Doing "Indian":

It is a time of great responsibility. We in the Oneida homeland today are caretakers of the past for the benefits of the seventh generation to come. We must draw together all we can, hoping to pass on to our children's children what they might ask of us... The traditional Oneida language is a vital link to our ancestors and national identity. Our spirit and spiritual values are embedded in it. We work to preserve and strengthen knowledge of the language, enhancing its daily presence in our lives.

Men's Council and Clan Mothers, Oneida Indian Nation, 2000, p. ix (qtd. in Elm and Antone)

Ellen Cushman (2008) introduces the distinction between “being Indian” as a scholar and “doing Indian” as a scholar. Being Indian is often a legal matter; as sovereign nations each federally recognized tribe has set requirements for citizenship and being Indian can be defined as meeting those legal requirements (though, as Cushman explains more thoroughly, there are a wealth of reasons that this alone is an incredibly problematic metric). Doing Indian, on the other hand, involves enacting a reciprocal relationship with one's community. Exploring the unique circumstances Native scholars often face between self-identification and self-representation, Cushman describes her own journey in developing a kinship relationship with her heritage, one that considers how her skills as a scholar can be an asset to her Cherokee community. Using this idea of doing Indian, Kristin Arola (2017) extends the concept into digital environments when considering what it would mean for Facebook or other social media sites to be Indian/do Indian.

In a survey of powwow attendees, in response to the question “what would Facebook look like if it were designed by and for American Indians” Arola (2017) found a mix of responses that suggested both what it might be like for a social network to be or seem Indian and what it might be like for a social network to do Indian, to provide opportunities for individuals to take actions that uphold or enact community values. Several of Arola's respondents suggested that an interface including the colors red, black, white, and yellow, would help it seem more visibly Native. Still other respondents considered specific functionality, including the opportunity to communicate in Ojibwemowin (the Ojibwe language) and a less formal, more playful way to compose identity. Ultimately, Arola finds that we must “think of the interface not as something that can necessarily visually promise a sense of Indianness, but as something that allows for Indigenous ways of being and doing” (p. 221).

Within the field of game studies, Elizabeth Lapensée (2017) has explored how this concept of doing Indian can be integrated into the design process. In her work, both as an academic and as a game designer, she has demonstrated how Vizenor's concept of survivance can be a generative tool toward creating culturally appropriate game mechanics. Though Vizenor originates the term, I enjoy Tzou et al's defintion of survivance, which describes the concept as "the active presencing of Indigenous knowledge systems" (p. 3). Thus, in addition to the kinds of questions one might ask about an educational game—where, when, and with whom will players encounter this game; what are the learning goals and how will they be assessed (Klopfer, Osterweil, & Salen 2009)—doing Indian as a game designer requires one to add this additional context: how does this game create community among my relations? How does this game decolonize and uplift my community? How does this game show my accountability to my community? In short, how is the design process an act of survivance and an opportunity to “do Indian” with all of the relationality and reciprocity that entails? With this context in mind, the game design process is thus a “gift” in the way that Clary-Lemon (2019) defines the term. Gifts, from an Indigenous perspective, lie “within the realm of worlding, relationship building, and indeed, maintaining a balance of obligation and reciprocity between people, knowledge, and land as a whole”.

Carrie Tzou et al (2019) echo this understanding of the relational nature of materiality and making: “we understand potentialities of materials to exist in relation to our experiences, histories, and futures with them. In this way, what is defined as 'material' and how relations to particular materialities are narrated and enacted are shaped by knowledge systems and shape culturally and sociopolitically consequential constructions, orientations to, and practices with materiality” (p. 311). Indeed, reflecting on the profound value of integrating cultural heritage and ways of knowing into maker practices, Tzou et al underscore the importance of a surivance-based approach to learning particularly in STEM disciplines (that have historically contributed to inequality).

A Strong Fire was designed in this context—in an awareness of creating a game that would both seem Oneida and do Oneida. Moreover, this sense of doing Oneida was brought not just to the final play experience, but to the design process itself. While Cushman (2008) describes how she internalized the Cherokee concept of gadugi, which she defines as “the individual serving the family and community and working together for the common good” (p. 344), in my work I was guided by the Oneida concept of Kaʔnikuhli·yó.