Meaningful Activism on the ‘Virtual Rez’: Reflections on Videogames and Smart Apps for Language & Cultural Revitalization

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The release of the 2014 videogame, Never Alone/Kisima Ingitchuna, the world's first Alaskan Native videogame, has sparked major interests from mainstream gamers and developers as well as Indigenous cultural advocates. The videogame is Iñupiaq-culturally specific (Northern Alaskan/Artic region) and it emerged from collaborative efforts between tribal members and a mostly non-Native software development team. I argue that this videogame achieves a balance between being a valuable Iñupiaq cultural artifact and being a successful game that is fun and meaningful, internationally. Pertinent to this form of digital activism for Indigenous heritages is the simultaneous emergence of Smart software developers for Indigenous languages. Namely, Darrick Baxter’s Ogoki Learning Systems Incorporated specializes in creating smartphone and tablet apps as language tools devoted to Indigenous languages. The success of Never Alone on the local and international level, coupled with the surge of ongoing Smart language learning tools in Indian Country, beget my research questions: “How are these new advancing technologies used to visualize Indigenous revitalization efforts? And, given emotional and meaningful resonances for Indigenous people have to their heritage languages, what is the relationship between the visuals/imagic in videogame/Smart technologically and affect?