#samish

So I'm in the early stages of writing my first book. It's a Peter Pan adaptation, and so I've been spending a pretty decent chunk of time thinking about the character of Tiger Lily and her whole community. The advice I've found most frequently online for writing indigenous characters is to

set them in a specific nation and culture rather than just "generic Indian" stereotypes

read and do research with texts written by members of that nation or in collaboration with them

talk to members of that group (heavy emphasis is placed on this one, for pretty obvious reasons.)

The adaptation is set in my home region of Puget Sound, so I spent a long time looking at the Coast Salish peoples who live here. The specifics of my worldbuilding for Neverland pointed me to the Swinomish and Samish peoples.

Fast forward a couple months, I've been doing my research and reaching out to various people and organizations to try and find someone who would be willing to talk to me. So far I've not found anybody who is willing to do so.

The resources I've looked at all mentioned that most native people are pretty guarded, and aren't usually super happy to be approached out of the blue by a white person looking to take up a bunch of their time and use their culture for their art. I absolutely understand why, and I don't want to be pushy and ask more of these people than they're interested in giving to a random stranger.

But this leaves me in a really awkward place, because like...this character exists in the source material I'm using. My choices are either to include her in the story or to deliberately write her out, and writing her out feels...well, bad. Particularly when I'm setting the story in an area where I'm already familiar with the existence of a wide diversity of indigenous groups, some of whose ancestral land I'm currently living on. I know a lot of modern adaptations just sort of quietly erase the Indian characters, but like...I don't want to? I'd feel like a coward doing that, like I was choosing the easy way out instead of doing the hard work of creating a positive and meaningful portrayal of a culture that isn't mine, but I also don't want to publish a book that heavily features a culture I'm not part of without talking to people in that community about it.

I feel kind of caught between a rock and a hard place, and I'm not sure where to turn that I don't just become a burden on someone who has no reason to like or help me. I've tried to find events I can go to to meet people organically, but I've had a hard time finding any specific to the groups I'm trying to work with that aren't closed to the public.

J14 Samish: ~1974-2016

Possible granddaughter of J2 Granny

Daughter of J12 Sissy and J1 Ruffles

Probable sister of J24 Eltanin/Canuck.

Mother of J23 Capricorn, J30 Riptide, J37 Hy'shqa, J40 Suttles, J43 Bellatrix, and J45 Se-Yi-Chn

Grandmother of J49 T'ilem I'nges, J59 Sxwyeqolh, and J63.

Fire Island - Dogfish Point, Skagit County, Washington