- #Must have research apps for android 2016 software
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The Tarahumara have already incorporated some ancient practices into modern life, so it is helpful that the game features narration in the Tarahumara language.Ī surge of fonts for Native American languages have been created over the last 10 years or so by various tribes, which can enable the teaching of traditional language, sometimes in nations where all original language has been lost. Through representations of cultural deities and customs, Tarahumara youth can both learn and share their heritage. This game was inspired by the stories of the Tarahumara people, and set in their ancestral lands in the northern state of Chihuahua. This highlights the Alaskan Native philosophy of interdependence between species, among other cultural ideas.įarther afield, the Mexican developer Lienzo created a 3-D environment video game called Mulaka - Origin Tribes, modeling the mythology of the Tarahumara culture.
Upper One Games in Alaska created a game called Never Alone, about a girl lost in a blizzard who must rely upon the friendship of an Arctic fox. Designed for kids ages 6 to 12, the game will be available in the App Store and for Android in February.Īround the same time Shortman released Navajo Toddler, the first indigenous-owned video game developer and publisher in the United States emerged.
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Shortman is also putting together a video game called Twin Warriors based on a Navajo birth-story, where twin boys must face a series of otherworldly monsters and ancients to prevail in life.
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To address this, the games will be open-source software, but will only show up as available for download in the appropriate season. One such story, called "Coyote and the Stars," is a Navajo legend that is supposed to be told in winter. He is now working with an illustrator cousin on a storytelling app for young children that relates traditional Navajo tales.
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Shortman, a software engineer, recently spoke to the cultural challenges of working with Native American topics, and the need to be sensitive to cultural rules - such as when a tale must only be told at a certain time of year. His daughter had been studying the Lakota language, he said, and was learning other indigenous languages as well. "It has been a unique experience working with the Lakota language - and a learning process," Shortman told the Falmouth Institute's Spoken First series in 2013. As they saw images, children could learn the basic words for each category, and audio of the word in Navajo would play simultaneously. "That meant using technology and sharing information through smartphones." The initial release of the app included three categories: food, numbers and body parts. "I saw culture and language not being passed down, and wanted to reach kids in an everyday way," he said. Upon its release, he promised that more games would follow.
Tinkr Labs co-founder Israel Shortman, a member of the Navajo Nation, created Navajo Toddler. It was designed for children ages 2 to 9, is available in the Apple App Store and teaches elements of the Navajo language with interactive visual flashcards, audio and gameplay. Navajo Toddler is one such game developed by Tinkr Labs, which for several years has created programming for Natives to learn or maintain their original languages. Nakay Flotte of Harvard University’s Native American Program (HUNAP) wrote to me about a trend in tribal video game and app development that started around 2013. Natives in academia like Littlebear keep a watchful eye on software and other products that can be used in schools to teach lost and diminishing languages. Littlebear applauded recent developments in language and culture retention technology. It is typically the elders or years of research that hold lost answers and dialect.Īs Richard Littlebear, president of Montana's Chief Dull Knife College, wrote in a recent research paper, the present generation of fluent speakers of Native languages "needs to honor the preceding generations by strengthening those languages so they remain beyond the seventh generation." For this reason, it's especially important for Native American children to find language tools in modern media. Children in particular feel the pull of Western things: language, clothes, toys, media and technology. When you're from a sovereign culture within a larger-looming cultural environment - as Native Americans living on and off reservations are - sometimes it's hard to hold on to your language and mores.
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