An educator from Standing Rock has created a video game in the style of "The Sims" and "Oregon Trail" to educate South Dakota’s students about math, history and language in Lakota and English.
Juliana Taken Alive, video game developer and formerSouth DakotaDirector of Indian Education, has led the creation of the Growing Math game, part of 7 Generation Games’ repertoire of games that educate on Indigenous topics, and is aimed at third grade through eighth grade.
7 Generation Games was recently awarded a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide no-cost resources to schools in six states, including South Dakota. Growing Math is free to any school in the state that wishes to use it, thanks to the grant, Taken Alivesaid.
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Taken Alive said her Growing Math curriculum is already used in seven schools in six districts in South Dakota, including Summit, Timber Lake, Marty Indian School, Red Cloud Elementary, Enemy Swim, McLaughlin Elementary and McLaughlin Middle School.
“It’s actually really nice that (7 Generation Games) isn’t a big corporation because they actually get to personalize their games and really get the cultural pieces correct and accurate by vetting them through tribal members and consultants from tribes,” Taken Alive said.
Maria Burns Ortiz, the CEO and creative director of 7 Generation Games, said the company started with the intention of closing the math gap. Educators wanted to engage the youth in math while also teaching culture.
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That’s what led to the foundation of 7 Generation Games.
“How many times do you see if you can play a video game to get incrementally further? You try again, and you fail, and you try again,” Ortiz said. “You don’t see that with math. What if we could take that excitement, engagement and persistence and put it towardmath?”
Creator: 'It's a nice, culturally relevant combination'
In the immersive, low-cost and interactive video games, students learn a wealth of topics in English, Spanish, Lakota, Dakota and soon Ojibwe and Navajo.
“It’s grown into this really nice, culturally relevant combination of math and Indigenous culture, which is really great,” Taken Alive said.
Growing Math provides ready-to-go lessons and activities combining math, agricultural science and Lakota and Dakota culture. Games are accessible to both rural communities and urban areas, and could be easily used in classrooms, in hybrid model teaching, or through distance learning.
For example, students can learn a lesson on cattails and what they’re historically used for, what they look like, how they’ve helped Indigenous people over the years and what cultures use them, Taken Alive said.
“It’s like a potpourri, a mix of everything in the lessons,” she said.
Ortiz said in other games 7 Generation Games offers, such as "Spirit Lake," a student may encounter an epidemic affecting their tribe in the game and would need to find a traditional, medicinal herb for each patient.
“You know you’ve got eight sick people, and you need three of an herb,” Ortiz said. “You run through the forest, you get past wolves and you have to find the right flowers. While you do this, you put it in the context of the math.”
Another example, Ortiz said, is a buffalo hunt where students solve problems like knowing they need five arrows to hunt a buffalo, but need to hunt seven buffalo.
The Lakota games were developed with tribal partners in the state. Games like Growing Math help create educational resources that accurately reflect local students’ communities and the history of their communities, Taken Alive said.
Video game developers actually interviewed teachers, Indigenous educators and school leaders to get their opinions on what schools needed and created the games with them in mind, she added.
“Our Indigenous educators were once Indigenous students,” she said. “Wherever they went, their experiences, they’re carrying them forward as education leaders, so it’s important to get their point of view.”
‘It’s for all students'
Taken Alive said it’s “commonly known” in Indigenous cultures that the seventh generation is an important generation, and the one that will “make the changes,” including changes in culture, ancestrally and more.
Indigenous educators are trying to recruit more teachers in more schools across the state to take advantage of the free curriculum in their classrooms so more students can gain a “culturally relevant” education.
“In South Dakota when we talk about the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings, some people shy away from that because they think they don’t know enough about it to teach it,” Taken Alive said. “But it’s not just for Native American students, it’s for all students.”
There’s a misconception that because an educator may not know enough about Lakota culture, they can’t teach it, Taken Alive said.
“When you think about it, Mario Brothers wasn’t created just so Italian plumbers can use it,” she said as an example. “It was created for everybody with that theme. That’s kind of how we want to look at Growing Math and 7 Generation Games: it’s for everybody, even though the focus is on Indigenous cultures.”
