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Kai-Lin! A marking of me coming back to tumblr to showcase my art! I haven’t been doing digital so this is the best thing I’ve got for now :)

How to Draw Native People: a Tutorial/Reference Guide

As requested, here is a basic guide for how to draw Indigenous peoples (mostly focused on North America)! Also please note that this is not an exhaustive list of Native American phenotypes/features, and more like an intro on very common features that can be found in us, and even then, not altogether at once on a single person’s face. I highly encourage the use of references and care taken into research when drawing. I may do a part 2 that goes slightly more into depth, but for now, enjoy part one.

Resouces:

How to draw Native Skin tutorial (don’t draw us red!)

List of Native American Celebrities, which include their tribe(s) and home country, with 1,250 names, to use for your referencing pleasure

How to draw black people by Peachdeluxe, & Black hair in depth by misslaney for mixed black Natives

How to draw Asian People, a guide by Chuwenjie, for mixed Asian Natives AND because it includes a lovely tutorial on monolid eyes, a shared feature of Native people

get drawin!!

Seminole Indian wrestling a gator (undated)

Kai for the people

@/indigenous.Kidd on instagram :)

Photo credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2783189/We-feel-disrespected-Anger-Seattle-City-Council-gives-Columbus-Day-boot-replacing-Indigenous-Peoples-Day.html

i want fanart of massai from fortnite on my desk by wednesday.

this also goes to assuming things about real life indigenous people. 

(inspired by another post I saw)

Writing Native Characters/OCs

Don't write your Native characters as dumb, being goofy is ok, but downright stupid isn't.

Avoid the "noble savage" trope; eg. having them be overly serious, aggressive, etc.

On aggression, portraying them as straight up bloodthirsty is very bad, esp for Nahua, Maya, & Mesoamericans in general.

Depicting or calling them "dogs" is very bad, it's a literal slur.

Drawing Native characters with red skin. Warm undertones are fine as long as you don't make them literally red.

Don't draw us with random feathers in our hair, we don't do that.

"Native" isn't a standalone identity, our tribes are far more important than the umbrella "Native".

Natives all look very different, some of us are light, some are dark. There's lot of Black Natives too.

Our living conditions are also diverse. Not all of us live on reservations, most of us are urban.

Don't portray our men as inherently predatory and misogynistic, it feeds into racist propaganda.

Don't portray our women as submissive, sexual, exotic creatures. Very gross.

Don't write us as thieves and criminals, more racist propaganda.

Writing or showing the death of a Native character can be very traumatic for us to see or read, esp if the death is needlessly graphic.

Related, torturing a Native character for shock value is very gross and messed up.

"Savage accent" is gross and racist. Don't write it.

The "Spiritual One" is so tired and unoriginal. (hence the "Native character is introduced with a flute playing in the background)

Our regalia is not casual attire, it's specifically ceremonial. We wear ordinary clothes, if not with some cultural influence, most of the time.

Please don't use us for poverty poor.

Writing us as drug, sex, gambling, addicts is really bad.

Esp avoid them using alcohol and inhalants, it's very stereotypical and are real systemic problems we face.

Using MMIW as a plot point is horrible, I'll hunt you down if you do this.

Having us fall in love with colonizers, don't emulate Pocahontas, that movie was a mistake and so is this trope.

The "special colored eyes/hair" see the Yue and the Water Tribe problem.

Regional/Cultural specific tropes to avoid:

Arctic NA Natives:

Don't us the word "esk*mo". It's a slur.

We aren't all Inuit. Lots of us are Inupiat, Yup'ik, Alutiiq, Athabascan, Tlingit, etc.

Although lots of us do eat meat, but for the love of god don't make that our personality.

Please do research on our names if traditional, no "Tuk Tuk" names or I'll kill you.

Although lots of us are born in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, not all of us are. I was born in California.

If you are not Arctic NA Native, don't draw our traditional tattoos. They are unique to each tribe and hold significant meaning to them.

We do have parkas but we don't just wear it, esp not when it's warmer like summertime, then it's qaspeq/kuspek. Please do research on our attire.

Drawing us with the "closed eyes" caricature.

Plains Tribes:

Carelessly having plains Natives in headdresses is a caricature.

There's lots of different plains tribes, they aren't a monolith.

Not all plain Natives still live in tipis, good god.

This is esp where you need to avoid "savage accent" and red skin.

Stop adding fringe everywhere.

They also aren't running around naked in buckskin loinclths.

(A lot of this also applies to eastern woodlands too. Also eastern woodlands tribes do not live in tipis)

Southwest:

Navajo isn't the only tribe in the southwest.

The "pueblos" are only built by Puebloan tribes, such as Hopi and Zuni. Navajos aren't Puebloan, they don't live in these.

We don't just spend our days just making silver turquoise jewelry.

Don't write about Sk*nwalkers, please don't.

Kokopelli is a Hopi Kachina. He isn't pan-indian.

Central/Mesoamericans:

"Aztec" and "Maya" are not all there is. And they are not the same.

"Aztec" isn't what the people are called, they are Nahua.

They aren't bloodthirsty and in love with violence, stop writing this.

"Evil Priest", "Holy Emperor", "Human Sacrifice", yeah stop all that shit.

There's more Central/South Americans tribes outside of just Mexico.

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