Never Alone:
(Re)Coding the Comic Holotrope of Survivance
MICHELLE LEE BROWN
"Like most Native people, I do not perceive of
the world of creative writing as divided into categories of prose and poetry or
fiction and nonfiction. Nor do I imagine myself crossing from political
resistance into artistic creation and back again. Life is a confluence of
creativities: art is a fluid political medium, as politics is metaphorical and
artistic."
(Haunani-Kay Trask, "Writing in Captivity:
Poetry in a Time of Decolonization.")
0. starting from the Center
I began this paper with the
intent to author a piece on indigenous political ecologies within and without
the Never Alone video game, articulating certain embodied material and
discursive practices in the making and playing of the game. The deeper and more
expansive the connections and stories became, the more I realized that
immersion within the game and the (re)mapping of histories and materialities
were altering how I thought and how I was writing. Alexander Galloway states, "[w]ith video games, the work
itself is material action" (3). I want to extend this idea of material action
further by thinking about praxis on multiple levels: the company and game
creation, the play-interface, and now the articulation of these processes
through written English.
This
game is infused with the foundational principles of the I˜upiaq people—interconnectedness
and interdependence. It is also infused with older sign technologies that are
themselves "complex information systems with layers of meaning, memory, and
interaction" (Loft 172). Putting those ideas into action-interface, I opened to
the epistemic agency of the game[1] as
a coauthor of this piece. It has shaped this work at every step, informing my
layers of understanding, and remains what I return to for grounding my words
and focusing my thoughts.
However,
as I reread Gerald Vizenor's writings on survivance and literature, this concept
of co-author became inadequate to encompass the world-within-world of the
story, the game system realm, the designers, players, and myriad other human
and nonhuman interactions occurring on multiple levels. Thinking of Never
Alone as a (re)coded comic holotrope of survivance retains that epistemic
agency I noted earlier, but also incorporates that worlds-within-worlds, the
"all" interplay of players, designers, and story within the story itself.
1.
core samples
"When we locate the present of settler colonialism
as only the production of the past, we overlook how settler colonialism is
configured in relation to a different temporal horizon: the future."
(Eve Tuck and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández,
"Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity")
This article employs Mishuana
Goeman and Gerald Vizenor's concepts as my main theoretical threadwork, as a
smaller reproduction of what resurgence theory does on a larger scale, and as
academic praxis. In short; this example of indigenous digital media is not new,
but a new emergence of a centuries-old way of relating to others, which has
much to offer on many levels as it (re)maps cultural practices, deepening and
rewiring human and nonhuman interdependence. These complexities and intertwined
communities require a turning away from Western linear temporalities and
theorizations, and a turn towards indigenous scholars who have already
articulated theories of storytelling and media.
This is
not to deny or exclude the invitational aspects of Never Alone; but by centering indigenous theory, it allows for what
Mohawk scholar Deborah Doxtator describes as "points of possible rapprochement
between two different ways of ordering knowledge and conceptualizing the past"
(34). This approach turns towards inclusive indigenous futurities, while
refusing the elimination and erasure tactics of settler ones, as noted by Eve
Tuck and Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández.
At
the core of this paper are two foundational concepts: (re)coding and comic holotrope.
(Re)coding incorporates Mishuana Goeman's use of (re) from her method of (re)mapping in
Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nation.
She defines (re)mapping as "a
powerful discursive discourse with material groundings... in which I would address
the unsettling of imperial and colonial geographies." She continues to note
that this is the work of Native authors and communities to "write and undertake the simultaneously
metaphoric and material capacities of map making, to generate new possibilities"
(3). Using the "re-" within
parentheses, she articulates a process of traditional and new storytelling of
survivance. These
stories of places and relational practices are not old, nor new—but a mix
of both, allowing for multiple emergences.[2]
Comic
holotropes themselves articulate two related concepts: game as world
(re)mapping—rather than game as text—and the relationality and
connections that reverberate through multiple realms, as drawn out by Gerald
Vizenor. He outlines the comic holotrope of survivance in Writing Indian,
Native Conversations as follows:
So
comic holotrope is the question—it's communal, and it's an "all"
figuration, the entire figuration—you have to recreate it, which is the
entire figuration—of the community. You have to create a play of readers
and listeners in the story itself. That's the comic holotrope. (117)
I will delve further into each
of these concepts in later sections, highlighting them here to underscore their
importance to situating Never Alone. Indigenous
use of digital media warrants engagement of Indigenous theorists and scholars
to this digital realm. Indigenous storytelling is political by nature, so it
made sense to turn to Vizenor and Goeman's work on political and literary analysis
to explore the concept of Never Alone (re)coding the comic holotrope of
survivance.
2.
remedia(l) tendencies
"Of equal importance in these processes of
counting is the dynamic relationship between the physical creation, the
narrator, the narrative itself, the act of narrating, and the audience."
