The power of Indigenous storytellers

In this panel discussion, four innovative storytellers share how immersive multimedia sustains a living form of storytelling. As each dives into their own creative practices, the discussion addresses how this work creates continuity with Indigenous ways of knowing that can be shared across communities.

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Meet our hosts
Amelia Winger-Bearskin Artist and Technologist, wampum.codes

Amelia is an artist and technologist who creates playful work with XR, VR, AI, AR, AV and other esoteric systems of story and code. She's the founder and host of wampum.codes podcast and the stupidhackathon.com. She's also a developer evangelist for Contentful and host of the Contentful + Algolia Developer Podcast DreamStacks. Amelia is working on ethics-based dependencies for software development as a Mozilla Fellow embedded at the MIT Co-Creation Studio.

Sarah Eagle-Heart CEO, Return to the Heart Foundation

Sarah, Oglala Lakota, is an Emmy award-winning social justice storyteller and CEO of Return to the Heart Foundation, focused on advocacy on behalf of Indigenous Peoples. She is an internationally accomplished executive with a diverse background in tribal, corporate, and non-profit organizations. Sarah is currently coauthoring a self-help/memoir titled Warrior Princesses Strike Back, to be published by Feminist Press in 2021.

Elizabeth LaPensee Designer/Writer/Artist, Michigan State University

Elizabeth (Ph.D.) is an award-winning designer, writer, artist, and researcher who creates and studies Indigenous-led media such as games and comics. She is Anishinaabe with family from Bay Mills, Métis, and Irish. She is an assistant professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She was inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame in 2020.

Amy Fredeen Lead Cultural Ambassador, E-Line Media

Amy (Inupiaq) serves as the CFO and executive vice president of Cook Inlet Tribal Council. She helped form a partnership with E-line Media, an industry leader for impact games, to create the first video game made with an entire Indigenous community, called Never Alone. For this game, she served as the lead cultural ambassador to ensure an inclusive development process that resulted in the sharing and celebrating of the Inupiaq culture and stories.

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