The Native American Nations have often be considered as one of the weakest point in Shadowrun setting. After 25 years, people most people who talk about "rebooting" the setting mention it. They often remark current Amerindian population figures would never allow them to first wage such war, and than populate countries that large. The issue is somewhat made worse by the fact that the population number from the Native American Nations sourcebooks weren't carried over in Shadows of North America, acknowledging the problem and creating a precedent for a retcon, if not a reboot. Some get into the details and point out that this tribe should be more important than that tribe, or that they're thousands of kilometers away from their historical territory. There are also other people to whom the sole idea US could lose a war, sign a peace treaty, and not develop a full magical military capacity under five years, is unsufferable.

Since as of now, the NAN are still part of Shadowrun, I started a new project of my own to write a more detailed and consistent history of the NAN. I already had tossed a few ideas in my file about Revlup corporation. The first idea was the parallel between the war against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the way US armed forces fought them. As both happened around the same time, early in divergent timelines, I thought the means and methods would very similar, including the wide use of private contractors. The second idea was that the Amerindian tribes would have had allies, with a growing uprising, triggered by indiscriminate use of armed forces by the US federal government. It had been barely touched upon in Shadowrun, but what I had in mind was to revert or equalize the ratio between Amerindian population, including Latin-Americans, whose much closer to Amerindians than Spanish, and the European population. I insist especially on the Mormons, whose presence in Utah has been repeatidly point out in sourcebooks, without truly raising the consequences (the population figures in the Ute nation in Shadows of North America is actually below the sole Mormon population). The result I came up with differs slightly from the description made in Shadowrun, without being really realistic.

However, in spite of all the respect I may have for Shadowrun canon, I didn't even started to try to explain how an Air Force regiment could have had a 15-to-1 kill ratio against SAIM air forces as it isput in 10 Mercs or, first of all, how and why the SAIM would have had an air force. Or maybe it's because of all the respect I have for Shadowrun canon.

As often with this type of file, I stopped around year 2035, several decades before the time at which Shadowrun games take place. I actually focus every time on the necessary period, and the possible period to switch from our world as we know it to Shadowrun world. This file should originally have ended with the Denver Treaty, in 2018. But I added a part on Tir Tairngire foundation, which has its own believability "problem" (mostly because of the elves age at the time, as most are born in 2011 and the following years). I also considered mentionning how and when the Tsimshian nation left the Sovereign Tribal Council in 2037. Then I realized I should continue up to 2075, write about the CAS and California secession to put them in a context, the civil war in the Algonquin-Manitou, the war between Tsimshian and Salish-Shidhe...

About 2035, we were talking with friends over the idea to divide Shadowrun into three eras. Instead of the current pussyfooting to determine if Shadowrun, now in its fifth editon, should willingly or forcefully go back to the 1980ies cyberpuk genre, maybe it would have been better to carry on with Shadowrun 2050 (an unfortunately sloppy project). Shadowrun could have drive on after 2070, while wistfuls could keep on playing in 2050. I was remarking the period between the first and second editions, 2049-2053 was actually in a pretty blank state, with only a handful of adventures in Seattle with small players and small events (this can be extended up to 2055, when Chicago bug spirits invasion was the first major events in the line). There was more than enough room to play.
Following this line of reasoning, we then imagined that "Shadowrun 2035" would actually match better some whiches (mine included). The setting would be closer to us from technological and sociological points of view, and magic less developped. The states were still defending whatever powers they retained, while corporations are growingly interfering on the geopolitical stage, the dragons were still behind the scenes. This era would lend itself better to Clancy-style "techno-thriller" than later Shadowrun settig. We could finally play the Eurowars veterans we all wanted to twenty or thirty years too late. The hackers would style be keyboard virtuoso, acting in fear of spooks who are the only one with access to full virtual reality through cyber-terminals. There, the numbers of events is way much more important, maybe even too much, with the Eurowars, the CAS, Tir Tairngire and California secession, the Amazonian revolution...

Another topic I wanted to deal with what the tribal population proper. The first step was to find nowadays numbers. The 2010 US census had for the first time featured information on the entire population (not only the reserves, but every US inhabitants with Amerindian origins) in a report available online : The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2010. I quickly realized that the current size of most tribes is so small than no extrapolation was ever to make sense. The worst inconsistency by far when you see what is currently the largest tribe by a wide margin, the navajos, basically doesn't exist at all in the NAN, their name just appearing in a Sioux tribal breakdown, without any explanation on how or why there were "exiled" so far from their lands! So mayhe Shadowrun alternate history should start as early as the American frontier era.