Cheryl LʻHirondelle, "Codetalkers
Recounting Signals of Survival"
David Gaertner wrote incisively
about Never Alone for ISLA 2016,
contextualizing it as remediation within Western new media and visual culture
studies definitions: bringing old into new, highlighting Marshall McLuhan's
definition of it as a process in which one medium becomes the content for
another. I press that more is being done here, thus my use of (re)mediation
rather than remediation. This is not to completely dismiss McLuhan's
contributions, but to center Indigenous literary and political scholars to reframe
the discussion. I use three key citations to briefly trace the threads that
help delineate (re)mediation from remediation.
English
can be challenging to express something that, while defined as a "noun", is
ongoing, material and discursive, deeply relational, and always in-process.
This paper uses gerunds, verbs and nouns to convey some of that—also
emphasizing that Goeman and Vizenor repeatedly outline the ongoing and active
nature of the terms they use. Even allowing for some flexibility in grammatical
categories, remediation remains fixed to Western concepts of time and relationality.
Remediation
also remains fixed to ideas of objects, which Indigenous digital media
challenges on multiple levels. Within these media, objects can be a charge, an
infusion of communal intention, and they can also contain multiple crossover points
between written and oral transmission. As Cree artist, writer, director, and
activist Cheryl L'Hirondelle notes in her chapter of Coded Territories:
What
these historical Indigenous practices... suggest is our ability to take account
of vital information with the creation of a physical object and move beyond
what has been oversimplified as solely orally centred transmission processes.
The "object" is charged and embodies the interplay of processes between the
oral and the written (notched/drawn) used to aid in its own retelling. (157)
Extending this further, if Indigenous
relational objects can be seen as hypertexts (Angela Haas) and/or as living
beings connected to the community by ongoing generative processes (Jackson
2Bears), how could their emergence and agency within a communal digital form be
framed as a mere remediating of one form into another?
In
his essay "Mediacosmology", Mohawk scholar and curator Steven Loft notes, "A
cosmological model of communicative agency, then, transcends the simplistic
notions of "romance" offered by anthropologists, ethnologists, art historians,
and media theorists. There is no "re" for us" (172). Here, he refutes the
simplistic binary invoked by McLuhan and his "tribal man" who has no sense of
past or history, only the present, moving towards a more nuanced and
connection-filled model.
Carrying
this concept further, Loft notes other Indigenous scholars and artists who see
these realms as already inhabited by our ancestors. He states:
If we,
as Aboriginal people, see the 'Internet' as a space populated by our ancestors,
our stories, and, in a wider way, ourselves, then we must believe it existed
before the actual realization of the technology. It is then, indeed, a "cyberspace",
attuned to, and inclusive of, our past memories, our epistemological concerns,
and the culmination of lived experience. (172)
If
there is no "remediating" or "remediation"—as this leaves little room for
Indigenous temporalities and perceptions of time/space/past/future—perhaps
there is room for (re)mediation. A form which could take up these past memories,
epistemological shifts, and lived experiences. Within the set of parentheses the
're' takes on a significant shift; Goeman is careful to delineate what the (re)
itself does in her method of (re)mapping. I am not glibly assigning the prefix
to create some sort of Indigenous media theory chimera, but to invoke these
generational, old-yet-new understandings. As she notes in the introduction to Mark
My Words:
In an
effort to recognize the recovery and extension of precolonial constructions of
space in Native writing, I use the parenthesis around "re" in "(re)mapping" to
acknowledge connections to cultural concepts... reflected in their work is an
understanding of space passed down through generations, and it is often only
the presentation of spatial concepts in new formats that are the contemporary
formulations. Even this format, however,
contains elements of the traditional. (213) [Emphasis mine]
The use of the prefix within
this paper is also not simply to riff on recode/rework as (re)code/(re)work,
etc.—though I hope to retain an element of playfulness. Instead, I invoke
the (re) within this paper to note these are emergences of much older
understandings of space, place, and relations, and embrace the concept of these
realms as already being inhabited by ancestors who reshape and reweave digital
and physical teleologies, as Never Alone beautifully illustrates.
3.
unsettl(er)ing emergences
"I think this game is going to be a seed, a new
emergence of video game culture."
(Qaiyaan Harcharek)
The Iñupiat believe this story,
a digital emergence of
"Kunuuksaayuka" as told by
Robert Nasruk Cleveland (with permission granted by his daughter, Minnie
Aliitchak Gray—Iñupiat Elder) is transformative, containing
healing and power they feel is desperately needed at this time.
Interconnectedness and deep relations are at its core, and particular elements
resist being dissected or partitioned. To approach this emergence and trace the
roots of this articulation of the story, I turned to Indigenous scholar and
artist Chadwick Allen's
process of entwined analysis in his book Trans-Indigenous: to understand an Indigenous
work, it needs to be situated in larger layers of context and meaning-making.
His term trans-Indigenous
is not meant to create a 'universalized' definition of indigeneity, but to
encompass ways of relating and practices that can mitigate moving between
realms—filling the interface between and interfacing different nations with
a myriad micro-connections.
