A self-proclaimed “’90s kid” who frequented arcades and played a lot of Diablo, Byrne grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. The Indigenous Games for Children Resource is a collection of traditional Indigenous games and activities to help front line leaders introduce or reconnect children to recreational and sport activities that reflect the rich cultural heritage of our Indigenous peoples across Canada. Even though she faces the cruelty of a nun, Margaret holds on to her desire to read. https://www.polygon.com/.../indigenous-representation-in-video-games They’ve all thought about what they could pursue with bigger budgets and more AAA-type support. But for studios and developers seeking meaningful Indigenous representation — both on-screen and behind it — developers like Longboat point out that the solution isn’t complicated: “Oftentimes,” he says, “the best way to do that is just to hand off the decision-making power to the folks whose story you’re trying to tell.”, [Ed. In it, you play as Meeygun Hill, a P.I. Especially in more remote Canadian reserve communities, where kids have to travel far from home and face potentially deadly circumstances just to get a high school education, it’s hard to pursue a career like game development. Scheduled for release in June 2016, Honour Water brings together Anishinaabemowin songs and water teachings in a singing game for healing water. “Why not just put out a call saying, ‘Hey, we’re looking to support this sort of work under our banner — to take on a producer role or publisher role, and to help make the industry more accessible to you’?”, Too often, LaPensée says, studios bring Indigenous people onboard with the stated aim of improving representation, but fail because they don’t give them a meaningful say. This is the illustrator's own story! By The New Yorke r. January 6, 2017. By Christy Jordan-Fenton, illustrated by Margaret Pokiak-Fenton Ask your local library if they have these books available! COMICS (DIGITAL + PRINT). 10 out of 10.”. working in “the slums of one of the last major cities in North America,” who is charged with solving the murder of a woman’s sister. Since 2007, LaPensée has designed, written, and/or developed over a dozen video and board games, with an emphasis on Indigenous self-determination and reclamation of narratives. Like Elizabeth LaPensée, Maize Longboat is a lifelong gamer who had trouble relating to characters until playing a fantasy MMO — in his case, World of Warcraft. Both players explore their respective environments, unaware of one another’s existence until the moment that their worlds collide and the formal cooperative game begins. Indigenous video games have arrived. In addition to the schools’ legacy of rampant physical and sexual abuse, they also stripped children of ties to their Indigenous heritage. He was particularly impressed by the 2014 puzzle-platformer Never Alone / Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, which features the Iñupiat language, and for which the publisher, E-Line Media, collaborated and consulted heavily with Iñupiat people. “Video games are a great way to connect people to stories if done right, and there was great opportunity to make a game that set the bar high for indigenous video games… Recommended for ages 3-7. Indigenous peoples through video games. How were they supposed to know what was to come next? But while the general landscape tends to rely on these tropes and stereotypes, Longboat says that doesn’t mean that it’s completely devoid of well-done portrayals of Indigenous peoples. And I’d say it’s not a particularly good thing.”, Since then, Longboat, who is Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) from Six Nations of the Grand River (a reserve community in southern Ontario) on his father’s side, and French Canadian and Finnish on his mother’s, has seen some small improvements in games’ depictions of Indigenous peoples, but they’ve been rare. 'Enough is enough': video of police slamming Indigenous boy face-first to ground rekindles father's rage Thirra, a Wangkangurru man whose 16-year … screen capture of game Spirits of Spring is an adventure game set in Quebec about friendship and bullying. The story of a grandmother who walks to raise awareness of the need to protect our water (the giver of life) and our planet for future generations. For Byrne, it’s the Métis-Cree RPG she designed characters for in school. In addition, as Petersen experienced, communities also often have difficulty — and face high costs — getting internet access. LaPensée, for example, doesn’t mind if her games don’t always “compute” for non-Indigenous players, because, she says, “My audience first and foremost is Indigenous players.” And no matter if their games are explicitly educational, or implicitly so through what they depict, all four developers want to prioritize games and game creation that actively seeks to hire, educate, and/or fund other Indigenous developers and artists. It's a fact. Policies included giving children English names, requiring them to wear European-American clothes, cutting their long hair — which holds deep significance for many tribes — making them attend Christian churches, and