Archive for category Legends

YOU READ THAT RIGHT.

How many other cultures out there can lay claim to having a hand in the signature look of one of the most well known and beloved movies of all time? Well…perhaps quite a few. Fair enough. But finding out that your own culture was part of that influence? Major geek squee moment.

This is a Tusken Raider.

Nasty looking piece of work. According to the Star Wars wikia, …”Tusken Raiders, less formally referred to as Sand People or simply as Tuskens, were a culture of nomadic, primitive sentients indigenous to Tatooine, where they were often hostile to local settlers.” They don’t speak much English, let alone anything that resembles words, stay on a desert planet while wearing bathrobes, and routinely mess up people’s day in general.

You may remember first seeing them in Star Wars: A New Hope…

Now notice anything familiar about that club the Tusken Raider’s holding? It’s called a Gaderffii.

Of the most interest to this article is the other end of the club. From the Star Wars Wiki: “The opposite end of the gaffi stick usually was bent into an L-shape, with a large and heavy club head tipped by a hook or second spearpoint…”

…

It’s a bloody Fijian War Club!

More concisely, it’s the War Club known as the ‘Totokia’.

This particular club was a mean little thing. While other clubs busied themselves with the business of bashing heads and chopping limbs, the Totokia was primarily concerned with ventilating your skull. Museum Victoria explains that “…these heavy-headed clubs are designed to penetrate the victim’s skull with minimum effort. They were favoured by chiefs, and used predominantly in heavy scrub where the required short swing of the club would not catch on undergrowth.”

How great is that? Fiji’s ancestors and their bloodthirsty ways are the reason why the Tusken Raider’s Gaderffii looks the way it looks today. Apparently the Star Wars design department loved the aesthetics of the Fijian War Clubs so much they tried the Gaderffii idea on three other war club types, before finally (I assume) settling on the Totokia version we now see in the film.

Imagine. Two generations from now, you’ll be sitting on a hovering wheelchair, proudly explaining to your kids that those honking, screaming sand people on Tatooine are brandishing your great x16 grandfather’s war club design. Your eyes will twinkle as you recall the good ol’ days when we used to watch Star Wars on VHS tapes. And how you damn kids got it easy today. Then they’ll wipe their snotty noses and go back to listening to their iPodd that’s implanted in their brains.

Another review of the infamous Totokia club from the Museum of New Zealand is embedded below.

May the force be with you sara.