“TimeTraveller™ Trailer” (2009) is a promotional clip which Skawennati made several years before TimeTraveller™, the machinima mini-series, was completed in 2014. TimeTraveller™ is a multi-platform project that features a website, at <a href="www.TimeTravellerTM.com" target="_blank" class="link">www.TimeTravellerTM.com</a>; a nine-episode machinima series; a series of machinimagraphs; and a prototype action figure. Together they tell the story of Hunter, an angry young Mohawk man living in the 22nd century. Despite his impressive range of traditional skills as a hunter, warrior and iron worker, Hunter is unable to find his way in an overcrowded, hyperconsumerist, technologized world. In an act of desperate clarity, he decides to use his edutainment system –his TimeTraveller™-- to help him figure it out. “Go ahead,” he tells us, “Call it a vision quest.”
Thus he embarks on a journey from survival to success, mirroring First Nations’ journey over the last few centuries. Along the way, he meets Karahkwenhawi, a young Mohawk woman from our time. Through a mysterious glitch in the system, she obtains a pair of TimeTraveller™ glasses. Shot in Second Life on AbTeC island, each episode features an historical event of significance to Native North Americans and an Indigenous commentary on it.
It is extremely important that Aboriginal people appear in the collective imaginary we call “The Future”. Images of unnamed, sepia-toned Indians are everywhere. But our absence from pictures of tomorrow suggests that we do not have a role to play in a technologically advanced society such as our own. TimeTraveller™ addresses that lack.