As
that last phrase suggests, there are multiple realms of gaming, theory, and
indigenous praxis to navigate. This particular emergence of the story within Never Alone is new; it is one more step
in a longer series of art evolutions for the Iñupiat—from scrimshaw
carvings on whale bone to ink and paper illustrations, oral stories to written
then printed books—now digital media. What struck me, as I read some of
the testimonies from the elders, was their acceptance of this as the story's
next expression, and their excitement. They had seen their stories unfold in
various mediums, this was a new (re)telling they could share with the next
generations. As their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were
already immersing themselves in video games and digital learning tools,
multiple translations and world-navigations were already occurring, now they
could (re)map their own routes.
Returning
to Chadwick Allen, he expresses this relational complexity as follows:
the
realities of contemporary Indigenous identities describe multiple kinds of
diversity and complexity; often, they describe seeming paradoxes of
simultaneity, contradiction, coexistence. These qualities are the contemporary
Indigenous norm rather than its tragic exception. (p xxxiii)
These multiplicities and
paradoxes highlight the importance of using native theorists and nurturing a
deeper understanding of the elements and communities that came together to
create Never Alone.
Here I am careful to note that these processes are ongoing, as the game
expansion releases, articles, books, digital media, and the communities
involved continue to grow and inspire further emergences.
As
Gerald Vizenor notes "political cultures begin at home" (Purdy 115); what the
Iñupiat and CITC have done is examine what was, is, and may be their home. This
game is one step towards a future that incorporates their worldview within
these new realms. The mechanisms for accessing these realms were already there;
the gaming systems and tech their children and community members were using. Now
it has been reinterpreted/reimagined as a digital articulation of survivance. A
story that we do.
Mishuana
Goeman describes a process of "unsettling settler space" through (re)mapping
with stories: "The imaginative possibilities and creations offered in the play
of a poem, imagery of a novel, or complex relationships set up in a short story
provide avenues beyond a recovery of a violent history of erasure and provide
imaginative modes to unsettle settler space" (2). Thinking of this digital
realm, how this game space is unsettled, and (re)woven, connecting with other
physical and digital realms and beings. These actions are deeply political, but
not "just" politics—as Allen notes, these are relational practices that
move between realms, (re)coding systems and connections, (re)mapping spaces.
4.
taproots/taproutes
"Creative people, however, know that culture is
political. Writing, music, painting, dance, and voyaging are profoundly
political....Not only the content of writing, but the act of writing is
political. And naturally so."
(Haunani-Kay Trask, "Writing in Captivity:
Poetry in a Time of Decolonization")
4.
taproots
Before moving into the inner
workings and external resonances of the game, it is important to note its roots—the
foundational threads woven before the release of Never Alone. Gloria O'Neill, President and CEO of the Cook Inlet
Tribal Council Enterprises, Inc. (subsidiary of Cook Inlet Tribal Council) and
Upper One Games, outlined the communal processes that Council engaged in order to
invest in something that would give back to the community in tangible and
intangible ways. After investigating the potential for growth and return, the
Council decided to invest in futures, rather than funeral homes (a common
investment strategy). After careful consideration, CITC Inc. partnered with
E-Line Media as Upper One Games in 2012,
the first Indigenous-owned commercial game company in the United States. In
2014, the two organizations merged with plans to expand Indigenous gaming in
partnerships with other communities.
The
Iñupiat chose to invest in what their children were already doing: gaming. Or,
evoking an older sense: playing, interacting with stories. The game systems
were already there, the culture (in its early 21st century manifestations) is
there. Various cultural practitioners and elders are featured in the game and
on the website as Cultural Ambassadors; some are in education (digital
education), some are polar bear guards and/or whale hunters (in traditional
boats), others are traditional storytellers, musician, and artists. As Amy Fredeen
notes in the very first Cultural Insight clip: "We are not a museum piece. We
are a living culture".
The
game world takes an oral story that had been written down, affixed, then
unlocks it through (re)newed oral and visual forms, then infuses it with other
stories and histories via insight clips, website extras, blog posts, and more.
Each step along the way, CITC referred back to the community to shape their
decisions and practices. They left it to the community to decide who would be
the voices of their narrators, community members were brought to the design
studio (and designers brought to I˜upiaq territory many times) to ensure it was
told in a way that was their worldview in digital form.
Visual
elements were created using the same protocols. Scrimshaw pieces have a long
history within I˜upiaq culture—images were (and are) carved on baleen or
ivory; these series of images are used for storytelling or documenting a series
of events. Images are read by the elder or carver to unlock the stories within—these
were timelines of natural and political events or tales that instilled
cultural, social and political practices. Within the game levels, scrimshaw
style artwork is used in animation sections that begin or end game levels
within Never Alone, superimposed with the voice-over in their native
language. Much as scrimshaw can be unlocked by those who know the embedded
histories and meanings behind it, there is much to think about regarding
encoded and (re)coded meanings within the game realm of Never Alone.
Several
elders and cultural ambassadors spoke of the joy in playing the game, of being
both student and teacher. This is not by accident—Never Alone is
designed to be best experienced in co-player mode[3]—with
people playing next to each other, talking and planning, sharing tips and
suggestions. This was a way of returning to story as a way of connecting—an
experiential interface between people and the non-human actors.
