2013-05-29: [CT] Knick-Knack

[Forrest]

Thirded that the "impoverished indigenous peoples" in question are everyone outside Tsuirakushiti and possibly the Elves.

Farrell and the North seem to be getting by at around a 19th century level of technology. As a resident of the 21st century, I feel like anyone still living in 19th century conditions today must be impoverished; even the poorest of the poor have indoor plumbing and electric lighting and refrigeration (well, except those so poor they don't have an "indoors" to speak of at all). Veracia seems to be further back in the late middle ages, by whose standards everyone in the western world today eats kingly feasts for every meal; you can get a meal with two kinds of meat, two kinds of vegetable, cheese, and soft fluffy bread, made for you by servants, in exchange for 15 minutes of minimum-wage work (a chicken sandwich plus bacon and cheese off the Jack In the Box value menu).

By modern standards, almost everyone who has ever lived has been impoverished. Meji comes from a country with modern standards, while nobody else in her world (besides the Elves) lives anywhere near those standards. So to her, all foreigners are impoverished indigenous people.

[erejnion]

As I was not familiar with the term "indigenous people", I just took it as "the lower classes". Now that I've learned one more term, well, "sometimes a pun is just a pun", or, if we want to make some sense of it, just strip the term off its meaning, and take the phrase for what the individual words mean. Impoverished natives are more than likely to sell this kind of souvenirs, even if they are not ethnic minority.