giving corporal punishment to students who didn’t speak English (or French, in some Canadian schools). For isolated indigenous communities, video games are becoming the medium of choice to tell their stories, spread their values and make their way of life more accessible to outsiders. References to the tribal affiliation of individuals in this piece use their preferred terminology wherever possible. Developed with technical director Mehrdad Dehdashti, Mi’kmaq artist and animator Ray Caplin, and sound designer Beatrix Moersch, and released in October 2019, Terra Nova is a two-player cooperative platformer exploring first contact between Indigenous and settler peoples in a distant future setting. The games on this list are incredibly beautiful, fun and educational! Indigenous dancer and drummer Bryce Morison. When building the cyberpunk world for her latest game, Hill Agency: BARK & byte, this was Meagan Byrne’s guiding question. The answers all relate back to the grandmother’s time at residential school. Even the classic Space Invaders got a makeover! And what’s a more classic childhood game than the now nearly 50-year-old Oregon Trail series? LaPensée’s goal isn’t just to facilitate Indigenous representation — she also wants to facilitate Indigenous self-determination. Why does she wear her hair in a braid? In practice, this means he’s using the grant to launch Northern Plains Games — a video game studio located on the Cheyenne River Reservation — with the intent to develop games made by, about, and for Indigenous people. A beautiful story about a little girl who begins to notice things about her grandmother as they work together in the garden. Each developer must choose their own way to approach this. Thunderbird Strike (2017) By Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe/Métis) When Rivers Were Trails (2019) By Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe/Métis), Nichlas Emmons (Miami/Shawnee), Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva) PURITY&decay (2017) By Achimostawinan Games Tipi Kaga (2019) By Carl Petersen (Oohe Numpa Lakota) Carl Petersen is a member of the Oohe Nunpa (or Two Kettles) band of Lakota — a tribe indigenous to the North American Great Plains — and a 21-year-old self-proclaimed “Gen-Z/Millennial.” But his childhood wasn’t the always-online one you might expect. Indigenous people have also conveyed their cultures through games, such as Never Alone and Thunderbird Strike. By Monique Gray Smith, illustrated by Danielle Daniel You can play the game here. By Melanie Florence, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard A rhyming book about the unique relationship between parents and their children, in particular about the bond new parents feel with their babies. Tipi Kaga is the studio’s first game, and is designed to teach conversational Lakota by having players build a traditional Lakota tipi in real time, with instructions spoken in Lakota. Indigenous Games and the Arctic Winter Games. Save this story for later. That they were going to get sick from welcoming a new people?”, “Oftentimes,” Longboat adds, “Indigenous people are even coming from positions of power in relation to these explorers, who are aliens in a specific place with no idea how to live or survive off of the Indigenous flora and fauna or the land.”. That she’d succeed, she says, was so unexpected that “they spent the rest of the season trying to undo that storyline, which only occurred because they had so underestimated my character’s intelligence.”. FEATURED GAMES. I was born in 1994, so games have been a part of pop culture my entire life. CANADA: Video showing officers dragging Indigenous man should be admitted in inquest, NAN chiefs say Nishnawbe Aski Nation Executive Council issued a statement on Thursday expressing support for the admission of a cellblock video depicting an Indigenous man being dragged by police officers into the pending inquest into the deaths of Roland McKay and Don Mamakwa who both died … Amka gains superpowers when she tries to release the spirits of the land who have been captured by a villain using the energy of the land. “I often have to defend Indigenous collaborators,” she says, “and feel like I’m fighting to get their voices respected by developers or institutions who just wanted to use all of us to do what they already planned to do before we were all involved.”, “What would an Indigenous sovereign nation look like?”