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A Theory of "Slow" Air Nomad Genocide and Speculation About Their Future
Part I: A Genocide in Four Easy Steps and As Many or More Decades
So I've been blowing my top over fun things like fictional genocide, and the Air Nomads were on my mind a lot. Together with arguments that Sozin might not necessarily have hated the Air Nomads, plus the evidence from the show, I've started speculating that the destruction of the Air Nomads wasn't industrial-strength massacres like the German Third Reich perpetuated. Maybe the process was more akin to the reduction of the American native peoples, a combination of very real atrocity and oppression with population issues, social and economic change, and loss of culture. It even culminated with little Airbenders growing up inAir Nomad Reservation Air Temple Island.
First, let's examine the evidence from ATLA. There's no denying a pitched battle took place at the Southern Air Temple, where the Avatar was living and which would have been a prime target. However, there are remarkably few Airbender remains. The FN soldiers might have gotten rid of evidence, sure, but if they did I would think they'd see to their own dead. And there are no corpses or mention of them at the Western or Northern Air Temples. Maybe the lack of bodies is because of the show's rating and the fact that bones decompose in time, but the episode "The Southern Air Temple" didn't flinch from showing a bunch of skeletons, one hundred years after the fact.*
*Another possibility: Weather and scavengers got all the bones in the open, but not Gyatso et al. in the covered area.
I mean if Aang is any indication Air Nomads would have been good at running. They preferred evasion to confrontation, so it's not hard to imagine that a great number of them fled the massacre. And what about the "nomad" part? If 100% of the Air Nomads were living sedentary lives in the Temples, then they weren't nomads. The Fire Nation might want to make people believe that they annihilated a dispersed nomadic population in a single (in)glorious day, but the rest of the world should be suspicious of that kind of bragging.
I'm all the more reluctant to believe the Fire Nation's version of history because I don't want to buy into their propaganda. Their claim of destroying the Air Nomads in a single day is part of the narrative that the Air Nomads were highly organized and centralized, and therefore both a) dangerous and b) susceptible to being wiped out a single sweeping assault. The reality of the Air people was very different, as Aang pointed out in "The Headband" and as we can guess from the appellation "Nomad."
From the foregoing here is my speculation of how the genocide happened:
1. Assault on the Southern Air Temple
Sozin struck the Southern Air Temple during the Comet, demanding that they hand over the Avatar. That seems like a more manageable scale of military operation to me, as opposed to scattering the army to four different locations around the world, two of which (North and East) were in Earth Kingdom territory. And let's not even get into hitting all the nomadic tribes and families at once everywhere around the world in one day, which is logistically impossible.
During this assault many priests and acolytes were killed, but a sizable number escaped when Monk Gyatso went Batshit Badass and took a bunch of Fire Nation soldiers with him. The refugees scattered, some to the Southern Water Tribe or Earth Kingdom, some to the other Air Temples carrying their warning with them.
2. Assault on the Other Air Temples
Now with the possibility that the Avatar had fled, Sozin ordered the other Air Temples attacked and also ordered the capture or killing of Air Nomads, forcing or bargaining his way to the Northern and Eastern Temples. I don't put it past him to have tortured monks and nuns in particular to reveal the location of the Avatar, which none of them could have known. Gyatso at least knew Aang had fled before the SAT assault though he didn't know where, and maybe that partial knowledge provided extra motivation for him to die in battle.
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loopy777 made a good argument in the comments that #1 and #2 should be a single step, i.e. Sozin would have launched simultaneous attacks on all four Air Temples, and I think that reasoning is sound.)
3. Exodus and Dispersion
Air monks and nuns fled from the other Air Temples. If the Southern Air Temple, which was supposed to be accessible only by air bison, was destroyed, it didn't make sense for anyone else to stick around and be sitting targets. Many were killed or captured (and then tortured to death, etc.), but many also escaped these initial massacres.
4. Attrition: Killing, Agrarian Pressure, Loss of Identity
Now with increasing numbers of Air Nomad refugees in the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, a mixed process of attrition began. The Earth people, largely sedentary farmers, may well have been expanding their farmlands, pushing the nomads out of their traditional hunting and migration grounds. Some of these Earth Kingdom populations may have seen an opportunity in Sozin's campaign against the Air Nomads, betraying the nomadic tribes or just joining the genocidal fun.
