Alika Spahn Naihe – Kupu

This image is from a collection of images featured in a card game project still currently in progress. The game was designed in direct collaboration with Nānākuli High School students as part of an afterschool game design class that I teach along with my great friends, Jeffrey Vierra and Jack Hobbs III, through the place-based learning organization, PALS. The game is based on negotiation between four factions that inhabit a fictional island. The faction featured in this image are the Kupu, the tree people. These people represent the indigenous people of the island that are most directly connected to the land and its health. They reproduce by planting the corm of life located in their naʻau and nourishing the new being that sprouts with the life left in their bodies. The Kupu defend the land with their lives because without the land, they would have no lives to begin with. See more about our projects and games at theorycraftist.com.