Native Americans in Video Games

Here’s something I wrote a few years ago. I’m not going to bother editing it or changing anything, but if you are curious about how Native Americans have been portrayed in video games you might find it interesting.

Native Americans have and continue to be very under-represented in video games. Back in the 1980’s, there were almost virtually no indigenous characters in video games. Things were a lot different back then as they were not in many other veins of popular culture. Besides the oh so familiar Mario Bro’s, this wasn’t a huge trend. There was one game in the 80’s, Custer’s Revenge, which features the apparent rape of a Native American girl. It sparked a lot of controversy from woman’s rights groups and Native American activists.

In the 1990’s, we had one of the first games to have a centralized Native American hero character. “Turok: Dinosaur Hunter” was released for the Nintendo 64 in 1997.  The game play itself was highly praised and was a huge selling title on the platform, but it also held all the stereotypes we usually give to Native Americans, feathers, mystic powers, ECT. I can’t really decide if that should be considered bad or not, as that IS a very important part of their culture as far as I understand. There was also some other Native American characters in games but they still were not very dominant.
Between 2000 and 2005, the Native American presence in videogames had completely dwindled. But in 2006, we had a new game coming out with a Native American hero.

It was titled “Prey”. Prey is a First Person Shooter revolving around a Cherokee hero. The game begins on a reservation in Oklahoma at a casino (okay, THAT’s a stereotype). The game then jumps into a sci-fi alien story that is very compelling from what I have heard. I haven’t played the game for more than an hour. It seems to, on the most part; fairly represent the Native American culture. A few stereotypes might include the use of a bow and arrow, and a spirit form where you exit your body. From what I remember, these were both used as very defining game play elements and weren’t simply tacked on to support the native theme. Two voice actors, the main lead and another supporting role, are both Plains Cree and it felt like 3D realms did a great job of representing the culture.

Other than what I’ve posted, there have not been many more titles to truly represent Native Americans as a culture. Not sure what the reasons are behind this, but game companies DO know what sells and what doesn’t. I will be keeping an eye out from now on in the games I play to take notice of Native American characters and how they are portrayed.
*Much of the information in this article was derived from THIS ARTICLE.

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