Another
non-human actor, the weather (Sila) in the game and in the Arctic also had a
definite 'interface' with the designers. Gloria O'Neill related a story during
the Hawaiian Media Makers Conference in 2014: the early versions of the wind,
sleet, and snow were deemed not quite right by the Iñupiat. The designers were
brought out to Barrow,
Alaska in mid-winter so they could experience it more fully: take photos, draw
sketches, be immersed within it. This Sila immersion worked—the next
version passed the scrutiny of the elders and cultural ambassadors. It
translated so well that Columbia University is incorporating parts of the game
in a class on climate change.
Key
concepts used throughout this paper are articulated within the game, via
twenty-four Cultural Insight video clips unlocked as the story progresses.
Featuring the Iñupiat Cultural Ambassadors, they offer stories and insights
about the game, characters, and key concepts: Sila (the atmosphere/weather—that
which is from the land to the stars) has a soul, as do animals, and the land
(Nuna). Nuna is also the name of the central character in Never Alone.
These same concepts, emergences of Iñupiat
traditional practices and stories, are also encoded within the game-making
process.
4.b.
taproutes
Humility and knowing "you are
not the biggest force in the world" are key parts of the Iñupiat world,
reflected in the making and playing of Never Alone. The making of the
game required a lengthy and multi-layered process of community-based decision
making and extensive designer-tribal collaboration and revision. This communal
interdependence and sense of connectedness (lateral rather than a hierarchy) is
also embedded in the game's structure and play. When adapting the story for the
game, several story elements were changed while keeping this in mind—the
boy becomes Nuna,[4] the arctic
fox is added as another main character. She rides a polar bear, which is an
actual experience of one of the elders, Fannie (Kuutuuq) Akpik. (This
multi-temporal story-within-story-within story is unlocked as one of the
cultural insights, fitting with the idea of comic holotrope).
Balance
is also central to these worlds—Never Alone is a (re)mapping of
beautiful forests and waters, but also harsh and unending winter in many
chilling variations; even such beautiful displays as the Northern Lights have a
dangerous side to them. It also shapes some of the adversaries in the game: the
Northern Lights which try to snatch up Nuna, the Blizzard Man causing unending
winter, Sila alannuqtuq—Sila (weather/atmosphere)
out-of-balance/changing. These are not seen as evil or bad, but beings
operating at a different level of intensity, or once-human-like agents now out
of balance (respectively).
For
generations the Iñupiat have been intimately aware of climate change and the
deeply connected systems disrupted by it. This particular issue emerging within
Never Alone—networks within a larger system out-of-balance—has
particular resonance through Nuna's journey as a small, seemingly insignificant
character up against forces that threatens to wipe out her entire community. On
her quest, players must rely on others to advance and work towards restoring balance,
even if in single-player mode. It cannot be done by one character alone—no
ammo or gear drops, nor cheat codes; reaching the end of this story realm
requires interdependence and timing.
This
is a digital story (re)mapped as praxis, a way of relating to different worlds
and realms that players can become immersed in, and (re)shaped themselves. Video
games are well-suited to this type of immersion, and Never Alone is
infused with the I˜upiaq world—the sounds of the language, the visual
images, background sounds, cries and calls, weather sounds—these and more
create realm-crossing paths designed to shift us, to affect and alter us,
creating or (re)creating connections on multiple levels. Yet, underneath these
other foundation threads, is perhaps the oldest one—our taproot here is a
story. Stories matter. As I˜upiaq writer and consultant Ishmael Angaluuk Hope
states: "We all
do stories. We all live stories." The next section engages with the
literary-political-social theories of (re)coding to think about how this story,
(re)mapped into a digital space, does renewed life in a new medium and
realm, yet retains an ancestral center.
5.
(re)Coded Territory
"Stories are wondrous
things. And they are dangerous."
(Thomas King, The
Truth About Stories)
Mobility and displacement have
offered up challenges to Indigenous presences and paths/routes to maintain
connections with human and nonhuman family. Stories have long been used to
trace the unsettling of settler boundaries, the continued existence and pushing
against colonial narratives. As Mishuana Goeman notes, "Remembering important
connections to land and community is instrumental in mapping a decolonized
Native presence" (29). In Mark My Words she traces how stories "teach us
how to care for and respect one another and the land; they endure" (34).
Part
of this endurance is their complexity and richness—multiple layers of
meaning allow for open and more coded access/understandings. If "territory... is
constitutive of cultural, political, and economic practices" (Goeman 34),
thinking of digital realms suggests not only (re)mapping, but (re)coding—pushing
back against colonial structures which see digital space as Terra Nullius 2.0. I
use (re)code to highlight that these stories are not just translations in a new
realm, or game as text; orality and community translation are powerful
challenges to these concepts. Richa Nagar's writing on translation refers to it
often being an act of violence. For Nagar, this indicates the translation of
sounds to written or typed words—affixing an oral story to the written
page, pinning it down, stripping it of further movement. She (as well as Noenoe
Silva) note the violence of translating from one language to another. What I
would like to pick up here is Never Alone as an act of (re)mediation
and release, an emergence of survivance.
