Indigenous stories of the Huni Kuin people are portrayed in an innovative game

For the first time, indigenous people in Brazil had their traditional stories told through a video game. And although it has not yet been officially released, the demo of Huni Kuin: Beya Xinã Bena (Novos Tempos) is now available. This version is a continuation of the stories portrayed in the award-winning game Huni Kuin: Yube Baitana (The Paths of the Python), released in 2016.

The development of the game brought together anthropologists, programmers and artists from São Paulo (SP) and indigenous Huni Kuin (or Kaxinawá) people from the Rio Jordão (AC). For its composition, traditional stories, chants of shamans and sounds of the Amazon forest were recorded. The indigenous people also designed all the illustrations used.

The proposal for the game came from anthropologist Guilherme Meneses. He says he has been creating games since he was a child. “I like to think and create games. I’ve made board games, card games and other electronic games, but simpler, nothing like this one”, he says. The first version of the game, Huni Kuin: Yube Baitana, won three awards, including the best diversity game, at the BIG Festival, the most important video game festival in Latin America.

The game Huni Kuin: Yube Baitana – the ways of the boa constrictor

The game is about a couple of Kaxinawá twins conceived by the python Yube. He is a young hunter and she is a small craftswoman. They inherit the special powers of the python and need to go through a series of challenges throughout the game to become, respectively, a healer (mukaya) and a master of drawings (kene).

At each stage, characters acquire skills and knowledge from their ancestors, animals, plants and spirits. And they enter into communication with the visible and invisible beings of the forest (yuxin), to finally become true human beings (Huni Kuin).

These stories were based on reports from village elders. They are traditional stories of the Huni Kuin people. To develop the game, around 30 indigenous collaborators were involved in the production, including researchers, artists and filmmakers. The indigenous people drew the illustrations that make up the game, about 100 drawings.

Native songs, essential for various activities of life in the village, such as ayahuasca rituals and activities related to planting and harvesting food, were used in the composition of the audio. The soundtrack was made with songs from the CD Mae Inini – Power of the Earth, previously recorded in a partnership between Huni Kuin and the Norwegian-Brazilian group Amazon Ensemble.

Preserving culture through technology

According to Guilherme Meneses, until recently, the Huni Kuin were concerned about keeping their knowledge secret, due to the uncertainties of what could be done with this knowledge. “But for some time now, this has partially changed, knowledge has opened up. The shaman Agostinho Ikamuru, before passing over, used to say that the Huni Kuin culture will only stay alive if it starts to circulate outside the Indigenous Land, not just inside”, he says.

He remembers that the first release of the game, even without having done any kind of marketing, had wide journalistic coverage, with news published in the main national and international newspapers. The game also illustrated various teaching materials and was presented at the SESC circuit in São Paulo, with the participation of some Huni Kuin indigenous people.

In most villages, however, the indigenous people do not use computers, because there is no electricity or communication signal. Even so, the use of cell phones today is more common among indigenous people, who are always in transit between the village and the city and use the device to communicate. Therefore, the second version of the game was specially designed to run on mobile devices.

The expectation is that the game will be shared among the Huni Kuin themselves. “Despite being playful, the game also has this characteristic of making these stories circulate. Many young Huni Kuin has not yet learned all the knowledge that older people have. Not even the children of shamans. And these elders don’t live forever,” he states.

The second edition of the game – Huni Kuin: Beya Xinã Bena

The second edition has not yet been officially released, but there is already a demo version, which can be downloaded for free from Google Play and the STEAM game platform. “In this second version, we added two new stories, there are seven levels in total. It’s a long game, it takes several hours to go through all the levels. And in terms of programming, it’s not that easy to do, because we’re always changing scenery. Different, for example, from a fighting game, which is a simpler system”, explains Guilherme.

The two new stories are about the enchanted quatipuru and the caiman. In addition, the second version of the game has a new interface. The structure of the game has been revamped and the mechanics have been changed. “Whoever plays the second version will understand. We’ve overhauled the way stories are presented in the game,” he warns.

“I realized the value of this project after having circulated in other indigenous lands. For example, the Igarapé do Caucho Indigenous Land, near the city of Tarauacá. There are more than a thousand indigenous people living there and, despite being all Huni Kuin, they no longer speak the native language, only Portuguese. They said they didn’t know these stories that are in the game. It’s from their people, but they didn’t know it”, says Guilherme, who had the opportunity to design the game recently at the local school.

The demands in the villages and the Associação Povos da Terra – APOTI

The Huni Kuin constitute the largest indigenous population in the state of Acre, with approximately 12,000 inhabitants, spread across 12 indigenous lands and urban territory. Another portion, smaller, with about 2,500 inhabitants, lives in Peru. Guilherme says that it was through the game that he and his teammates created the first infrastructure project in the Huni Kuin villages.

“With the game, we realized that giving visibility to their culture, despite being important, would have a little immediate impact on life in the villages. And they told us they needed electricity. We didn’t even know how to work with solar energy, but during the development of the first game, we made five installations and recovered another three that were broken. We learn by doing for them”, recalls Guilherme.

The game team then created Associação Povos da Terra – APOTI, an NGO to continue supporting local demands. “Nowadays I work professionally with solar energy. But first, I did the installations on the Rio Jordão and then on the Rio Humaitá, for five years, all on a voluntary basis. Only then did we formalize the initiative and seek partners inside and outside Brazil, so that they could support”.