Between the expanding agrarian civilization of the Earth Kingdom and the depredations of the Fire Nation, the nomadic life probably became increasingly unfeasible and often dangerous. Contrary to the Fire Nation's lies, the Air Nomads couldn't mount an organized military resistance; the Air Nomad population was likely never as large as the agrarian Fire Nation's or Earth Kingdom's. The Air Temples, probably their largest population centers and certainly the most important cultural centers, were destroyed or abandoned. Maybe there were instances of tribal alliances and even victories, but the Air Nomads as a whole couldn't fight the Fire Nation's policy of genocide or even those Earth populations who would have been happy to see them gone.
Under these circumstances the best strategy for survival were escape and camouflage. They could go to the friendlier or less populated parts of the Earth Kingdom and maintain the old ways, though that would have been just a temporary solution until the farming settlements spread and the same conflicts started up again. Or they could settle down and no longer be Air Nomads, which I believe is the path most of them eventually took for safety and due to the pressures on nomadic life. With this loss of identity airbending would have died out of the population, since bending is related to spirituality. (amyraine raises a good counterargument in her comment below, though.) Air Nomad refugees in the Water Tribes would similarly have experienced assimilation.
There are other things I could speculate about, like Air Nomad concentration camps and the forcible transfer of Air Nomad children to Fire Nation parents, all in the name of properly civilizing them. (U.S.A! U.S.A.!) I like to imagine that Ty Lee is a descendant of assimilated Air Nomads, but of course that is speculation like the rest of this post.
Part II: Looking to the Future of the Air Nation
Others have speculated and written about the return of airbending and the Air Nomads, so I won't go deeply into that subject here. With the culture slowly reviving and the spirituality returning (though to a more materialistic world) the genetic components that are out there could respond and bring airbending back.
If the airbenders do return outside of Tenzin's little brood, they'll certainly be a more eclectic and cosmopolitan bunch than before, and probably not exist as nomadic tribes, not in this increasingly industrialized world. Instead they might be more of a network bound together by common genes and spirituality, though they'd also bring their different cultures and perspectives.
In fact, maybe the Air culture no longer has to rest on airbending, or Air Nomad genes. There are non-bending Air Acolytes who are going to be an important part of the group, who don't have the identifier of bending power or genetics but still share the culture and spirituality. And then if airbending spontaneously returns, whether to descendants of Air Nomads or even other populations (as in The Element of Freedom [viaamyraine] in which the Northern Air Temple settlers start developing airbending), who might not share the same culture or at least might be multicultural, the picture would grow even more complex.
In the end the revival of the Air culture would increasingly run into the question, what does it mean to be an Air... something? It's hard to even agree on a name because they're no longer nomads, they're not all benders, they might not all be monks and nuns or acolytes, and they might not even share the same culture. Air Nation probably works best, as in the American First Nations.
I fully expect conflict and crisis to result under this scenario, with perhaps purists like Tenzin wanting to limit membership to airbenders who are part of the old Air Nomad culture like himself and his children, with the Air Acolytes in a strictly supporting role. As Air Acolytes increase in numbers and power they might want recognition as full members, perhaps to be called monks and nuns even if they don't airbend. Other airbenders or Air Nomad descendants might similarly want to be included or might not identify with the Air Nation at all, resulting in more conflict.
Recovering from the crimes committed against their ancestors, the Air Nation will have to adapt to these new realities. It's not easy to adapt to change, much less horrible collective trauma and the destruction of one's identity. But it's a necessary process and one that I think will ultimately make the Air Nation more inclusive and stronger, an important spiritual presence and alternative viewpoint in an increasingly materialistic, mechanized world.
The Air Nomad and now Air Nation story is one of loss, but it's one of hope and revival as well. Despite atrocity, despite human imperfections, despite time and change and pain, they are making a comeback if in a different form. They may be fictional but I see in their story the struggles and triumphs of real-life peoples who recovered, or are trying to recover, from atrocities and, and fight daily to build something new out of the destruction.
I wish them all luck, because the world loses something when a unique culture is lost, the voices, the views, the ways of life. Much of what is lost will not return, but maybe the strange alchemy of life will bring constancy as well as change, rebirth as well as death, and maybe something strong and vital and beautiful will arise out unimaginable tragedy. I certainly hope so.
