Depictions of Native Americans in Video Games

It'll be a while before we get here.

     

As part of an ethics course that I teach, I've recently had my students take the Implicit Association Tests on Harvard University's web site. The tests are based on the work of Dr. Tony Greenwald of the University of Washington, Dr. Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University, and Dr. Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia. They measure implicit biases by noting differences in the time it takes to associate certain groups of words with certain demographic groups. The ur example, and the most popular on the IAT web site, has the user associate good words with white faces and bad words with black faces and then reverses it. (And before you chime in with what you think are obvious objections, rest assured that the team already thought of them and has built in the appropriate controls; the FAQ addresses the most common issues.) Most white people, and even an unfortunate percentage of black people, find that they have a harder time associating positive themes with black faces. This implicit bias has obvious repercussions in any field where discretion plays a role (e.g., Does this person feel right for this job? Does this individual look "suspicious"?), and it shows that bias can still be a problem even in the absence of overt or conscious racism.

         

Not that there isn't plenty of overt racism, too.

     

I asked the students to take the white/black test and also to pick one of the other tests that interested them. I was looking through them and I saw the "Native IAT." I always feel bad about my score on the white-black test, so I figured I could feel better about myself by taking the Native American one. I can say with all honesty that I have never once had a negative thought about Native Americans as a group. I had to struggle to even think of a Native American slur. Not only that, but I also don't think I've even met anyone who expressed a racist opinion about Native Americans. If anything, I've always been exposed to positive associations. One of my earliest memories is watching I Will Fight No More Forever (1975) with my father, and having him explain how great a leader Chief Joseph was. In short, I thought, I got this.

   

Well, Harvard got the best of me. It turns out that the Native IAT doesn't ask you to associate good and bad things with whites and Native Americans: it asks you to associate contemporary and past things with whites and Native Americans. My scores were worse than they were on the white-black test. I may not think Native Americans are "bad"; I just think they're over. I took that test about three weeks ago, and I've thought about it every day since then. I can't decide what would be worse: being a member of a culture that the majority of people thinks is somehow "bad," or being a member of a culture that the majority of people thinks is extinct--that regards you and your family as remnants, artifacts. It made me think an entirely new way about the "sports team" controversies. Some fans think that "Braves" and "Chiefs" are the opposite of racist--that they in fact honor the people they reference. But line them up with other team names that reference peoples--Vikings, Celtics, Patriots--and it's clear what they have in common. You may draw inspiration from them, but they're part of the past.

   

These things were on my mind when Dr. Wendi Sierra of Texas Christian University wrote to me as part of her research into how Native Americans are depicted in video games. "Where are their homes? Are they seen as contemporary? Do they speak their indigenous language?"

   

Dr. Sierra's project comes from a fusion of her interests. She is a member of the Oneida Nation herself, and one of her passions is video games. She teaches Games Studies at her university, has designed a game around Oneida culture and language called A Strong Fire, and has written a 2020 book on Bethesda's Todd Howard. 

       

A Strong Fire includes a simple memory game with Native American images and words.

      

Unfortunately, the era that I've covered in this blog is one in which complex stories and NPCs have not yet emerged. But based on my limited experience, I decided that the use of Native Americans, as I've seen them, falls into essentially five categories:

   

1. Games in which Native Americans are basically fairy tale characters, akin to the inclusion of "Indians" in the story of Peter Pan. They're usually drawn quite broadly and use tired cliches. So you have an Indian saying "How, Pale Face" in Space: 1889 or an Eskimo saying "You use me kayak" in Tangled Tales (1989).

    

2. Games in which they are unapologetic enemies. These will often be set in the Old West. These are more likely to be strategy or action games than RPGs, but one weird example that I've played is Escape from Hell (1990), which is based heavily on Catholic mythology, and thus American Indians are in Hell along with all other cultures who were never baptized.  

        

If Dante said they were in Hell, they're in Hell.

      

3. The "magic Indian." This NPC helps the main character in his quest by lending his peace pipe or offering a tomahawk or whatever. I think of the Native American janitor in Elvira II (1991) or the Navajo who gives you the magic feather in Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor (1992).

       

The unnamed "magic Indian" in Elvira.

     

4. Games that depict American Indians respectfully, authentically, and with substance. None of these have come up yet on my blog, but I think some of the characters in the Red Dead Redemption games would qualify, as would Assassin's Creed III and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.

