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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.

Favelas in RJ state are often located on hills, which served as refuge for enslaved people - after the abolition of slavery (1888) - and immigrants, who worked for downtown citizens. The Law of lands (1850) prevented unoccupied lands to be owned through labour and provided government subsidies for the arrival of foreign settlers to be hired in the country, further devaluing the work of black men and women. As a result, favelas today are mostly composed of a black population, surviving decades of persecutions and low incomes while defending, preserving and creating a unique culture rooted in African origins that reverberates into music and the arts. Children in favelas, due to social and economical inequality and racial discrimination, have less possibility of personal development and professional realization. They attend public schools where in 2021, according to SAEB, students do not reach a satisfactory level in Portuguese language (69%) and math (95%).

They hardly have access to after-school courses and do not tend to see themselves represented in the academic community. This produces a disadvantage in access to higher education and consequently in opportunities for decent employment. The project Closer to the Sky aims at co-producing scientific knowledge in collaboration between astronomers and artists/educators living in the favela of Cantagalo Pavão Pavdosinho (PPG, RJ, Brazil), for children, teenagers and young adults of the community. We will work in close collaboration with the social project Ninho das Aguias, where classes and night sky observations will be held.
Offering extracurricular courses and cultural experiences to students in the PPG, we wish to enrich their school curriculum and strengthen the chance they wish to stay in education after secondary school. A key element of the courses is providing positive role models of scientists from Afrodescendant backgrounds, reinforced by the presence of local artists and educators, thus endorsing their role within the academic community. The project also creates just work opportunities for local artists and educators, who will offer workshops rooted in favela culture, while at the same time creating novel, decolonial courseware based on contextualized science, i.e materials that use the context of marginalized societies as examples where we can understand, learn and make science. The material developed within the project will be shared as Open Educational Resources in several languages.

Barbosa Araujo, Claudio Alberto. 2023. "Closer to the Sky." 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, Hawaii, Nov 8-11.

The article explains how a team of medical staff treated (and consequently killed) a number of patients following the flooding of a hospital in New Orleans. The staff in question overdosed the patients to put them out of their pain as they saved other patients who were more likely to survive. The article calls into question the process of triage and how we go about it. Who has the authority to make these decisions, and what lines do we draw between ethics and compassion. The article provides a play-by-play of the events leading up to the flooding, and relevant policies that existed and have been created related to this incident. 

“The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors.”

“The physician, Anna Pou, defended herself on national television, saying her role was to “help” patients “through their pain,” a position she maintains today.”

From the links provided within the article, relevant information about Hurricane Katrina can be viewed with the commentary and archival articles that published in The New York Times that written by other authors.

Also the author has made in contact with Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans to focus on the investigation into the detail situations happened with the floodwaters. Afterwards, gained more information on the lethal injection issues.

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricane-katrina?inline=nyt-class…]

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricanes-and-tropical-storms-hur…]

The article has first emphasis the number of death and corpses during and after the Hurricane Katrina, then with further investigation and research, the issue related to the lethal injection to the patient has raised. From the physician’s perspective, the lethal injection in this case is a way to relief the patient’s pain, as it is a “for” for the lethal injection, which not seems to be violating the medical ethical. From the conclusion parts of the article, the author provided the evidence that “that more medical professionals were involved in the decision to inject patients — and far more patients were injected — than was previously understood.”     

The main focus group of the article is the physicians that involved in the injection decision to the patients. The discussion to the article questioned on the ethical issue towards overdose injection in order to “help” the patients to relief their pains that causes the death to the patients.  

"Anna Pou, defended herself on national television, saying her role was to “help” patients “through their pain,” a position she maintains today"

"The laws also encourage prosecutors to await the findings of a medical panel before deciding whether to prosecute medical professionals. Pou has also been advising state and national medical organizations on disaster preparedness and legal reform; she has lectured on medicine and ethics at national conferences and addressed military medical trainees"

The author conducted their research for the article through a personal interview with one of the doctors who worked at the Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans. 

The main point of this article is the idea that government regulations do not always comply with what is best for patient care and the situation at hand. In this particular case doctors and nurses decided to euthanize patients who were in critical condition and were going to be delayed or unable to be rescued.