. Napi (say "naw-pea") is a trickster character and the digital comics are based on thousands of years of stories shared by the Blackfoot Indigenous people to empower and educate others about the world around them. Watch Popular Haida filmmaker trying to put an end to people falsely claiming to be Indigenous Video Online, on GlobalNews.ca In 1997 — seven years before WoW’s release, and a year before Petersen was born — Ultima Online went on sale, and it quickly became the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 subscribers. While Tipi Kaga is mostly geared toward those with some grasp of Lakota, Petersen wants to make sure that everyone can play — and benefit from — the game regardless of their level of knowledge, so that even without speaking the language, you can still be immersed in the “cultural feel” of it. “I see these digital spaces,” says Byrne, “as one of the few things where Indigenous people can make something, where they can express themselves, and know that no one’s going to be able to go in and spray-paint all over this. Why does she speak a different language? (Adam Berry/Getty Images). for PC, Mac, tablets and phones, PS4, PS3, XBox, Wii and Kindle She used the premise as an opportunity to enlist over 20 Indigenous writers, including Carl Petersen, from tribes and nations located along the narrative’s route, to tell the stories of those tribes and nations themselves. Indigenous gamers, creators, and characters have been under- or misrepresented since the early days of the industry. During her last days at home, she collects memories and lessons from her family to take with her. Recommended for ages 6-9. | Image source: qalupalik.com Today multimedia platforms are being combined with Indigenous teachings, mythology and stories to bring forth exciting new quests in the form of video games. At imagineNATIVE, Byrne will lead the first-ever iNdigital Space during the festival — a large-scale presentation of digital and interactive Indigenous works, including VR games, online platforms and digital web series. As Jonesy heads out to explore life after high school, he finds himself discovering and dreaming. As part of his master’s thesis examining Indigenous video game development, Longboat developed a game called Terra Nova, released last year, which explores first contact through an Indigenous futuristic lens. You choose to play as either Terra, an Earth-born landkeeper, or Nova, a young star-born inventor. Created in collaboration with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, When Rivers Were Trails follows an Anishinaabe person in the 1890s who is displaced from their traditional territory in Minnesota and heads west to California because of allotment acts, which claimed almost two-thirds of Indigenous land for settlers. Petersen learned Lakota in school, but like about 95% of the roughly 115,000 Lakota members in the U.S. today, he isn’t fluent — his last family member who spoke it fluently died 14 years before he was born. Both organizations work to combat poor representation of Indigenous people in media by helping Indigenous creators shape narratives directly. So Byrne started using her stories to tell Indigenous ones. Created by artist and designer Elizabeth LaPensée, Honour Water is a free game featuring Anishinaabe songs and teachings about the importance of water and protecting it. “Ironically, playing as an Orc felt like the most accurate experience,” she says, “because we were constantly defending land against extreme odds.” She recalls a favorite moment: In a massive, player-coordinated event, she snuck into an enemy castle and, thanks to her poison-crafting skill, successfully assassinated the enemy king. Petersen believes video games are an ideal way to not only teach Lakota, but revitalize it. It is the first game produced by the Indigenous-owned video game company Upper One Games, a subsidiary of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC), a nonprofit based in Anchorage Alaska that serves Alaska Native and American Indian peoples. Comics are awesome. Shi-shi-etko only has a few days before she leaves for residential school. Now, with video game giant Ubisoft Entertainment SA opening offices in Winnipeg later this year, the question is whether games … What made you decide you wanted to make a video game? Video game streaming is an increasingly popular form of entertainment where people record themselves playing games live on apps such as Twitch and Facebook. “To me, it’s less about content and more about who’s behind the wheel,” Byrne says. By David Alexander Robertson, illustrated by Julie Flett Even the classic Space Invaders gets a makeover! Recommended for ages 0-5. He says Indigenous narratives are often rooted in the past, but he wanted to show an Indigenous future. Connecting both Game Theory and Native Studies, I analyze how digital games incorporate identity, culture, and relationships in diverse and intellectual ways and provide new spaces for Indigenous agency and semiotics. Recommended for ages 5-8. Even in actual historical narratives, says Longboat, “we usually only get one interpretation of the first contact — the ‘white male explorer’ figure who’s writing the historical record,” so “we don’t get to see the perspective of whoever they’re making contact with.” First contact is treated as something that happened to Indigenous people, who are viewed almost like nonplayer characters who only exist to further the protagonist’s quest to conquer a foreign land. ], The next chapter of Indigenous representation in video games, legacy of rampant physical and sexual abuse. “And the professor was like: ‘So, just some feedback … What makes them native?’, “And I was like, ‘… well, because I based her outfit sort of on, like, Fancy Shawl dancers, and the pattern on her smock was based on Christi Belcourt’s art ...’ And I was trying to explain this and he’s like, “Mhm mhm mhm ... 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