#instantfrost

“Amarillo, said Nana Maria. Jaune, said Nathaniel’s mother. His dad said yellow” I love that.

“should have gotten a Choctaw or Chickasaw designer to do it in the first place”

Yup.

I was just bitching about this in my IG because Isi is from my home state of Boo Hexico, which is cool, but isn’t actually appropriate for her. Someone said, “but _insert native people of the area_ DO have deer woman legends” and I was thinking about how that might be true, but then she should be specifically from this area in terms of her name, etc. What makes MH characters strong is their specificity. A Choctaw or Chickasaw designer could have given her this specificity, and would have been a real win in the doll community.

I wanted to post this comment separate from the ask you put it on because it is great and deserves to stand on it’s own, but also because I have a little bit to add and I didn’t want to have it get lost on an already made post:

I don’t really have so much of a problem with her being from “Boo Hexico” because any person from any NDN affiliation can live anywhere. It doesn’t mean that they have to be from the tribe who was originally there. I live in Northern California, in an area originally home to the Me-Wuk, but it doesn’t make me any less Choctaw and Creole just because I don’t live in Louisiana. It just means my people came to live here for a variety of different reasons ranging from “they had to” to “they wanted to”. NDNs are allowed to migrate just like everyone else. And it’s not like Choctaws were ever scattered to the wind or anything by say, some catastrophic tragedy, that may have forced them to go elsewhere. The Trail of Tears wasn’t that long ago, and many of us are where we are now because of it.

I understand the argument that she could belong to a New Mexican tribe, but I think it’s a false parallel to be like “she’s from New Mexico so she HAS to be a New Mexican NDN”. That’s not true. That’s actually very hurtful and erasing to those of us who are living in places where our peoples aren’t from. Plus, no one’s arguing that Frankie can’t be a part of Frankenstein mythos just because she didn’t come fresh from Germany, either. And, in the end, my stance on Isi being Choctaw is firmly built on lots of canon truths:

Her name is Choctaw for ‘Deer’

Our Kashehotapalo fits her exact physical description

We have deer women who's entire mythology is built on dance

Those same deer women are siren-like and lead men to their doom to protect women (but don’t get me started on Isi’s bio on how they chose to include this because I am THIS CLOSE to sending the Mattel CEO an email to tell them to meet me in the street i S2G)