Talk:Guane people

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Tisquesusa in topic Image

Image edit

Would you include pictures of skulls in the German people or Swedish people article? Living people are preferable to body parts of the deceased. Yes, Wikipedia is not censored, but "the relevant aspect of the image should be clear and central" and add to the understanding of the article's subject. Cranial deformation was actually quite common throughout the Americas prior to contact, but since it is not practiced by Guane people today, it's not central to their identity. Yuchitown (talk) 16:32, 27 May 2016 (UTC)YuchitownReply

IMHO the image and information is relevant as it is even ("proudly") shown in the Guane museum where that photo was taken. Years ago I visited the same museum, close to the Chicamocha canyon. That it was common in the Americas (and other places) is only a reason to include it, not to "censor" it, I'd say. It is not meant to downgrade the Guane people neither from the past, nor the few survivors of them today. It's history anyway, so it cannot be "offensive" or so. The pottery and cloth making of the indigenous peoples are also history yet do not have a "negative" image, but then I'd say to include more text on that. Reliable sources about the Swedish being "Captain Sweden-ish" or Germans being straightforward and sometimes insensitive to other cultures IMHO should be added to, if they are (historically) relevant to the article. It's not to censor and not to downgrade, just to inform the readers.
Same for human sacrifices. When you read the source material there seem to be two opposing "schools of thought"; one is blaming the Spanish for pointing out the indigenous peoples sacrificed young boys and the other is following the POV of the conquistadores that the people were "primitives" and "cruel" and so on. I think our task as writers is to combine the two POVs and make it into a nuanced, non-censored, informative piece of content. Tisquesusa (talk) 16:54, 27 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
The image you added is tagged as "Guane culture" on Commons, but it's from Casanare. That would not have been Guane, as they were restricted to Santander in a quite small area around the Chicamocha canyon. They could be U'wa, Lache or Tegua, but not Guane if they didn't move from Santander to Casanare... Tisquesusa (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
The prevailing views of Indigenous people of the Americas is that they are primitive and long extinct. The skull image reinforces those stereotypes. St. Stephen's Dom in Vienna is completely decorated with human remains, so why wouldn't Austrian people use skulls to illustrate their article? Because living people better reflect an ethnic group that parts of corpses. If the other image isn't actually of Guane people, could you correct that on its page in Wikipedia Commons and find a better image of Guane people? Yuchitown (talk) 22:22, 27 May 2016 (UTC)YuchitownReply
No, the skull only "reinforces" stereotypes to those who think in stereotypes. It is part of their culture and thus shouldn't been censored, less when it is proudly presented in a Guane museum. If the Austrian people performed those rituals there is no reason why that should be censored from that page either.
That's not how it works. You post an image of "Guanes" which are not Guanes so you are responsible. Laying a task on my shoulders is not how it works; I am not responsible for placing that photo in the infobox. Tisquesusa (talk) 22:44, 27 May 2016 (UTC)Reply