Work Text:
Years ago now, I heard of two things in relation to the Jewish diaspora, and they spawned this idea.
The two things are firstly, that there is a black Nigerian (I think it's Nigerian - it's been years I could be misremembering and I'm too lazy to even look it up on Google) Jewish community that was discovered. They had quietly drifted under the radar for centuries, and it's a strange thing. Keep in mind that the Ashkenaz Jews of Europe are so consistently racially constant that there are genetic diseases endemic to the community because one Does Not marry outside the community. On top of which, it is not a proselytising religion, meaning that unlike Islam or Christianity (or Mandalore, actually) it's very much about, "we're doing our thing with God, the rest of you can do your thing, it's nothing to us".
The second thing is that a South American community of Jews was discovered who hadn't even realised they were Jewish, because of how they had been hiding for so long. That is, Jews were persecuted for millennia (The Romans didn't like Jews much either), so it was natural to hide your religious practices behind closed doors. When a group of Jews wind up in South America, they continue to hide it, but along the way the connection gets lost, and those specific people just assume this is a thing you do behind closed doors and everyone does it. Eventually the closed-door religion is discovered and it is revealed to be basically Jewish practice.
How this connects to my idea, is that that it is very easy to imagine any number of diasporas where people vanish into a local population and gradually their origins are masked or lost, but for weird family traditions.
So, let's go to the inevitable diaspora that would have followed the Excision/Dral'han.
Keeping in line with my headcanon about Naboo being the masters of armour hidden in clothing (and I saw it in someone else's fanfic once) imagine if they are the remnants of a Mandalorian colony. Part of the reason for the acrimony between the Gungans and the Naboo is the history of Mandalorian occupation. Perhaps there is even some cross-pollination in that the Gungans became more warlike following the Mandalorians, and the Naboo kept the armour traditions but gradually became more peaceful to coexist with the Republic they were now part of, which exacerbated tensions between the Gungans and outsiders again, because their respective cultures were at loggerheads a second time, like the traditionalist Mando'ade and the New Mandalorians.
However, the language remains an underpinning of Naboo culture, though changed. Linguistic drift and interaction with Gungan language caused the Mando'a to shift to different pronunciation and spellings. So, say, 'ramikad' becomes 'rumakad'.
Meanwhile, you have slavery in the Star Wars galaxy and one of the underlying cultures that develops is from Mando'ade taken captive in the intervening years since the Dral'han and teaching what they can of their culture to friends and family. Shmi and Anakin are descendants of a long line of Mandalorians lost to slavery who were never rescued. They speak a linguistically drifted Mando'a in the home, and follow as many traditions are allowed by slavery, with a belief system developing that reflects a realism that one cannot wear armour when one has no resources to make or buy it, leading to a view of armour as a metaphor. 'We armour ourselves against the lies and tricks of our owners", for example.
When Padme and Qui-Gon stay with Anakin and Shmi, Padme catches them speaking their version of Mando'a - which is just this side of intelligible to Padme. She quietly joins in on the conversation, the three of them working around the gaps in their respective versions of the language - that is, Naboo Mando'a has a hundred words for water and myriad water metaphors, while Tatooine slave Mando'a has a hundred words for sand and myriad sand metaphors, so they both have moments where they're not mutually intelligible, but they work through it. In particular, Anakin and Shmi are used to helping new slaves understand what's going on through less-than-ideal linguistic barriers, so this is not a new thing for them.
They leave Tatooine, and Padme is absolutely certain that Shmi, Anakin and anyone of their particular subculture are from a lost tribe of Naboo. She determines that, once she is back in command of her planet that she will try to find a way to bring them home.
The Naboo crisis goes as it did in the movies, but Padme is very determined to stay in contact with Anakin, because Naboo has a specific deal with the Jedi about any of their people who become Jedi. As a very family-oriented culture (at the heart of Naboo culture are the six Fundamentals, Children, Family, The People, Education, Language and Protection), they studiously enforce that families are to be kept abreast of what their children are doing in the Temple, and even if they may not have personal holocalls every day, they exchange letters weekly and holocalls yearly until the child is thirteen, when they come home for their adulthood ceremony, and again until they are knighted. As Anakin, to Padme's way of thinking, is a lost Naboo, he deserves to have this contact with his home, and she will stand in for his family.
She sends a team out to Tatooine, who come back as determined as Padme is to get as many people out as they can.
Using some legal wrangling, Padme is able to get a whole whack of slaves out of the Hutts' grasp by claiming them as Naboo. They are collectively resettled on Naboo, including Shmi, who is very happy to have regular contact with Anakin and to know he is well.
Anakin gets on less well with Palpatine, because Palpatine doesn't care about Naboo traditional culture and won't speak Mundua (or Minduao - depending on if you ask Anakin or Padme) with him.
When the clone wars start, Anakin and Padme exchange looks and basically claim all the clones as Naboo.
As a side note, because Satine has been trying so very hard to demilitarise Mandalore, she does not willingly claim the clones, but provides under-the-table support to the Naboo to 'repatriate' the clones who they cheerfully tell everyone are speaking a clearly bastardised version of Naboo's Minduao. She is worried about the massive number of armoured clones upsetting her delicate political balance, but she will cheerfully support Naboo efforts.
This upsets the traditionalist Mando'ade, because the clones are clearly speaking Mando'a.
Anakin bluntly confronts the angry muttering crowd of Mandalorians living on Coruscant and asks them if they are willing to accept the clones as their own, then?
The cognitive dissonance of claiming the clones are Mando'ade if they're speaking Mando'a, but not Mando'ade because they are flesh droids, sends the upset traditionalists into a mental tailspin.
I don't really have any ideas for that, I just like them being all upset because the clones are so very Mandalorian, but they're also denying they're people and someone making them actually have to think about it.
Anyhow, some political wrangling later and there are a bunch of Naboo overseers on Kamino, and because no one ever does any historical research, they get away with claiming the clones are totally Naboo. The Mandalorian trainers can't even begin to figure out how to argue about this, because they don't know any history either (and maybe one or two start to actually wonder if Naboo is where Mandalore came from). By the time some academics have actually worked out the history and tried to tell everyone the truth, the Naboo have walked off with the clone cadets and suddenly clones are not a renewable resource.
Krell gets caught immediately on that line of thinking, as do any military COs treating the clones as just something to throw infinitely at the enemy.
This was not even in the back of Palpatine's mind as something that could happen, and when he tries to get Anakin on side, Anakin is appalled, because his mom just adopted a whole squad, and he's not going to send his new baby siblings out to die on the front lines. Anyhow, with former slaves like Shmi adopting, naturally they get the clones scanned for everything and find the chips and . . . well, I'm sure you can all figure out the rest.
This collective Mandalorian diaspora get together and reform into a sort-of consistent single culture. Effectively, they form something where you choose the form of resol'nare you want to follow at thirteen. So, if you want to be a warrior/soldier, you follow the clones' version, if you want a craftsperson you make a different vow, and you can change at any time if you change your mind. After someone finally gets through to people with the truth of how this diaspora actually worked, historically, Satine points at them a lot, saying, "Look! See! We can adapt to present circumstances instead of clinging to an ancient tradition that literally drove one of Mandalore's key animal life forms to extinction!"
The traditionalist Mando'ade make a lot of grumpy noises.
And that's where this idea kind of poops out.