Intergalactic Summit

now I will answer the questions of the original survey

Please answer the following if you are an ethnic Achur or of mixed Achuran heritage.

1. When speaking in terms of your identity, would you foremostly describe yourself as an Achura, or a Caldari?
Both
2. Were you born on our homeworld of Achura Prime/Saisio III, or elsewhere?
Saisio III
3. Were you raised in the Achuran client state or one of it's very few outposts, or under a megacorporation?
3A. If the former, have you ever felt uncomfortable with your position as a citizen of a tributary protectorate?
3B. If the latter, were you content with the necessity to comform to the Caldari cultural norms to be accepted? Did you feel you were provided with satisfactory education about your ethnic history?
Qí province Qí Sect Zhongdu now the sect agreement with Sukuuvestaa is this you legally own the cities we run them oh and culturally were weird Mix
4. To whom would you say you hold the most loyalty: The Elder Visionaries - the provisional government of the homeworld, based around the remnants of the old empire - The Chief Executive Panel, or neither?
Both
5. Do you follow one of the many sects of the Faith of the Achur, the Caldari Wayist Faith, or neither/another religion?

6. Are you familar with Sukuuvestaa's early actions on our homeworld, where they demolished and replaced many of our major cities, deposed our native leadership, and assumed minority rule over the planet, enforcing Caldari culture in the process?
6A. Do you believe this was a good and justified action?

7. Would you consider native Achuran culture to have a great deal in common with native Caldari culture, as is often claimed, or to even be essentially one and the same?
Kindred spirits mostly

8. How do you personally perceive the Caldari and Achuran relationship in general?

Odd and weird

1. When speaking in terms of your identity, would you foremostly describe yourself as an Achura, or a Caldari?

Religiously and culturally Achura, but an exile.


2. Were you born on our homeworld of Achura Prime/Saisio III, or elsewhere?

Achura. Not that I remember even a minute spent there.


3. Were you raised in the Achuran client state or one of it's very few outposts, or under a megacorporation?

A little bit of both, I gather. I, or my predecessor, was raised in a Caldari city until she was seven, then in a SuVee creche until she was eight, then at a rural monastery and a succession of boarding schools. So, mostly, the client state.


3A. If the former, have you ever felt uncomfortable with your position as a citizen of a tributary protectorate?

A little. Aurora Morgan's desire for an independent Achur nation has some resonance. I don't actually think it's a very good idea, though.


4. To whom would you say you hold the most loyalty: The Elder Visionaries - the provisional government of the homeworld, based around the remnants of the old empire - The Chief Executive Panel, or neither?

The Elder Visionaries, though as an exile without strong emotional attachments to places and people of my past, I'm really only loyal to one person.


5. Do you follow one of the many sects of the Faith of the Achur, the Caldari Wayist Faith, or neither/another religion?

Distinctly Achura, Shuijing sect.


6. Are you familar with Sukuuvestaa's early actions on our homeworld, where they demolished and replaced many of our major cities, deposed our native leadership, and assumed minority rule over the planet, enforcing Caldari culture in the process?

Very.


6A. Do you believe this was a good and justified action?

Ambivalent. It wasn't especially gentle, but they were more careful with us than ... well, maybe just about any other interstellar empire might have been. They basically disarmed our culture of its most militaristic tendencies by Uplifting the feudal aristocracy, and left us with maybe the world's strangest and most reluctant theocracy.


7. Would you consider native Achuran culture to have a great deal in common with native Caldari culture, as is often claimed, or to even be essentially one and the same?

We do have a fair bit in common; the Wayists aren't wrong in identifying us as close spiritual kin. Only, while the Caldari seem to look at us as poor cousins, I kind of look at them as the wealthy, connected, and ... well, kind of aggressive and gambling-addicted cousin to whom I owe a family debt that we might actually have worked off a few decades back, but who I'm still fond of and helps keep my family fed and protected.


8. How do you personally perceive the Caldari and Achuran relationship in general?

Not abusive, exactly, but a little patronizing. Ultimately, probably both communities benefit pretty well. They take a little advantage, but, maybe, so do we.

Well ... and that's not an unreasonable way to look at it necessarily, but the Caldari as a culture also have certain standards for what "being Caldari" requires, stuff like language, decorum, manner of dress ... and, usually, corporate citizenship. You might remember some of that from when you were preparing for the academy? Cultural conversion was pretty much outright required.

... even if we could switch right back, after.

I'm also aware that my beliefs, while compatible with Caldari beliefs, are not themselves Caldari. The Caldari were taught their culture and ways by Caldari Prime, a world of hard winters where material resources are key to surviving.

I prefer Achura's lessons: to prize knowledge and insight, and to treat my share of this world's transient things as something light and expendable, not something desperately important.

I appreciate the Caldari State, and the protection it provides our people. But though I'm half Civire by blood, I'm not Caldari.

