When Rivers Were Trails: cultural expression in an indigenous video game

ABSTRACT

When Rivers Were Trails is a 2D adventure game wherein The Oregon Trail meets Where the Water Tastes Like Wine through an Indigenous lens. The game depicts a myriad of cultures during the player’s journey from Minnesota to California amidst the impact of land allotment in the 1890s. Initiated by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, the game was developed in collaboration with the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University thanks to support from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the many Indigenous creatives who contributed design, art, music, and writing. Uniquely, When Rivers Were Trails is a sovereign game, meaning that it was directed and informed by Indigenous creatives who maintained the role of final decisions during development. Merging design research and close reading methods, this study sets out to describe the game’s design, development process in regards to the game writing, and the resulting themes which emerged as a result of engaging Indigenous writers in self-determined representations.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous
• cultural expression
• video games
• game design
• game writing

Acknowledgments

When Rivers Were Trails was developed in collaboration with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation and Michigan State University’s Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab thanks to support from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and contributions from over 30 Indigenous writers, artists, and musicians.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth LaPensée

Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D. is an award-winning designer, writer, artist, and researcher who creates and studies Indigenous-led media such as games and comics. She is Anishinaabe with family from Bay Mills, Métis, and Irish. She is an Assistant Professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.