The energy is used in collective lighting systems. In addition to solar energy, Associação Povos da Terra offers infrastructure services related to the supply of drinking water, collective constructions, ecological sanitation and the Internet.

“The water in the rivers of Acre is not potable, we did laboratory analysis, and most of it is unfit for human consumption. And children get diarrhoea, there is a lot of infant mortality. There is also a Huni Kuin cultural issue: women are responsible for the village’s water and many have had accidents, some have even died, because they have to climb ravines with a bucket of water on their heads”, explains Guilherme Meneses.

Copyright, partner NGOs and donations

Associação Povos da Terra – APOTI is representing the copyright of the second version of the game. In this way, any income received by the game after its development is completed will go to the Association, which will be reversed in infrastructure work and maintenance of equipment in the villages. To carry out other works, the Association also participates in national public notices and makes partnerships with international NGOs.

“We have already partnered with NGOs in Russia, France and England. In the last government, it was very difficult. There was practically no public notice, if it weren’t for the international support, I don’t even know what would have been. Even the international support for the NGOs was small because the deforestation control targets were not met and countries like Germany and Norway, which had always supported projects in the Amazon, stopped supporting them”, says Guilherme.

He explains that the Huni Kuin are lacking in protein and food is compromised, which is why they also need donations from individuals. “In Acre, deforestation is linked to logging and cattle raising. And increased deforestation in areas around indigenous lands is driving away the game. The natives have another thought, they are worried about today, they don’t work with the idea of accumulation. And many are starving. So, currently, we at the Association are studying projects with agroforestry and chicken farming”, he says.

Despite the game involving around 30 indigenous people in its production, no Huni Kuin wanted to become a game developer. “It is a very specific reality, very different from ours, that we live in the city. They don’t even have a computer, for example. But Isaka worked a lot with me, he ended up becoming the project’s indigenous coordinator. He is the one who presents the game outside the village, engaging people a lot in this theme”, recalls Guilherme.

Indie game

The technical team that developed the game is made up of just three people: Guilherme Meneses, an anthropologist, who acted as producer and game designer; programmer Carlos Nascimento, and digital artist Lita Hayata. In addition, the anthropologist Nadja Marin is the deputy coordinator of the project and is responsible for all the audiovisual parts, such as the videos of the stories and the photographs. The team also had four other partner anthropologists, who worked with anthropological consulting functions, installation of solar energy systems, script adaptation and sound design support.

It was about four years from the first field trip to the completion of the game. The first two years, however, were without any funding. “We paid for the tickets with our own money to go to the village, because we believed it would work. Only after two years did we receive funding from Itaú Cultural, based on the Rumos public notice. For this second version, we had funding from the PROAC São Paulo public notice”, he says.

To develop the first game, they made four field trips to the Kaxinawá indigenous lands on the Jordão River, Lower Jordão River and Seringal Independência, in Acre. There, drawing workshops, recording of songs and storytelling were held, for the elaboration of the game’s thematic proposal, as well as the production of content for the visual composition and narrative of the phases.

The difficulty of developing an independent game in Brazil linked to cultural themes has to do with the very purpose of the game. Therefore, the support of public notices is essential, says Guilherme. “There is an understanding that the game is a nascent industry in Brazil that needs to be incubated. So the public power finances the developers to compete in the global market. But there are two types of projects: games that are made to be marketed, which are projects for the games industry. And there are the cultural projects, in which we are included”, he says.

“We didn’t sell the game and we were only able to develop the project because we had support from the culture notices. Because we brought Brazilian themes to the game, the indigenous theme. Different from other games, which use generic images of the indigenous, which do not speak of any specific reality, which plays with the theme, but does not mention the people, nor the right name of things. It’s all fanciful, unlike the stories we bring, which are true, they are ancient stories, we brought their knowledge”, says Guilherme.

Anthropology and Ayahuasca

Ten years ago, Guilherme Meneses did not know about the Huni Kuin villages. “I arrived in the village in 2013, for the first fieldwork in the game. Only then did I go on to do fieldwork for my master’s and doctoral degrees,” he recalls. His doctoral thesis was defended at the University of São Paulo in early 2020. For the thesis, he mapped contemporary movements of ayahuasca and other forest medicines among the Kaxinawá of the Rio Humaitá, Rio Jordão and urban centres in Brazil and the outside.

The idea for the game, he recalls, had to do with his insertion in Anthropology, at USP. “Since that time I’ve been reading ethnographic books, such as Crônica dos Índios Guayaki, by Pierre Clastres, and I’ve already imagined making an electronic game with those indigenous populations, which in fact don’t even exist anymore…”, he says.

It was the initiation with ayahuasca that led to the encounter with the Huni Kuin. “I met Huni Kuin and he introduced me to his drawing work and songs. I started a conversation with him and then with several other Huni Kuin until I went to the village to see how I was going to do it”, remembers Guilherme.

His relationship with the plant also brought inspiration to the game. “I had already had the idea, but once in Alto Paraíso, in January 2013, I drank ayahuasca and saw cartoon Huni Kuin drawings in the miração. There I visualized exactly how it would be. It had to be retro, with an older game aesthetic, in 2D. I can’t say it started from that, but there was that interaction too”, he recalls.

Want to support this cause?

It is possible to make donations through the website Game Huni Kuin and Associação Povos da Terra – APOTI.

For those who want to volunteer, it is also possible to cooperate with the work of the Association and with testing the games. “We need beta-tester volunteers”, warns Guilherme.