Speaker
But Moving on to the next age, where you got to play as the Shawnee. The Shawnee civilization was pretty cool. And so, like, you can unlock this bread dance tradition where increased culture to all farming towns and increased food for all fishing towns.
00:16:36
Speaker
So you could grow your cities really fast, adding gold to a tree. So they're, like, ah adding gold to a tree route. But they incorporated a lot of Shawnee language into the game. So there was, lot of crazy stuff, like the...
00:16:50
Speaker
Tawatiki and the Heli Kalilana Pauwipe stuff and different actions. So it's just like really cool.
Successful Collaborations with Indigenous Tribes
00:16:57
Speaker
And as a, as a tribal citizen to see a collaboration between indigenous nation and their leadership with a major AAA game developer to accurately represent this group of people within a game that, you know, because of this,
00:17:15
Speaker
Like Civilization, let see how many downloads. Civilization 7 sales. Let's just look it up real quick.
00:17:26
Speaker
I don't know how we could look it up. But anyways, it's also available via on Xbox too because it's Microsoft game. um But there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, you know, adults, young adults, teenagers, kids who play civilization who are being introduced to the Mississippians and the Shawnee and Tecumseh.
00:17:50
Speaker
in a way that it is really hard for an academic to do or really hard for a historian to do and to have worked with the shawnee people and the shawnee nation to represent the shawnee civilization was like really inspiring and i wanted to take the time and today to uh to kind of bring that up like it was really neat to see and i hope they continue on working with tribal nations And from what I've been reading online, it was a good relationship. And like thinking about all of this and collaboration between two different groups in the context of like what's now being band-aided by the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act, where even though NAGPRA has been around since 1990, some major revisions occurred in 2024. Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
twenty four that it's a lot of folks have been scared to engage with indigenous nations regarding nagpra. But like if a triple a game developer can successfully work with a tribe, you know pretty much anyone can. like There was a lot of flack in Civilization VI.
00:19:01
Speaker
The Cree were really not happy about how they were represented. And so it could be really easy. like There was nothing that Sid Meier's team, they didn't have to work with the Shawnee, but they chose to. They chose to take the criticism of what happened in Civ VI.
00:19:16
Speaker
learn from it and then do the right thing for the next game. Right. Archeology, especially with network or working with communities in the great plains, like there's been a lot of not great things that have happened in the past.
00:19:30
Speaker
Right. And contemporary archaeologists and students have to deal with the history of the discipline. And even though we ourselves did not commit those sins of the past, we are responsible for them as we move on to the professional space.
00:19:45
Speaker
And like this is a pretty good lesson for moving on and doing better. And yeah, I just thought it was really cool. I think, do they have Tecumseh in... No, Civilization is fine. Toshani and Tecumseh, I was thinking of something completely different. i was thinking Shoshone.
00:20:07
Speaker
you know I'd be curious... to know what the Shoshone thought about their representation. i imagine Civilization II, which was like a 2D game in the 90s, they didn't do the Sioux and any favors. But like I'd like to actually hear from Cree and Iroquois. like The Iroquois were in Civ I believe. Yeah, they're Civ V. I'd actually really like to know, and their leader is Hiawatha.
00:20:31
Speaker
like I'd like to know... how Cree, Iroquois, and Shoshone people feel about how they are depicted in those games. Because like I kind of feel bad for playing as them. Because you know even though I'm not from those tribes, I have family down to Shoshone.
00:20:50
Speaker
I live down Wind River. I know Shoshone folks. So I always had the cho opportunity to play Shoshone. But i actually never thought if there was that collaboration. And Civ V came out when I was in high school or college.
00:21:01
Speaker
Civ VI came out when I was in grad school. And I never really thought about it. And like I always gravitated towards playing those civilizations because they were North American indigenous. Anywho. So that's just kind of it. It was a fun game.
Engagement and Participation Encouragement
00:21:14
Speaker
For those that are who are, who listen to this podcast, I have no idea actually how many how well this podcast is doing. I should probably talk to Chris or Rachel. But for any of the listeners out there who play Civilization, like if you'd like to play with me sometime, you know send me hit me up on Instagram. I probably should check...
00:21:30
Speaker
the email i have for great plains archaeology podcast and see how i have any respondents but yeah if you guys play this game i'd love to hear from you i'd love to play civilization with more people i love playing with david and connor although i will say like i've learned playing with connor for david i can't trust david at this game david is incredibly devious at civilization you cannot be trusted But with that, we're going to end the episode a little bit early today. I swear, this is the last. We've gone off on a couple tangents these past couple episodes, talking about Lance, hit on a really boring topic last time, taxonomy, and now I'm talking about video games.
00:22:09
Speaker
But next week, we will talk about, or the next episode, we will talk about Great Plains Woodland, and then we'll talk about Plains Village Contact, and we'll start looking into some sites and stuff that I do. So for those of you guys that are enjoying the podcast, please leave a like.
00:22:22
Speaker
Please rate the podcast. Please let me know how I'm doing. If there's any topics you guys want me to cover, I'm about to open up the Gmail account now and see if there's anything waiting. So with that, I hope to hear from you guys. I'd love to play some civilization games with any of you who are listening, but I'll see you next time.
00:22:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at Pawnee underscore archaeologist. And you can also email me at greatplainsarchpodcast at gmail.com.
00:22:53
Speaker
And remember, anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie. American author, Willa Cather.
00:23:06
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy. Our social media coordinator is Matilda Seabrook. And our chief editor is Rachel Roden. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of Cultural Media and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:23:27
Speaker
Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.