Image from Nijdam’s recent article in The Conversation.
The Games for Decolonization Project provides an interdisciplinary forum, methodological framework, and academic and industry network dedicated to examining the intersections between board games and discourses of settler colonialism, decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty, and social justice.
This project explores how games are valuable educational tools and was the foundation of both a recent article in The Conversation entitled “What’s unsettling about Catan: How board games uphold colonial narratives,” which examines the colonialist underpinnings of popular board games, and a workshop that took place in March 2024. The “Games for Decolonization” Workshop (March 21-23, 2024) brought together Indigenous and settler scholars to engage in critical conversations on the role of gaming cultures in the work of social justice. Examining what role gaming cultures might play in illuminating the complex relationships between discourses of Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and migration, this 2-day event explored how games might foster decolonizing perspectives in both academic and public-facing forums.
Tarot for Decolonization
The “Games for Decolonization” project’s primary output of research-creation is the Tarot for Decolonization Deck. Guided by Indigenous Two Spirit tarot practitioner and author of Red Tarot (2024) Christopher Marmolejo, 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.
This project is generously cosponsored by CENES, the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, German Studies Canada, UBC Comics Studies Cluster, the UBC Centre for European Studies, and the Narratives Group in the UBC Centre for Migration Studies. This work has also been partially supported by ISoTL Seed support.
Re-Cap: Games and Social Justice Public Lecture Series (Winter 2025)
This winter, UBC’s Pop Culture Cluster hosted the Games and Social Justice Public Lecture Series, a series of weekly talks and workshops that brought together scholars, game designers, artists, and community organizers to explore how games—from digital video games to analog tabletop systems and tarot—can both reinforce and challenge systems of power. Spanning ten sessions […]
Games & Social Justice Lecture Series Launches with Roundtable of Local Developers
The Games and Social Justice Lecture Series (2025) is an ongoing series of speaker events that examine the intersections between digital and analog gaming cultures and the work of social justice. Speakers will explore various approaches to video games, tabletop games, and tarot, including game design, gameplay, and fan cultures to examine how gaming cultures, […]