"Kunuuksaayuka" is the basis for
Never Alone—a version of an older story crafted and told orally by Robert
Nasruk Cleveland. His daughter, Minnie Aliitchak Gray, was encouraged to write
the story down; it was later published. Ishmael Angaluuk Hope came across the
printed copy of her written retelling, and thought it was one of the best
stories he had ever read.[5]
While
the story itself has shifted shape (as noted earlier) the intrinsic elements of
it have remained. Ronald (Aniqsuaq) Brower, Sr. is one of the Cultural
Ambassadors of the Upper One company and Never Alone game, providing cultural insights, Iñupiat translation,
and voice over work. He describes his childhood, and being trained, literally
filled with stories in their language by his elders, so that he might share
them with future generations:
"As a
child disabled by rheumatic fever, I listened and learned many Iñupiaq myths, legends, history
and stories from Elders that frequented my parents home. I would also be
invited by Elders to listen and learn my people's history and life experiences
so I may be useful to our community in my adult years. How correct they were in
choosing my life path!"
Ishmael and other Iñupiat
cultural advisors (both young and old) note that it is common practice for
elders to tell young children what they hope they will do or be for the
community as they grow up. Over the course of their video clips or interviews
on the game website, they note how fulfilling it was to express skills planted
within them in the making of the game (and its supplemental release, Foxtales).
Returning
to Goeman once again:
While I
study contemporary Native American literature and not stories from time
immemorial... its tendency in a single breath or word to recall hundreds, even
thousands of years back by employing community, personal, and historical stories
in intertextual moments allows us to see these sets of relationships outside
the mapping of the state. (38)
Breathing life through the
centuries, transcending intertextual spaces and the gaps between 0 and 1 in
streams of code—these are stories as relations. "The truth about stories
is, that's all we are." Thomas King begins his book with this statement—I
use it here as a launch into the next section. These are stories as governance:
highlighting the importance of interconnectedness and responsibility to each
other, the land, and the world around them. They are also seen as
transformative. If stories are indeed all we are, what does this mean in terms
of relational webs of players, designers, storytellers, and the technologies we
engage with to play the games?
6.
net-work: kinnections + deep relations
The Native paradigm is comprised of and includes
ideas of constant motion and flux, existence consisting of energy waves,
interrelationships, all things being animate... If human beings are animate and
have spirit, then "all my relations" must also be animate and have spirit.
(Leroy Little Bear, "Foreword", Native Science: Natural Laws of
Interdependence)
These webs of connections are
necessary for survivance storytelling to flourish, within Never Alone,
it is an intimacy and interconnectivity through game play, immersion with an
old story (re)mapped within a digital space. In this section I introduce my own
neologism—kinnections—to trace threads of this web of
interconnectivity, weaving selected strands into this article. It is intended
as a launching point rather than definitive statement—the networks reach
out in more directions than is possible in multiple books, let alone one paper.
Nonetheless, tracing these relations helps highlight their materiality—a
richer one than may appear at first.
Within
Never Alone in particular, and Indigenous games more broadly, materiality
is more pervasive than it seems. I am engaging with particular Indigenous lines
of thought, threads if you will, to tug ideas within Robbie Shilliam's concept
of deep relations into a kinnected, trans-indigenous sphere. These threads are
words on the page, pulled from a digital recording or image; what we weave here
is perhaps more intangible than tangible, but nonetheless connected deeply by
interdependence.
As
with any deep interdependence, the game, company, tribe, players, land itself
have a stake in each other. I take up Robbie Shilliam's terms to describe this
interconnectedness, but shift it slightly. He defines deep relations in his
work The Black Pacific as:
a relationality
that exists underneath the wounds of coloniality, a cutting logic that seeks to—but
on the whole never quite manages to—segregate peoples from their lands,
their pasts, their ancestors and spirits. Decolonial science seeks to repair colonial
wounds, binding back together peoples, lands, pasts, ancestors and spirits. Its
greatest challenge is to bind back together the manifest and spiritual domains.
(13)
Binding back together manifest
and spiritual domains presents a paradox that digital spaces might help
mitigate—as this binding requires materiality. Materiality in an extended
and very earthy sense, as it cannot leave nature out of materialism, a
materiality that does things (Wark 14). Never Alone has a particular
liveliness that cannot be separated from the material world, which is
foundationally the natural world. Alexander Galloway calls a video game "a
cultural object, bound by history and materiality, consisting of an electronic
computational device and a game simulated in software" (1). I would like to
decolonize this, extending it further than being viewed as an action-object—but
as something which has a particular vibrancy, a liveliness that crosses realms.
Binding
and relational threads are used here to describe the interstices between realms;
when we cross over into a different media realm and immerse ourselves in a
particular world, touching on deep, global infrastructures of trans-indigenous
connectivity. These connections are marked by invitations to participate, but
the digital/physical world-making with Never Alone at its center has been
created with Iñupiat
ways of being. It will take up the questions of cosmologies and temporalities,
seeds and emergences.
