These B.C. teens are being immersed in local Indigenous culture by playing Minecraft

As puffs of smoke rise from a fire inside a kikm(Kwikwetlem) big house, middle school student Elsa Romey reaches over to help her twin sister Maya turn soft cedar wood into a box with an inlay-carved lid.

"This is a bentwood box," she tells CBC News. "You can store stuff in it."

"Important stuff," Maya adds."Things that have meaning to you."

On this day, their class is busyplacingcedar bark they collected in the forest into the boxes they made. Elsa explains the soft bark can be used for everything from multi-coloured blankets to hats and weavings.

Outside the big house, two cedar welcoming figures tower amida landscape of trees, mountains, and rivers teeming with salmon.

But the Romey twins and their classmates can't smell the fragrant cedar planks of the building, nor feel the warmth of its central fire, nor hear the calls of the eagles soaring outside.

They are actuallyinside a classroom at cole Montgomery Middle Schoolin Coquitlam, B.C., playing the immensely popular video gameMinecraft.

WATCH | B.C. teens show off their Indigenous cedar box-making skills in Minecraft:

B.C. teens show off their Indigenous cedar box-making skillsin Minecraft

9 months ago

Duration 1:30

Twin sisters Elsa and Maya Romey demonstrate how their peers at cole Montgomery Middle School in Coquitlam, B.C., are learning about the local kikm First Nation's culture and history, thanks to a new immersive world within the popular video game Minecraft.

The digitalIndigenous environment is the creation of School District 43, which teamed up with kikm First Nation educators to develop an area within the game to learn about the First Nation'sculture and history.

"You go like this,then you drag it around," Elsa explains as she taps buttons on the laptop touchscreen. "These hardest tasks would be very useful to do in a group.

"It's a really fun way to learn for people who don't want to just sit in class and read about First Nations."

The best-selling game Minecraft allows multiple players to create structures, objects and characters using clusters of digital blocks within a deliberately pixelated, three-dimensional environment.

That popularity of thegame among students is being tapped by schools in Coquitlam, locatedjust east of Vancouver, to create an immersive and co-operative space for Indigenous storytelling in local classrooms.

But while the existing Minecraft world has trees, mountains, fish and birds, some of the most important items for many B.C. Indigenous cultures weremissing, such as Western red cedar.

So those developing the new world calledA Pacific NorthWest Coast Experience enlisted help from Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, to add the iconic species. The world also featuresred-and-green sockeye salmonspawning in rivers.

A Pacific NorthWest Coast Experience is the first of nearly a dozen Indigenous-created worlds in the works, school officials said.

'It's amazingly done'

John Peters, an elected councillor with kikm First Nation,first started playing Minecraft as a way to connectwith his son, who is on the autism spectrum.

"This is just the welcoming post or the house post.This is a big house.It's amazingly done," he tells CBC News as the game appears on a large screen behind him.

"Seeing something like Minecraft that incorporates the teachings of kikmFirst Nationis just simply amazing," Peters added. "I'm actually so excited that I can't wait to have my turn with my sons on this game."

Teachers across B.C. have already been using Minecraft Education, a school-appropriate version of the world-building game, for several years for a number of topics.

WATCH |B.C. school uses Minecraft to teach Indigenous heritage:

B.C. school uses Minecraft to teach Indigenous heritage

9 months ago

Duration 2:51

The kikm First Nation, School District 43 and Microsoft have teamed up to create a new Minecraft world for Indigenous storytelling in the classroom.Our Maurice Katz visited cole Montgomery Middle School, where Indigenous classes are being taught using the popular video game.

Rob Cowie, School District 43'sIndigenous education resource teacher, says using a populargame to integrate Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into the classroom madesense.

"We have this wonderful tool called Minecraft," recalled Cowie. "Can we find a way to use that to help with Indigenous storytelling here in our territory?

"I thought, what a wonderful idea, and it just grew from there."

Cowiesaid the district's requests for local modifications to the world were eagerly received by the game's creators.

"We have to have cedarit is the heart of the whole community here on the West Coast," he said. "They were gracious enough to actually rename and re-skin certain trees that were in the game so that we could have cedar.

"We didn't have bears, [Minecraft] had polar bears, but not bears in the Lower Mainland."

WhileMinecraft is normally a world of almost limitless possibilities to collect resources for world-building, thekikmversion setsunique limits for instance how many salmon players can harvest.

"We're only allowed to catch one,"Montgomery student Ara Bella explained. "We want to be resourceful and not waste food."

For Elsa Romey, the game hasbeen a chance to make her curriculum more engaging and collaborate on challenges with her peers.

"We learned a lot through this, because it was really fun and we worked together," she said. "Since we're co-operating, it makes it easier."