The “Games for Decolonization” project’s primary output of research creation is the Tarot for Decolonization Deck. Guided by the scholarship of Mimi Khúc (creator of the Asian-American Tarot and Games for Decolonization Workshop participant) and facilitated by Indigenous Two Spirit tarot practitioner and author of Red Tarot (2024) Christopher Marmolejo (also a Games for Decolonization Workshop participant), the Tarot for Decolonization Deck will adapt the mechanics of tarot to facilitate conversation through terminology and imagery that thematize Indigenous and settler relationships to land, history, and sovereignty.
The Tarot for Decolonization Project seeks to cultivate a deeper understanding of decolonization through arts-based and co-creative research mobilization, specifically focusing on Tarot as a methodology for shared, relational, and dialogic storytelling. The primary goals are to foster dialogue on decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, and Indigenous and settler relationships to land by developing opportunities for story-sharing and relationship-building between Indigenous and settler community members. By connecting creators with Tarot scholars and practitioners, industry partners, and decolonial educators, this project will create new approaches to re-storying Canadian history and relationships to land through a reimagined and decolonized approach to Tarot.
Traditionally, tarot cards have been seen as a tool that purportedly helps the player gain insight into the past, present or future. However, tarot does this work through a kind of relational spontaneous storytelling that takes place between the player and the reader. Moving away from the occult associations of this activity, our project positions the methodological practice of reading tarot cards as an opportunity to cultivate a relational and dialogic understanding of settler colonialism and its impacts that emerge through a storytelling engagement with decolonial themes.
Each card in the Tarot deck carries a wealth of symbolic imagery. These symbols act as triggers for storytelling, inviting the reader and querent (person who is having the reading done) to explore their meanings in the context of the question or situation at hand. The reader then weaves these meanings together by considering not only individual cards but also the relationships between them, compelling the querent to similarly draw out relationships to and between the cards. Card combinations create a narrative flow, encouraging a more nuanced and interconnected storytelling experience.
At the heart of this initiative is the development of the deck as a tool designed to facilitate reflection on settler colonialism in Indigenous and settler spaces. Tarot will serve as a heuristic and methodological framework to foster shared storytelling, inviting users to reimagine relationships to land, sovereignty, and reconciliation to deepen understanding and foster critical reflection on our shared history of settler colonialism. Moreover, as a potential or intended divinatory tool, the Deck has further applications in healing past trauma, advancing spiritual growth, and temporal reflection in advancing the work of truth and reconciliation. Storytelling through Tarot meaningfully engages a dialogic co-construction of time, not just of reader and querent, but with self and Spirit. In its divinatory application Tarot is thus able to break the stranglehold of “straight time” (Muñoz) to evoke an ontological shift. When practitioners engage the prophetic, revelatory, or augury and omens that the cards potentiate as a means to comprehend a temporal unity, the practice Tarot thus queers time and place, itself a decolonial tactic. Thus, in the context of truth and reconciliation, Tarot can not only foster new and relational understandings of the history and ongoing legacy of settler colonialism but also facilitate dialogue on decolonial/post-colonial futures.
A decolonized version of this process would then be two-fold. First, the questions posed would prompt reflection on the reader’s relationship to the land, settler colonialism, and/or Indigenous sovereignty. Secondly, the images presented on their cards themselves and their symbolic meaning would be reimagined to communicate essential concepts, ideas, symbols, and archetypes that connect with real lived Indigenous experience as well as to the process of truth and reconciliation.
In consultation with UBC students, members of BC’s Indigenous community members and participants at the Games and Social Justice Public Lecture Series, a selection of themes and archetypes for the deck, which is traditionally 78 cards divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards), will be identified. While this process will determine its own ends, Nijdam and Marmolejo will guide the conversation to help illuminate what a Tarot deck for decolonization might look like. For example, a tarot deck that seeks to foster dialogue on decolonization would be a culturally inclusive tool that reflects diverse perspectives on Indigenous-settler relations from an Indigenous perspective, fostering narratives of Indigenous experience through symbolism and archetypes. Therefore, these symbols and archetypes might reflect perspectives on the path to and hurdles in the process of truth and reconciliation.
Like “Cards for Decolonization,” it might play with stereotypes of Indigenous experience, but the “Tarot Deck for Decolonization” would replace satire with earnest dialogue to force settlers to reflect on archetypes that either problematically reinforce or challenge traditional power structures. The Tarot for Decolonization Deck will thereby be a tool for reflection, empowerment, and cultural appreciation, inviting users to explore diverse perspectives on Indigenous experience that challenge established settler-Indigenous relationships through collaborative and dialogic storytelling.
Then, drawing from the UBC Comics Studies Cluster’s network in Vancouver and beyond, the project will commission the illustration of these cards from Indigenous cartoons and graphic artists living on the North West Coast.
In addition to the deck itself, the project will exhibit its materials and process at the Koerner Library; produce a comprehensive set of teaching materials; publish findings in both public and academic platforms; and advocate for Tarot’s potential as a social-justice-oriented methodology in activist and educational spaces. Moreover, the Deck and materials produced will be showcased at the UBC Pop Culture Cluster’s Pop Pedagogies Symposium (2026) and housed in the Pop Pedagogies Archive of Educational Resources to support educators in engaging with popular media in teaching and learning. Lastly, the Deck will include a guide by Marmolejo that scaffolds the reading. This guide will support practitioners in engaging with the deck’s symbols and meanings, prompting critical reflection on relationships to land, colonialism, and Indigenous sovereignty. Ultimately, this project demonstrates Tarot’s transformative potential (Smith) and capacity for fostering discursive self-reflection, co-creative meaning-making, and transcultural dialogue. The Deck will, therefore, function not only as a theoretical exploration of decolonial storytelling but also as a practice that enables transformative dialogue and narrative co-creation in the spirit of truth and reconciliation.