Weaving
in the concept of deep relations helps encompass further these concepts of
relating and moves to self-determination that underpin the story and gameplay,
the creation and distribution, the materiality of resources, technology, and
future plans. While examining them in detail is outside the scope of this
paper, noting their connections to and through the game helps indicate
additional depths of this relationality. Rather than a massive portmanteau or
hyphenated kin-making-digital-physical-phrase, I will use kinnection to touch
on this area. This term invites further development and discussion, but if we
are tracing roots and routes—here we turn back to Never Alone.
Never
Alone is a fitting emergence for articulating realm-crossing routes, as it
draws on the materiality of itself—the earthiness of the console, the
travels to get there, the electricity to utilize it. This materiality is in
motion, the work-play a material action. Returning to Galloway:
With
video games, the work itself is material action. One plays a game. And the
software runs. The operator and the machine play the video game together, step
by step, move by move. Here the "work"
is not as solid or integral as in other media. (p 3)
Here we are still stuck within
Western concepts of work, binaries, and ʻoperatorʻ versus
ʻmachineʻ. Galloway does note that "in our day and age, this is the
site of fun. It is also the work site" (5), and he takes up the terms "operator" and "machine" not to downplay the fun
within gaming, but "to stress that in the sphere of electronic media, games are
fundamentally cybernetic software systems involving both organic and nonorganic
actors" (6).
I
would like to turn this line of thought in on itself a bit: teasing out the
idea of cybernetic networks into nets and work-play of
relational practices/kin-making across multiple realms. Seeing these as the
threads that bind the interstices, that flow out from and back to the "cultural
objects" Galloway refers to as a video game. It can be said that, just as the
title denotes, we are never alone playing the game; Never Alone is more
than a cultural object, even in the broader game theory sense. Taking back up
the thread of the game as more than a co-author allows us to present it as a decolonial
science practice/comic holotrope of survivance—moving between realms to
relate a story of multiple worlds (touching on material and spiritual domains).
"I
think we are more scientists than people realize—we have more knowledge
of these things than people will ever know" (Angie (Patik) Kellie, Never
Alone Cultural Insight video).
In
the introduction to Native American DNA, Kim TallBear notes the
importance of "the practice of making kin" and the deep meaning in circulation,
as she puts it: "routedness" versus "rootedness". In this section, TallBear
also thanks Donna Haraway for "insisting that there is pleasure to be had in
the confusion of boundaries—in their undoing." Unsettling boundaries,
embracing routedness—patterns and pathways that unsettle settler spaces
as they (re)map them; within this r(re)mapping and (re)connection lies an
undoing as well as a remaking. What Galloway sees as being less than
"interactive" (6) can be powerfully generative and disruptive at the same time.
I
would like to pick up the idea of migration and travel further here to think of
routedness and movement in
digital realms, pathways and kin-making, and maintaining practices for both
human and nonhuman family. Revisiting the earlier use of the term root/rooted
to view rootedness as planted within a story, traveling along the story
route through varied temporal and spatial perceptions, returning back, flowing
through, changed but familiar. These decolonial intimacies indigenous game
realms offer extend kin-making and practices through various materialities and multiple
realm-crossings.
These
net-works—encompassing readers, viewers, makers, players, and more—are
whirling in kinetic webs of survivance that elicit resonances and tugs
kinnection threads. For assistance in further tracing multiple narrative voices
and connections in these worlds/realms within realms—I turn to Vizenor
and his concept of comic holotrope of survivance.
7. comic holotrope of survivance: or, when Fox is more/less/all
"The fox was reborn into a new form. Or was it who he really
was this whole time?"
(Narrator, Never
Alone)
Here we pick up these threads
of (re)coding and kinnection to weave them alongside Vizenor's articulations of
comic holotrope of survivance, tracing some of the digital-political Never
Alone and Upper One Games has (re)coded. It is fitting to place the section on (re)coding
comic holotropes after kinnections—as it is a communal "all" figuration
by an extended community, a (re)coded space. Articulating it here remains
playful and open to expanded allusion and layered meanings; much like
survivance, it is praxis—theory as action. We do stories. Linking Ishmael
Angaluuk Hope with Haunani-Kay Trask, these "story-doings" are inherently,
profoundly, and richly political.
Before
releasing these lines of flight within Never Alone, it is helpful to revisit
various pieces of this concept as drawn out by Gerald Vizenor. As stated
earlier, he outlines the comic holotrope of survivance in Writing Indian,
Native Conversations as follows:
So comic
holotrope is the question—it's communal, and it's an "all" figuration,
the entire figuration—you have to recreate it, which is the entire
figuration—of the community. You have to create a play of readers and
listeners in the story itself. That's the comic holotrope. (117)
This play of readers,
listeners, story within the game is assisted by a key figure: the trickster.
"The trickster is a communal sign in a comic narrative; the comic holotrope
(the whole figuration) is a consonance in tribal discourse" (Narrative Chance
9). Vizenor delineates the trickster and comic holotrope in a later section as
sign and signifier, noting Lacan's liberation of the signifier[6]
within trickster narratives. I will not delve too deeply into sign and
signifier here, as their emergences in digital spaces transforms the discourses
about them, pushing for (re)newed ones. But it is important to note this delineation
of narrative voices/comic holotrope as the signifier in trickster narratives,
and the trickster as semiotic sign that "wanders between narrative voices and
comic chance in oral presentations" (Narrative Chance 189).