So I've been blowing my top over fun things like fictional genocide, and the Air Nomads were on my mind a lot. Together with arguments that Sozin might not necessarily have hated the Air Nomads, plus the evidence from the show, I've started speculating that the destruction of the Air Nomads wasn't industrial-strength massacres like the German Third Reich perpetuated. Maybe the process was more akin to the reduction of the American native peoples, a combination of very real atrocity and oppression with population issues, social and economic change, and loss of culture. It even culminated with little Airbenders growing up in
First, let's examine the evidence from ATLA. There's no denying a pitched battle took place at the Southern Air Temple, where the Avatar was living and which would have been a prime target. However, there are remarkably few Airbender remains. The FN soldiers might have gotten rid of evidence, sure, but if they did I would think they'd see to their own dead. And there are no corpses or mention of them at the Western or Northern Air Temples. Maybe the lack of bodies is because of the show's rating and the fact that bones decompose in time, but the episode "The Southern Air Temple" didn't flinch from showing a bunch of skeletons, one hundred years after the fact.*
*Another possibility: Weather and scavengers got all the bones in the open, but not Gyatso et al. in the covered area.
I mean if Aang is any indication Air Nomads would have been good at running. They preferred evasion to confrontation, so it's not hard to imagine that a great number of them fled the massacre. And what about the "nomad" part? If 100% of the Air Nomads were living sedentary lives in the Temples, then they weren't nomads. The Fire Nation might want to make people believe that they annihilated a dispersed nomadic population in a single (in)glorious day, but the rest of the world should be suspicious of that kind of bragging.
I'm all the more reluctant to believe the Fire Nation's version of history because I don't want to buy into their propaganda. Their claim of destroying the Air Nomads in a single day is part of the narrative that the Air Nomads were highly organized and centralized, and therefore both a) dangerous and b) susceptible to being wiped out a single sweeping assault. The reality of the Air people was very different, as Aang pointed out in "The Headband" and as we can guess from the appellation "Nomad."
From the foregoing here is my speculation of how the genocide happened:
1. Assault on the Southern Air Temple
Sozin struck the Southern Air Temple during the Comet, demanding that they hand over the Avatar. That seems like a more manageable scale of military operation to me, as opposed to scattering the army to four different locations around the world, two of which (North and East) were in Earth Kingdom territory. And let's not even get into hitting all the nomadic tribes and families at once everywhere around the world in one day, which is logistically impossible.
During this assault many priests and acolytes were killed, but a sizable number escaped when Monk Gyatso went Batshit Badass and took a bunch of Fire Nation soldiers with him. The refugees scattered, some to the Southern Water Tribe or Earth Kingdom, some to the other Air Temples carrying their warning with them.
2. Assault on the Other Air Temples
Now with the possibility that the Avatar had fled, Sozin ordered the other Air Temples attacked and also ordered the capture or killing of Air Nomads, forcing or bargaining his way to the Northern and Eastern Temples. I don't put it past him to have tortured monks and nuns in particular to reveal the location of the Avatar, which none of them could have known. Gyatso at least knew Aang had fled before the SAT assault though he didn't know where, and maybe that partial knowledge provided extra motivation for him to die in battle.
(
loopy777 made a good argument in the comments that #1 and #2 should be a single step, i.e. Sozin would have launched simultaneous attacks on all four Air Temples, and I think that reasoning is sound.)3. Exodus and Dispersion
Air monks and nuns fled from the other Air Temples. If the Southern Air Temple, which was supposed to be accessible only by air bison, was destroyed, it didn't make sense for anyone else to stick around and be sitting targets. Many were killed or captured (and then tortured to death, etc.), but many also escaped these initial massacres.
4. Attrition: Killing, Agrarian Pressure, Loss of Identity
Now with increasing numbers of Air Nomad refugees in the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, a mixed process of attrition began. The Earth people, largely sedentary farmers, may well have been expanding their farmlands, pushing the nomads out of their traditional hunting and migration grounds. Some of these Earth Kingdom populations may have seen an opportunity in Sozin's campaign against the Air Nomads, betraying the nomadic tribes or just joining the genocidal fun.
