When the Indian Land Tenure Foundation saw the need to actively respond to concerns regarding the lack of Indigenous-led land-centered knowledge in schools, they collaborated with Indigenous educators and knowledge carriers on the Lessons of Our Land curriculum. With the goal of supplementing this curriculum with an interactive way of engaging in knowledge, they collaborated with the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University to design and develop a game aimed at middle-school and high-school students in both public and tribally-owned schools. The resulting 2D adventure game When Rivers Were Trails has since been play-tested by middle-school and high-school youth across the United States during a pilot study. Results indicate best practices for implementation, including specific discussion topics as well as the role of the game as part of an Indigenization of education.
The educational video game, When Rivers Were Trails, was launched in 2019. The purpose of the game is to teach players about Indigenous perspectives of history, US federal allotment policies affecting tribal nations, and some of the effects of these policies on Indigenous peoples. This article explores tribal college student experiences playing When Rivers Were Trails in hopes that it provides the basis for further research into how tribal college faculty may be able to teach the game within their own classrooms. Tribal colleges and universities were created by tribal nations to provide for the higher education needs of their citizens. Using phenomenological research methods, seven college students volunteered to participate in a brief study about their experiences playing the video game. Upon transcription and analysis of the interview data, three themes were developed that capture how these students define their experience with When Rivers Were Trails: feelings of representation, histories of land dispossession, and resilience of communities.
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