I
do not wish to imply that Fox is a trickster in a generic sense; returning to
Chadwick Allen's concepts, thinking of Fox as a whole within the game and the
community. "The trickster is a communal sign, a comic holotrope and a
discourse; not a real person or a tragic metaphor in an isolated monologue" (Narrative
Chance 9). The particular kinnections for his game allow Fox to push back
against boundaries Vizenor proscribes around tricksters in prior literary
emergences: "The trickster is disembodied in a narrative, the language game
transmutes birds and animals with no corporeal or material representations" (Narrative
Chance 196). Here there is another materiality now intimately involved:
earth, metals, oils, plastics, electrical currents and charges.
I
use 'involved' with some humor here—at a certain point (now infamous on
community boards and playthroughs), the only way out is through breaking player
perceptions of "tragic." Vizenor notes the trickster is comic and communal
multiple times in Narrative Chance, noting this is "neither the 'whole truth' nor an isolated hypotragic
transvaluation..." (12). The tragic is outlined as a linear single story arc that
communal comic holotropes resist—as does the trickster as the sign, as
does Fox as our emergence of this sign within Never Alone.
At
this particular game point, when a player ʻwins' or 'beats' that level by making it through all
the challenges and unlocked bonuses, a figure comes out and brutally snaps Foxʻs
neck. This step is necessary, as it leads to a (re)emergence of the Fox within
the next levels, however it is rough to experience (even for those replaying
the game). Players react very strongly to the character's perceived death, the
unfairness of that action, etc.
Fox
exemplifies both the comic and survivance—transforming into another form
on the next level. As shown by the fox quote opening this section "or was this
his true form to begin with?" perception and form are fluid; tragedy is turned
into something else, here the comic is communal, shared humor between game,
players, narrator, etc. The 'tragic single story' thread is playfully inverted,
woven back into the larger holotrope. Walter Kerr notes in his classical
studies on tragedy and comedy—there is no way out in comedy, and tragedy
is the form that (cruelly) promises a happy ending. In Never Alone it
remains cyclical, we continue on within the game, transformed, to return to the
end-as-beginning: the same scene it started from.
8.
comic holotrope: (re)coded
"The Western world is finally coming to
understand how our ancestors embedded and encoded our ceremonies, languages,
world views, and metanarratives as complex algorithms that refer back to the
very creation of the universe."
(Cheryl LʻHirondelle "Codetalkers
Recounting Signals of Survival")
Now that we have traced some of
what Fox does within Never Alone, as a sign that becomes the comic holotrope of
survivance "(t)rope are figures of speech; here the trickster is a sign that
becomes a comic holotrope, a consonance of sentences in various voices,
ironies, variation in cultural myths and metaphors." (Narrative Chance
190). Never Alone is a shifting interplay of narratives within the game
and there is much more to be said, written, and created around the ideas of comic
holotropes and tricksters in digital realms.
Between
the storyteller/narrator, Fox, and glitches (which often happen through the fox
when played by the game system itself)[7]
there are significant emergences of the comic holotrope: playful, communal,
with nuances and multiple layers/realm shifts that push against the
"flattening" Leanne Simpson and others caution against—within game
worlds, these nonhuman intimacies and unexpected turns are heightened. All of
which weaves into a "whole figuration"/emergence that "ties the unconscious to
social experiences" (Narrative Chance 196); (re)coding these spaces as
acts of survivance.
Shifting
discourses beyond critical theory and political ecologies—thinking of
this digital (re)mapping of these holotropes as political/cultural/artistic
emergences of survivance requires a moment to think about what this term might
emerge as in a digital space. Thinking of survivance as ways of relating and
reshaping other realms within our context of (re)mapping, it allows for
invitational play with resurgence theory,[8]
partnerships and remaking within digital realms. Turning to resurgence theory,
scholar Leanne Simpson notes similar themes to those presented earlier in this
writing: seeds, stories, emergences in her book, Dancing On Our Turtle's
Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence:
Interpreted
within our cultural web of non-authoritarian leadership, non-hierarchical ways
of being, non-interference and non-essentialism, the stories explain the
resistance of my Ancestors and the seeds of resurgence they so carefully saved
and planted. (18)
In the first section, Simpson
clarifies that she sees these stories told in print or video/film as losing
some of their emergent transformative power, becoming "flattened" and
"unilateral" (34).
Gerald Vizenor's pivotal definition of
survivance in Manifest Manners is "an
active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere
reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of
dominance, tragedy, and victimry";they have much in common with resurgence, and,
as the site survivance.org states,
"[a]n act of survivance is Indigenous self-expression in any medium that tells
a story about our active presence in the world now." The flattening she
articulates can be understood on some level within words on a page. Yet as
Vizenor, Goeman, and others have noted, there is incredible depth and play
within this form. Leanne Simpson has engaged with this in her more recent works:
in her chapter in Indigenous Poetics in
Canada, she describes how digital storytelling plays a "critical role" in
Indigenous nation-building and resurgence. In addition, these forms work to
decolonize and envision Indigenous-centered collective futures for all our
relations.
