Elizabeth LaPensée

Elizabeth LaPensée
LaPensée speaking at #1ReasonToBe Conference, March 2015
Nationality	Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish
Occupation	Professor, artist, game designer, writer, and researcher
Title	Assistant professor
Academic background
Alma mater	Portland State University (BA, MA) Simon Fraser University (PhD)
Thesis	Survivance: An Indigenous Social Impact Game (2014)
Doctoral advisor	Ron Wakkary
Academic work
Institutions	Michigan State University

Elizabeth LaPensée is a professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University.^[1] She is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish.^[1] She studies and creates video games, visual art, and digital media to help indigenous people confront and process intergenerational trauma^[2].

Education

LaPensée received her Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University.^[1] Her dissertation was on the benefits of playing Survivance— a social impact game that uplifts storytelling, art, and self-determination as a pathway to healing from historical trauma, especially Indigenous historical trauma.^[3][4]

Indigenous game design

LaPensée designs games around indigenous identity. She often collaborates with community partners to create games and is active in organizing for the indigenous community. She argues that Native cultures have a different understanding of space and time than others, and can use that to innovate in game design.^[5] Her games provide an interactive way of engaging with and preserving indigenous cultures and history. Her game Honour Water (2016) is a "singing-game" that teaches the water songs of the Anishinaabe.^[6] In 2014, LaPensée spoke out against a remake of Custer's Revenge, a controversial game that allows the player, as General Custer, to rape a Native woman.^[7]

LaPensée's game Invaders was featured in the 2015 ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto.^[8][9]

She organized the first Natives in Game Development meetup at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in May 2015.^[10]

In 2017, Lapensée received the Serious Games Community Leadership Award from the Serious Games Special Interest Group of the International Game Developers Association.^[11][12] Her game Thunderbird Strike won the prize for Best Digital Media Work at the 2017 ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.^[13]

In April 2018, Lapensée was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow in the fine arts category.^[14]

Indigenous Futurism

Elizabeth LaPensée's research is often cited in connection with Indigenous Futurism. Indigenous scholar Grace Dillon describes LaPensée's sci-fi animations as a "must-see" example of how Aboriginal storytelling can transform the way Aboriginal futures are imagined.^[15] Kristina Baudemann argues that LaPensée's ability to draw on her Aboriginal culture, spirituality, language and values and create new representations of Aboriginal people that transcend and debunk stereotypes and myths of Aboriginal people in Canada is a vital part of contemporary Indigenous Futurism.^[16]

Works

References