Games as Enduring Presence

Abstract

Games offer a space for Indigenous artists to reify the connections between tradition and technology since Indigenous games can directly engage players in Indigenous ways of knowing through design and aesthetic. The social impact game Survivance, the musical choose-your-own-adventure text game We Sing for Healing, and the mobile game Invaders exemplify games as self-determined spaces for Indigenous expression. And yet, these examples still merely hint at possibilities of self-determined Indigenous games as access to technology expands and the potential to design systems with Indigenous perspectives from the code up unfolds.

Sami-digital storytelling: Survivance and revitalization in Indigenous digital games

“…Turning to Gufihtara eallu’s gameplay experience, however, through the game design’s VR platform, Gufihtara eallu does this quite literally. Gazing down at the traditional footwear of the Sami player character makes manifest that which Todd observed: that cyberspace may become a place where storytelling flourishes, while VR might, in fact, facilitate a return to oral tradition (LaPensée, 2016: 180). Similarly, to lift language from Vizenor, while “Native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence, the dominance of cultural simulations, and manifest manners” (Vizenor, 2009: 1), VR takes this one step further: Indigenous new media thereby challenges and deconstructs false representations of Indigenous experience, while virtual simulations of Indigenous experience supplant cultural simulations of absence and manifest manners.…”

“…10 Digital games on Indigenous themes therefore enable game designers and players to explore different strategies in cultural preservation and revitalization (Winter and Boudreau, 2018: 41), revealing the role of digital technologies could play in the work of truth and reconciliation. Ultimately, Indigenous digital games such as those developed in the Sami Game Jam, invert the hierarchy embedded in conventional notions of the intersection of media studies and Indigenous studies to reveal the power of digital games as both “an extension of traditional storytelling and as acts of survivance” (LaPensée, 2016: 180).…”

“… 9. This a particularly important element of Indigenous game studies, especially in the work of Elizabeth LaPensée’s Honour Water (2016), which is a singing game featuring songs by Anishinaabe elders and Sharon Day to pass on teachings about water in Anishinaabemowin, and the app development of organizations such as the First Peoples’ Culture Council and Ogoki Learning Systems Inc., which was explicitly founded as a response to the need to preserve and revitalize the Ojibway language in Canada. However, this work is by no means limited to North America.…”

“Nothing about us, without us”

“…She has created many games that reflect her people's sovereignty of their own stories. Games like 'Thunderbird Strike' and 'When Rivers Were Trails' not only share heritage but also act as powerful tools to show the devastating effect of colonisation [5][6][7][8].…”