Welcome to the Turtle Island Games Archive!

Introduction:

Game studies, a new and novel field twenty years ago, has grown into an established research area with scholars across the academy addressing various elements of computer and video games in their work. However, there remains relatively little focus on Indigenous representation in games. While there is an increasing focus from the area of Native American studies, the inaccessibility of many relevant games makes studying commercial games with Native American characters particularly challenging. This project hopes to create research tools that will make studying Native American representation in games more accessible.

How to use the site:

This site contains a series of resources intended to help those interested in teaching with or researching games with Indigenous representation make informed choices. If you have some idea of what you’re looking for (either a specific game, or some criteria that you’d like to sort by) you’ll want to check out our game articles. If you’re still trying to figure out an approach, you might want to look at some of our curated lists, which can help point you in the right direction.

Game Articles

The game articles contain information about a game’s release and include a brief description of the types of Indigenous content you will find in the game. These game descriptions are not meant to be plot summaries, but they can be spoiler-heavy. You’ll also find a gameplay description- this section is meant to offer some suggestions on how easy or difficult a particular game may be to use in a classroom or incorporate into your research.

Finally, each game article includes some additional media. When possible, we link to examples of the media coverage a game received and scholarly sources that mention the game. Game articles also include screenshots, images from game manuals, and gameplay videos.

Additional Content

Our listicles provide lists of curated content that go beyond the tags to provide some additional insight into the games in the collection. If you’re not sure where to start looking, you may want to browse the listicles and see if you find a topic that catches your eye! We have listlcles on

1980's Games 1990's Games 2000's Games 2010's Games 2020's Games Action-Adventure Android Arcade Competitive Multiplayer Cooperative Multiplayer DOS Indigenous Involvement Indigenous Language Indigenous NPCs Indigenous Player Character Indigenous Villians iOS Linux Named Tribe NES OS X Platformer Point and Click Adventure PS2 PS3 PS4 RTS Shooter Single Player Switch WiiU Windows X360 Xbox XboxOne