[Air-L] Lecture:

[Gerald Voorhees]

Dear Colleagues,

Please join the Games Institute <https://uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/> at
the University of Waterloo for a Lecture “From Custer's Revenge to Red Dead
Redemption: Changing the Language of Indigenous Representation in Video
Games” with Dr. Ashley Bird on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 — 1:00 PM TO 2:00 PM
EDT/UTC-4.


This is a free and hybrid event! *Registration is required.
<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/changing-the-language-of-indigenous-representation-in-video-games-tickets-590420031207>*

Dr. Bird will emphasize the two types of language taking place in video
games: mechanical, coded language, and visual, representational language.
She presents the importance of teaching the history of Indigenous
representation in games and will break down various examples from Custer’s
Revenge to the Mortal Kombat and Red Dead Redemption series to demonstrate
these types of gamic language. Building upon these examples, she centers on
the problematic ways players have historically translated the messages they
are being presented within the digital medium of the video game. She
illustrates how these translations result in harmful narratives about
Indigenous avatars becoming cemented within the overarching discourse and
design of games. Finally, she will look at new Indigenous works and how
inclusive and decolonial game design and practices like ROM hacking can
push back against these established narratives and the ways in which
players read them, and instead create sovereign digital spaces for
Indigenous peoples.

About the Speaker:

Dr Bird is a Native American game designer and PhD in Native American
Studies. She is Western Abenaki and originally hails from the Champlain
Valley of Vermont. Her work  theorizes digital sovereignty, drawing on
Native American studies, media studies, and game studies to address
representations of Native American characters in video games. The work
analyzes specific colonial methodologies being replicated within game
spaces in order to then replace these with decolonial methods of game
design being undertaken by herself and fellow Native game designers with a
focus on what she terms “synthetic Indigenous identity,” oriented around
promoting Indigenous futures.  Her work has been featured in the InDigital
Space at the ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Festival in 2018 and 2019
respectively. She is also a founding member of the UC Davis ModLab, an
experimental laboratory for media research and digital humanities.

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Gerald Voorhees, Ph.D. (he/him)

Associate Professor

Department of Communication Arts

University of Waterloo

257A ML, Waterloo ON, N2L 3G1


President, Canadian Game Studies Association
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*I acknowledge that I live and work on the traditional territory of the
Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. The
University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land
promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometers on each side of
the Grand River. *