Last week, our cultural consultant Dr. Erich Longie and our co-founder Maria Burns Ortiz traveled to Prior Lake, Minnesota (right outside of the Twin Cities) to attend the biennial Minnesota Indigenous Language Symposium. The event brings together Native Americans from across Minnesota and the surrounding areas to discuss issues relating to indigenous language and other aspects of culture.
We not only had an exhibition table alongside a bunch of other great companies, but 7 Generation Games headlined two sessions on incorporating culture into the classrooms. The response to the game was great. In fact, in our second session, we had the fortune of having several students from an area Ojibwe immersion school in attendance as they had the day off. At the end, one of the girls told Maria to follow up with their school to see about getting it into their computer lab.
The feedback from teachers and other attendees was equally as promising. It looks like we might soon be adding some additional schools and after-school programs to what is an ever-growing list.
We’ve been doing a lot of meetups and events lately promoting the math side of the game, but it was great to do something where the cultural aspects of the game that we’ve worked so hard on were the focus.