Excavating Colonial Narratives in Minecraft: From Noticing to Critical Making With Education Students

• In Event: Critical Discourse in Media: Impacts on Learning and Cultural Politics

Abstract

This study's purpose was to address tensions in the popular digital game Minecraft around representations of colonial ideologies. Minecraft has been critiqued as a tool that reproduces settler colonial themes such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius (e.g. Lopez, deWildt, & Moodie, 2019). This study examines qualitative outcomes from a workshop, Critical Making for Anticolonial Reflection (CMAR), designed for university students, with the aim of fostering critical reflection about colonialism through construction in Minecraft. The workshop had three phases: noticing, evaluating, and designing. Our findings describe participants’ critical reflections around the game’s lack of consequences and freedom. We offer our theoretical workshop map for educators to modify as they enact similar critical making learning experiences.

Authors

• Robyn Ilten-Gee, Simon Fraser University

• Yumiko Murai, Simon Fraser University

• Maryam Gharib, Simon Fraser University