(Re)mapping
survivance into digital game spaces traces these relations even further. If we
think about spatial (re)mapping within Indigenous stories, and the
(re)mediation of them into digital environments—Never Alone in
particular—dynamic circular web patterns swirl in an emergence—an
imaginative and lively imitation, rather than a fixed representation. In other
words: a comic holotrope of survivance, with kinnections bringing depth
and multilateral resonances. Returning to survivance.org:
"[s]urvivance is more than mere survival—it is a way of life that
nourishes Indigenous ways of knowing."
Comic holotrope as a
concept is important to articulate through ever-political 21st century Indigenous artists and creators. Vizenor
parallels Trask when he cautions: "Social scientists take Native stories as
representations, not imitations or figurations, because they are not literary
artists. They're methodologists, looking for a faux reality" (Purdy 116). If
the comic holotrope is all communal, relational, and all figurative/emergent;
here this conceptual tool is (re)mapped to think of new-yet-old relational
emergences, a story infused with survivance, (re)coded for the 21st century.
As
with the word survivance, the use of comic holotrope here is done not as a
neologism in the digital realm, but infused with a "beyond meaning" or "greater
meaning" (Purdy 117). This is an attempt to (re)code the comic holotrope of
survivance into digital spaces, thinking about realm emergences: highly
imitative realms with their own agency.
The
comic holotrope within this world also incorporates that there are actors within
the game that are not human: glitches, and AI moving the NPC in unexpected or
seemingly counterproductive ways. Temporal plasticity occurs on multiple
levels, causing shifts in relations and intimacies. The game pushes certain
questions: what other intimacies get clipped when we focus on human ones? What
happens when we recenter affective intimacies on the nonhuman?
9.
end as beginning—survivance into resurgence
"The lie, the great American lie that we have
been exterminated by the colossus of the North has been uncovered... Decolonization
is all around us. My work could not exist outside this context, nor would I
want to write in any other."
(Haunani-Kay Trask, "Writing in Captivity:
Poetry in a Time of Decolonization")
There is no neat conclusion
here. As this realm and these concepts (re)code in new emergences, I close our
journey together with a look towards current and future projects, which promise
to take these ideas even further and deeper. There is more here than can be
articulated by the written word. As Vizenor notes, social scientists often
become fixated on terms, articulations, definitions—which cuts many kinnections
that help shape these works in intangible ways.
While
it is important to attempt to note some of these potentials and articulations,
I want to close with the images above, thinking of them as world (re)mapping,
allowing us "to see that the map is an open one and the ideological and
material relationships it produces are still in process" (Goeman 38). The first
image is of a game interface as Turtle Island, designed by Elizabeth LaPensée,
for the Indigenous languages singing game Singuistics developed by
Pinnguaq. The second is by Lianne Charlie, who created gyó/Salmon in connection
with learning traditional salmon relational practices in her home territory.
Both women are phenomenal digital artists and Indigenous scholars who push,
what we assume to be, ones and zeros, thinking of the spaces between them as
relational practices, engaging with multiple realms and materialities to (re)code
digital images and spaces, embodying kinnections and the responsibilities those
kinnections entail.
Several
younger and older Iñupiat community members refer to Never
Alone as a seed, a story which can unfold further (as it has for
generations). As with any seed, they need care to flourish into emergences,
which may take route/root in multiple spaces. From a polar-bear guard to a
Basque-American currently writing alongside Kānaka Maoli 'ohana hanai in Hawai'i, tracing these threads is not meant to exclude others,
nor preclude their unfolding elsewhere, but to highlight how Never Alone as (re)coded holotrope moves
far beyond 'preserving a culture' or 'saving' a people. It also offers future
lines of flight for thinking about (re)coded comic holotropes of resurgence.
As
the I˜upiaq believe, this story is transformative. It deepens kinnections:
story and practices of interconnectedness and deep relations form
trans-indigenous patterning across human and non-human worlds. To articulate
this further—especially how the liveliness of the game interplays with
the concepts of (re)mapping, kinnection, and survivance—I close with two
quotes from Amy Fredeen:
I grew
up hearing some of Our traditional stories, but not fully aware of the values
imbedded in those stories. Being a part of the team that made this amazing game
has been a gift. I have reconnected with stories long forgotten, and have been
able to realize how important storytelling is for passing on wisdom and values.
She invites us to think of
stories as alreadycoded in multiple ways: having numerous layers of meanings
that are embedded, unfurling in new-yet-familiar ways as they are (re)mapped
and (re)coded in different realms. Within this unfurling are depended kinnections—experiencing
places and ties in visual and aural kinetic environments and networks within
networks, expressed through Never Alone's comic holotrope: a holotrope
of survivance and perhaps (invitational) resurgence of indigenous futurities. As
Fredeen succinctly explains it: "It's not one way of seeing things, it's one
way of knowing you're connected to everything."