You know, Ms. Shaishi, I feel like it would've been polite to at least credit me when resurrecting something like this. And after more than two and a half years, no less!

Well, I suppose I ought to explain a little context behind it, since it's here now: I originally wrote up this survey for the purposes of gauging general opinion and raising awareness of Achura culture in general - The original post included a secondary form for foreigners - as well as sort of a means to reach out to other Achur, at a time when I earnestly felt like I was the only one in the Capsuleer sphere who actually practiced the Faith to any degree further than the faintest lip service. (Of course, now we have Aria about, who runs rings around me in that front, even as an amnesiac.) If I remember right, it was prompted by a number of small events, including me being taken as a Wayist by multiple individuals, several ethnic Achura identifying themselves with Caldari wholesale and one even denouncing our native belief system as being "Gallente-ish", and I think some bizarre event where I was told by a Civire rookie that our people were literally living in mud huts when we were uplifted, which justified it in juxtaposition to the experience the Caldari were forced to endure some hundreds of years prior.

I'm not quite sure why Ms. Shiashi's revived it. In retrospect, the whole thing was a bit reactionary on my part; It's obvious that I was pretty annoyed if you go back and read the back and fourth. (Though, you wouldn't believe the response I got from some ethnic Caldari at the time. There were even death threats!)

That said, I haven't revised my opinion on the overall subject. While it's getting less common than it was in the days where Provist rule was a more recent memory, the State is still frequently all too willing to pretend we, and our history, don't exist, especially when it causes unsightly blemishes in it's national myth. It remains troubling to me how many of our people are willing to overlook this, or even adamantly defend the lack of a need for any change to the status quo whatsoever, be it in terms of the restrictions put on our society and government, or in how our race (or for that matter, race itself) is viewed in State society, culturally.

At the risk of leaving my words a little too unminced, when I hear people say that the State "protects" the homeworld, it's hard not to imagine men in expensive suits on their monthly visit to the local restaurant, if you get my drift. I know you're saying it with a certain number of asterisk's, but I've heard the sentiment without reservation from all too many people, and it's like... Have you even read the history?

To be honest, at this point, I'm almost ready to throw in the towel in terms of hoping the State will somehow come to accommodate our culture within it's society any more than they already do, which essentially amounts to looking the other way and probably vaguely hoping we'll vanish eventually. The fight for Achur to gain acceptance within preexisting State culture is another story, and honestly, a lot of great strides have been made in that front - Which I don't mean to downplay for whom they are important - But it's never been what I've been concerned with, as a native to the homeworld. But changing themselves for our benefit, or letting us settle about the State without taking on their customs? I sort of doubt it.

I almost feel like a better plan to preserve our society in this age, in some capacity, would be to strike our on own, not through hoping for independence for what we have left, but getting some sort of third-party colonization program going for those under the local government. We're not isolated anymore; There are bucketloads of us in Capsules now, a far cry from two decades past. I feel as though it could be the right time.

I mean, I don't think the State is actively trying to kill us off with neglect - Sorry if I phrased that a bit too harshly, or if I'm coming across as hostile. It's a subject that's easy for me to get passionate about, considering the responses I've had in the past.

...That being said, it's a fact that more or less the only reason we're still around is because SuVee didn't think we were valuable enough to assimilate, compared to those who were. I sort of doubt that they'd care if we vanished. I'm not sure how I feel about you suggesting finding that a bit uncomfortable is a sort of nationalist hysteria.

Besides, oppression doesn't have to mean they're coming in and shooting you with a gun. The Caldari would never accept not being able to choose their own fate, and living and dying at the whims of foreigners.

I don't know, Gwen, the matter of Achuran independence always is a thorny problem. On the one side, most of the population seems perfectly content, matters are settled and peaceful and the Saisio system falls within the State's sphere of influence.

On the other hand - these are all arguments I've heard before with a slightly different emphasis...

In any event, let's keep talking about it. Let it be understood that individual Achura are perfectly welcome to seek subsistence elsewhere to experience different cultures and systems of government,. If things were totally and irrevocably broken down, I'd like to think that we would even let the Achuran people go. I hope you can understand how an alliance with the Federation would cause certain security difficulties... ...but even that could probably borne if it didn't come complete with Federal Navy bases, patrols and troops.

Personally I think the Achura should be a patient people. They are starting to be felt more in mainstream Caldari culture. They are certainly appearing higher up in the Suvee chain of command. They are even starting to spread a little more to other Megas. Changes in culture ought to be patient and slow and sure - that's not just been the Caldari way, it has been the Achur way for a long time.

Stop trying to find out occult stuff. It's weird, and I'm pretty sure your god wouldn't like you dabbling in it.

I heard that there's a sect focused on the manipulation of a spoon via mental focus alone.

There is no spoon. But you can manipulate the spoon in this dream.