Gaming Extractivism: Indigenous Resurgence, Unjust Infrastructures, and the Politics of Play in Elizabeth LaPensée’s Thunderbird Strike

Abstract

Background: Indigenous-led struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure in North America have become increasingly visible. These struggles occur on the ground as well as through cultural production that performs cultural resistance. Analysis: This article examines Anishinaabe, Métis, and settler-Irish media theorist and artist Elizabeth LaPensée’s video game Thunderbird Strike as a form of Indigenous cultural resistance to extractivism. Conclusion and implications: Thunderbird Strike expresses the necessity of halting the expansion of extractivism by inviting players to participate in the sabotage of unjust infrastructure. In asking players to enact the very forms of generative resistance that the game articulates at a narratological level, Thunderbird Strike reveals the possibilities for video games to prefigure the transition to a decolonial, post-extractive future.