• (left) Time Traveller™
Episode 2, Dakota
Uprising (
production still). 2012
© Skawennati
Fragnito; (right)
Skins 2.0.
Skahion:ati
approaches the
Stone Giant, from
The Adventure
of Skahion:ati—
Legend of the
Stone Giants game
prototype. 2012 ©
Ab TeC
In short, we showed in multiple
ways that our commitment to the
project, and to the community, was
not just professional but also personal, and not just opportunistic
but essential to who we were and
wanted to be.
It took two years before we
found our first partner, Survival
School, the Kahnawake high
school, and even then it ultimately
came about because of a familial
connection. Owisokon Lahache,
Fragnito’s cousin and a teacher at
the school, shared our vision and
enthusiasm. She took on the role
tionships while constantly repeating
the grander visions we were pur-
suing and indicating our personal
commitment—ultimately convinced
the community to trust us to appro-
priately handle its stories.
March + April 2012
interactions
of liaison between the school and
us. She also acted as a proxy for
the community at large during our
workshop discussions about what
stories to remediate and how; the
youth themselves also exhibited a
strong sensitivity for such issues. It
took another two years before we
confirmed our second partner, the
Kahnawake Education Centre. Our
strategy [ 3]—of slowly building rela-
to find his way in an overcrowded,
hyperconsumerist, technologized
world. Using his Edutainment sys-
tem, the Time Traveller™, Hunter
embarks on a fact-finding mission
that takes him back in time to his-
torical conflicts that have involved
First Nations. (“Go ahead,” he says,
“call it a vision quest.”) Along the
way, he meets Karahkwenhawi, a
young Mohawk woman from our
to dealing with stories of cultural
identity. Fragnito carefully research-
es the events, location, and eras
and individuals represented in each
episode—Mohawks in Kahnawake
and elsewhere, other nations in
the Haudenosaunee Confederacy,
the Aztecs, the Dakota Sioux, the
American Indian Movement, and so
on. She uses the history as a launch
point for both reimagining the