You released a Primative neighbour. You need them to be a non-primative. Just wait for colonists, you'll not regret it anyway (you get to steal their tech)
Develop --> release before it was disingenuously removed (like most other agency for natives) was a much stronger a play than waiting for a colonizer, with the possible exception of SA native councils which can migrate into Caribbean for pre-1500 borders.
Compared to having institution progression starting early 1500s, that "tech boost" is a trap. It's unrealistic unless very lucky to be caught up on tech and ideas before 1650...putting these nations and their "tech boost" well behind central African nations even if they develop for all 4 initial institutions. That's the reality of post-1570 reform. You wait 70 years after passing 5 religious reforms, you get a farce "tech boost", then you wait some more, for ~1/2 of timeline spent mostly doing nothing.
"Primitives" are the only position in the world that has that non-gameplay. The sad thing is, they were not like that in all previous patches, and the devs have gone out of their way to make sure they're like that. It's a joke. Waiting to be able to play is not the same thing as challenge. The design of these nations actually had more gameplay 3-4 years ago, as in a lower % of the game was spent doing nothing.
I played in 1.22 (last version of the game) and, in fact, as the OPM is shown with feudalism adopted, I didn't understood why I was not able to reform.
Going off the color of the province, it appears the institution is present, but not embraced. Lighter shade of green (you can check this yourself, compare the color of this province to the color of provinces in Europe in the same screen using console on a different save). Maybe I play the game too much to know that at a glance, but whatever.
I don't know French, but quickly slapping the text into a translator reads: "Adopted the institution: feudalism". Unless there is nuance to the translation that I'm not aware, "adopted" in the English language is closer to "embraced" than it is to "present" in this context so that is misleading. Based on your reaction to this I'm guessing that the word does indeed imply "formally approving or accepting" the institution.
Likely the text is wrong and it's a UI bug. There are plenty of those in English too unfortunately (offensive coalition pre-war screen and what you can take/core are blatant examples that have been reported and ignored for 2+ years).
Translations aren't easy. The translator is putting "actuel" (current) when I try to put the English version in the translator. However, what the English is really saying is that the institution is there, but not formally adopted. When I look at translation I'm not sure that word usage would be appropriate in this context in French.
