Creation of Meshanticut

Meshanticut’s Purpose

The concept behind the game, Meshanticut: The Tale of Masswascutt (MTTM), was created by the Providence Cultural Equity Initiative (PCEI) as a part of their Real Revolution 2036 campaign to “powerfully and dynamically recast Rhode Island as ‘The Home of America’s Revolutionary Spirit’”1. The Real Revolution 2036 campaign was created in preparation for Providence Rhode Island’s 400th year anniversary in 2036.

The founder and CEO of PCEI, Raymond Two Hawks Watson, states that the goal of the MTTM game is to “establish a new cultural tourism infrastructure and framework for the Greater Providence cultural tourism sector intended to generate economy and articulate a new, unique, and invigorating narrative for Rhode Island’s tourism sector”.2 In addition, Watson notes that MTTP is also intended to inform and educate those playing about the “cultural narratives associated with the specific locations they are visiting,”2 acknowledging that indigenous communities are a “thriving part of the vibrant fabric of Rhode Island’s contemporary ‘Living Culture.’”2

Photo from PCEI

The Development of Meshanticut

This website and the game’s foundational elements have been developed by honors students of Roger Williams University as a part of their WTNG 102 class. Everything found within the Meshanticut website has been created by the efforts of three different writing classes over the course of two semesters. Students researched the history of Providence, the history of indigenous peoples in Rhode Island (specifically the Narragansett and the Wampanoag), and contemporary Providence to ensure that the foundations of Meshanticut are authentic.

Using the research conducted, the class developed the overall goal of the game and possible storylines for the player character to follow.

How to Get Involved

Through the Equity Gamified - the collaboration of PCEI, Roger Williams University, and Rhode Island schools & community organizations to design Meshanticut - many different people can get involved in this project. Anyone who wishes to participate in this project should familiarize themselves with the research already conducted by RWU students and use this knowledge to help develop new storylines and challenges for the player character to encounter. People can also brainstorm how these storylines will be translated to an alternate reality app. We have strived to respectfully represent the histories of the Indigenous people of Providence and to avoid a Eurocentric view of history. This project is dedicated to represent the history of indigenous people of the area from their point of view, and to celebrate the culture and traditions of indigenous people.

In order for people to add onto the website, certain guidelines must be followed to ensure that the website remains uniform.

Write professionally: do not use any first or second person pronouns (such as I, we, us, our, or you).
Properly cite sources: citations should be incorporated as footnotes in 7th edition APA format.
Image Captions: provide a quick caption to explain what the image depicts / its relevance.
Image attribution: all images used must be protected under Creative Commons or public domain. For CC images, be sure to include the title (if applicable), author (with URL), and the type of CC license (with the link to the license).
Uniform Font: all font must be written in the #313131 hex color. Titles must be written in 34-point Gentium Basic, body text must be written in 11-point Gentium Basic, image cations must be written in 10-point Gentium Basic, and image attributions must be in 8-point Gentium Basic. Line spacing for body paragraphs must be 1.38.

Next Steps

Moving on, more work must be done in properly citing the information on the website still without citations. Images without captions and attributions must be checked to ensure that they are protected under Creative Commons or public domain, and these attributions must be added. In addition, images that better reflect the indigenous culture in the Northeast must be added to replace images of indigenous tribes of other areas.

1 Providence Cultural Equity Initiative. (2020, November 1). https://provcei.org/hireus/.

2 Watson, R. T. H. (n.d.). MESHANTICUT: The Tale of Masswascut.

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