5. Games with Native American protagonists with their own agendas and choices. This is a hypothetical category for me, but I'm sure they exist. The only game I've played where a Native American character was even an option is Don't Go Alone (1989), which depicts him wearing a feather stuck in a headband and otherwise makes no references to his background or motives. [Ed. As a commenter pointed out, Assassin's Creed III belongs more in this category. I don't know why I put it in the previous one.]

    

I have pasted below all the games that Dr. Sierra had identified at the time of this posting, so I would ask for your contributions. We're looking for games in which one or more characters is explicitly identified as indigenous from North America, so no games with Indian "themes" alone (e.g., one of the magic artifacts is a dreamcatcher), and no games that draw solely upon Central or South American peoples. The more obscure, the better; being a professor of game studies, Dr. Sierra has a pretty good sense of the AAA market.

    

Maybe in another 10 years, RPG stories will have grown complex enough that I can write about this subject properly.

   

****

   

1870 (2018)
Age of Empires (Definitive Edition) (2020)
Age of Empires III: Warchiefs (2006)
All Japan Pro Wrestling Featuring Virtua ()
America (2001)
American Conquest: Fight Back (2003)
Apachacha (1993)
Apache Raid/Cowboys 'n Injuns (1987)
Assassin's Creed III (2012)
Assassin's Creed Rogue (2014)
Bang! Howdy (2017)
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (2008)
Banjo-Tooie (2000)
Brave: A Warrior's tale (2009)
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (1989)
Call of Cthulu: Shadow of the Comet (1993)
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (2013)
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (2007)
Civilization VI (2016)
Colorado (1990)
Cowboy kid (1991)
Custer's Revenge (1982)
Dangerous Streets (1994)
Darkwatch (2005)
Davy: King of the Wild Frontier (1985)
Disney's Pochahontas (1996)
Don't Go Alone (1989)
Don't Wake the Night ()
Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus (1991)
Empire of the Sin (2020)
Empire: Total War (2009)
Escape from Hell (1990)
Expeditions: Conquistador (2013)
Fatal Fury series (1998/1999)
Fight 'N' Jokes (1997)
Fighters Megamix (1996)
Gun (2006)
Gun Smoke (1985)
Gun: Showdown (2006)
Hammer boy (1991)
Indian Attack/Apache Raid (1983)
Indian Battle (1980)
Infamous: Second Son (2014)
Kane (1985)
Kasumi Ninja (1994)
Killer Instinct (1994/2013)
Kona (2017)
Legend of Pochahontas (2002)
Lego Chess (1998)
Lone Ranger (1991)
Meriweather: An American Epic (2017)
Metal Gear Solid (1999)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)
Mortal Kombat (2011) (2011)
Mortal Kombat 3 (1995)
Mortal Kombat X (2015)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006)
Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004)
Never Alone (2014)
Nightmare Circus (1996)
Oregon Trail (1985)
Outlaws (1997)
Peter Pan: Adventures in Neverland (2002)
Prey (2006)
Quick draw mcgraw (1990)
Red Dead Redemption (2010)
Red Dead Redemption II (2018)
Red Dead Revolver (2002)
Rochard (2011)
Santa Fe Mysteries: The Elk Moon Murder (1996)
Shadow Hearts: From the New World (2005)
Shadowrun (1993)
Shadowrun (1994)
Sid Meyer's Colonization (1995)
Space 1889 (1990)
SpellCraft: Aspects of Valor (1992)
Street Fighter series (1987-2020)
Sunset Riders (1991)
Tao Taido (1993)
Tekken series (1994-2017)
Tengai Makyō: Daiyon no Mokushiroku (1997)
Terra Nova (2019)
The Raven And The Light (2015)
This Land is My Land (2019)
Thunderbird Strike (2017)
Total War: Medieval II (2006)
Turok series ()
Turok: Evolution (2002)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (1995)
Virtua Fighter (1993)
Virtua Fighter 3 (1996)
Virtual Fighter 2 (1994)
Virtual Fighter 4 (2001)
Virtual Fighter 5 (2006)
Virtual Fighter Kids (1996)
Werewolf: The Last Warrior (1990)
Westerado: Double Barreled (2015)
When Rivers Were Trails (2019)
Whomp Em (1991)
Wild West Guns (2008)
Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire (1990)