UC Davis

This dissertation applies Native American studies, media studies, and game studies to address the history of harmful, inaccurate, and often downright racist representations of Native American characters in video games. I feel it is important to dissect this history in order to understand the specific colonial methodologies being replicated within game spaces in order to then replace these with decolonial methods of game design being undertaken by myself and fellow Indigenous game designers. My work emphasizes the concept of “synthetic Indigenous identity” and my research and practice are oriented around promoting Indigenous futures. My work is grounded in the foundational epistemologies of Indigenous scholars and artists such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s “25 Indigenous Projects,” Michelle Raheja’s work on visual sovereignty and the virtual reservation, Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance, Tanya Tagaq’s pioneering efforts in solo throat singing, Stephen Leuthold’s categorization of Indigenous cultures as inherently synthetic, and Stephanie Nohelani Teves’ understandings of the varying roles and meanings of tradition and performance for Indigenous peoples. The weaving of these concepts posits that Indigenous identity can not only be created through games, but that entire worlds and teachings surrounding community, collective knowledge oral tradition, and Indigenous ways of knowing can be created within this digital medium, and thus embodied by the player. This project also draws on the work of academics such as Adrienne Shaw’s understandings of representation and disidentification, Lisa Nakamura’s concept of racial tourism, and Nick Dyer Witherford and Greig De Peuter’s analysis of the problematic immutability of digital constructions of race, to contend with the representational disparities of varying Native American figures throughout the history of gaming. From Mortal Kombat to Assassin’s Creed, I dissect the very specific ways in which games replicate and foster colonial methodologies through their constructed worlds and their structures of play. My research traces the multiple ways that digital dispossession takes place through the erasure of Native characters from representations of their lands, the lack of nuanced and culturally specific Indigenous characters, and the colonial construction of the Earth. For example, the genre of “open world” videogames not only produces a mode of play based on fantasies of endless resources and consumption, but these games Indigenous avatars as a “vanishing race” or a “people trapped in time.” These pernicious representations play a significant role in conditioning player responses to Indigenous avatars. The confluence of the visual, representational language of games and the mechanical, coded language of games, specifically in their historical representations of Indigenous avatars as one-note, interchangeable, and hostile, has created a player response to Indigenous characters that is founded upon violence, discrimination, and, at best, willful oversight. This player response is evident in the game design choices of companies like Rockstar who must now program mechanical safeguards for Native characters necessary to the story in their popular Red Dead Redemption series. My game design practice is also a vital component of my theoretical work and this dissertation features a creative component in the form of two games: One Small Step and Full of Birds. One Small Step is a space walking simulator that subverts the established norms of the open-world, sandbox style game genre and instead poses questions about colonialism and connection to physical space. Along those lines, Full of Birds is an interactive Indigenous art gallery featuring the works of Sarah Biscarra Dilley that seeks to complicate the traditional understandings of a gallery, as well as provoke thoughtful engagement about the spaces from which Indigenous art stems and the spaces in which it is displayed. Ultimately, my theoretical work as well as my game design practice works against the dominant narrative to design digital games that feature and represent Indigenous people within sovereign spaces. These sovereign spaces, therefore, should accurately reflect the spaces of the real-world people the game seeks to create. This digital sovereignty benefits not only the real-world Native peoples being represented, but the richness and success of the games it is featured within.