Elizabeth LaPensée

Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D. expresses herself through writing, design, and art in games, transmedia, comics, and animation. She is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish, living near the Great Lakes. She designed and created art for Honour Water (2016), an Anishinaabe singing game for healing the water. She designed and programmed Invaders (2015), a remix of the arcade classic Space Invaders inspired by art from Steven Paul Judd. She also designed The Gift of Food (2014), a board game for the Northwest Indian College about Northwest Native traditional foods.

Early on, she was a Research Assistant for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace and continues to contribute as a Research Affiliate in the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Her dissertation in Interactive Arts and Technology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia shares experiences from the Indigenous social impact game Survivance (2011), which encourages healing through storytelling and creating art. Soon after, she was a Postdoctoral Associate for the University of Minnesota’s Research for Indigenous Community Health Center. Her ongoing work addresses the intersections of media, culture, and healing.