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As a hobby, tabletop role-playing games have a dubious history of appropriation of non-western fantasy tropes as supplemental, and othered. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons' Oriental Adventures (1985), and Al- Qadim (1992) tokenized East Asian, and Middle-Eastern mythology, respectively. Since the onset of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (2014), it's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, makes claims to progress in its depictions of BIPOC communities, by bringing in folks to talk about their own cultures, such as with Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (2022). More fundamentally however, the release of 5th edition and the hobbies resurgence coincided with the proliferation of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, allowing new voices to populate the hobby space. Adventure games like the all indigenous Coyote and Crow allow for a non-colonial view of North America that presents indigeneity beyond traditionalist tropes, offering advanced technologies like Yutsu Lifts, Second Eyes, and Nisi. The horror game Old Gods of Appalachia offers a marginalized region the chance to celebrate their heritage, and reshape the narrative around Appalachia. The focus on local, and indigenous authorship may offer benefits beyond a sense of authentic representation. When utilized therapeutically, these games may work to address intergenerational trauma, and offer therapeutic insights specifically built to unmoor the legacies ascribed onto these groups by dominant and colonial powers. 

Thomas, Brian J. 2023. "Local Games for Local Trauma." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Among those now working to oppose the long-term release of more than 1.3 million tons of Fukushima’s radioactive wastewater, contemporary activists can draw inspiration and perspective from an earlier transnational movement during the 1970s, when Pacific Islanders were central to stopping a plan by the Japanese government to dump 10,000 drums of nuclear waste into the Mariana Trench (Branch, 1984; Avenell, 2017). The mobilization of Pacific activists significantly contributed toward achieving the suspension and eventual cancellation of the ocean-dumping plan by taking their stories to audiences in Japan while working in collaboration with Japanese activists. In a strategy that proved crucial for influencing changes in Japanese attitudes toward ocean dumping, Pacific activists shared moving accounts of the environmental and historical injustices to which the Pacific Islanders had been subjected. They gave witness to the harm caused by 67 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1979, which had resulted in the loss of homelands as well as higher rates of leukemia, lymphatic cancers, and genetic defects. These powerful testimonies challenged Japanese audiences to oppose the committing of further aggressions against those with whom they could identify as fellow atomic victims. In “Pacific Solidarity and Atomic Aggression” (2017), historian Simon Avenell writes, “This Pacific iteration of environmental injustice opened the eyes of many antinuclear advocates to the ways Pacific activists connected the radioactive waste issue to a longer struggle for independence and the obliteration of nuclear neocolonialism.” That in turn complicated the victim consciousness which had long informed antinuclear protest in postwar Japan. The activists' intervention made plain the moral case for Japanese people to act in solidarity with their counterparts in the Pacific Islands, who had similarly suffered from the lethal toll wrought by the use of nuclear technology in ways that devalued human life and the natural world. Given the breakthrough achieved through transnational activist solidarity, this historical precedent serves as a reminder that the nuclear wastewater issue must not be relegated to the politicized nationalist frameworks that have become common in contemporary media accounts. Notably in 2021, the unilateral decision to release Fukushima's radioactive wastewater alienated not only residents of neighboring countries but also many of Japan's own citizens, resulting in a breach of public trust which needs to be addressed by stopping the release and pursuing a sincere dialogue with stakeholders - not simply a campaign to attempt persuasion - according to nuclear engineer and Nagasaki University professor Tatsujiro Suzuki (2023). To attain public trust and to honor the moral and ethical legacies surrounding questions regarding nuclear waste and the Pacific Ocean, such a dialogue must extend to transnational stakeholders, and Indigenous knowledge must factor highly into the debate over an issue with vital transboundary and transgenerational consequences. 

Image: GRID-Arendal, www.grida.no/resources/7365.

Kim, Nan. 2023. "A Precedent of Success: Pacific Islanders' Transnational Activism Against the Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.