Between the expanding agrarian civilization of the Earth Kingdom and the depredations of the Fire Nation, the nomadic life probably became increasingly unfeasible and often dangerous. Contrary to the Fire Nation's lies, the Air Nomads couldn't mount an organized military resistance; the Air Nomad population was likely never as large as the agrarian Fire Nation's or Earth Kingdom's. The Air Temples, probably their largest population centers and certainly the most important cultural centers, were destroyed or abandoned. Maybe there were instances of tribal alliances and even victories, but the Air Nomads as a whole couldn't fight the Fire Nation's policy of genocide or even those Earth populations who would have been happy to see them gone.
Under these circumstances the best strategy for survival were escape and camouflage. They could go to the friendlier or less populated parts of the Earth Kingdom and maintain the old ways, though that would have been just a temporary solution until the farming settlements spread and the same conflicts started up again. Or they could settle down and no longer be Air Nomads, which I believe is the path most of them eventually took for safety and due to the pressures on nomadic life. With this loss of identity airbending would have died out of the population, since bending is related to spirituality. (
amyraine raises a good counterargument in her comment below, though.) Air Nomad refugees in the Water Tribes would similarly have experienced assimilation.There are other things I could speculate about, like Air Nomad concentration camps and the forcible transfer of Air Nomad children to Fire Nation parents, all in the name of properly civilizing them. (U.S.A! U.S.A.!) I like to imagine that Ty Lee is a descendant of assimilated Air Nomads, but of course that is speculation like the rest of this post.
Part II: Looking to the Future of the Air Nation
Others have speculated and written about the return of airbending and the Air Nomads, so I won't go deeply into that subject here. With the culture slowly reviving and the spirituality returning (though to a more materialistic world) the genetic components that are out there could respond and bring airbending back.
If the airbenders do return outside of Tenzin's little brood, they'll certainly be a more eclectic and cosmopolitan bunch than before, and probably not exist as nomadic tribes, not in this increasingly industrialized world. Instead they might be more of a network bound together by common genes and spirituality, though they'd also bring their different cultures and perspectives.
In fact, maybe the Air culture no longer has to rest on airbending, or Air Nomad genes. There are non-bending Air Acolytes who are going to be an important part of the group, who don't have the identifier of bending power or genetics but still share the culture and spirituality. And then if airbending spontaneously returns, whether to descendants of Air Nomads or even other populations (as in The Element of Freedom [via
amyraine] in which the Northern Air Temple settlers start developing airbending), who might not share the same culture or at least might be multicultural, the picture would grow even more complex.In the end the revival of the Air culture would increasingly run into the question, what does it mean to be an Air... something? It's hard to even agree on a name because they're no longer nomads, they're not all benders, they might not all be monks and nuns or acolytes, and they might not even share the same culture. Air Nation probably works best, as in the American First Nations.
I fully expect conflict and crisis to result under this scenario, with perhaps purists like Tenzin wanting to limit membership to airbenders who are part of the old Air Nomad culture like himself and his children, with the Air Acolytes in a strictly supporting role. As Air Acolytes increase in numbers and power they might want recognition as full members, perhaps to be called monks and nuns even if they don't airbend. Other airbenders or Air Nomad descendants might similarly want to be included or might not identify with the Air Nation at all, resulting in more conflict.
Recovering from the crimes committed against their ancestors, the Air Nation will have to adapt to these new realities. It's not easy to adapt to change, much less horrible collective trauma and the destruction of one's identity. But it's a necessary process and one that I think will ultimately make the Air Nation more inclusive and stronger, an important spiritual presence and alternative viewpoint in an increasingly materialistic, mechanized world.
The Air Nomad and now Air Nation story is one of loss, but it's one of hope and revival as well. Despite atrocity, despite human imperfections, despite time and change and pain, they are making a comeback if in a different form. They may be fictional but I see in their story the struggles and triumphs of real-life peoples who recovered, or are trying to recover, from atrocities and, and fight daily to build something new out of the destruction.
I wish them all luck, because the world loses something when a unique culture is lost, the voices, the views, the ways of life. Much of what is lost will not return, but maybe the strange alchemy of life will bring constancy as well as change, rebirth as well as death, and maybe something strong and vital and beautiful will arise out unimaginable tragedy. I certainly hope so.