Family fun with TOPONA?

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It's Trivial Pursuit?- Aboriginal style.

TOPONA? is a new board game created by two Northwest Territories women who wanted to create something educational and fun for families.

Marilyn Sanderson and Ruth Manderville created the idea for the game after a 12-week business development training program put on by the Keninu K'ue First Nation. That was three years ago. Now, Great Circle Entertainment, the company the two women are primary share holders of, has sold more than 2,000 copies of the game since the first prototypes rolled off the assembly line last year.

The games have fallen into some pretty high profile hands already.

Sanderson said Prime Minister Jean Chretien and each provincial premier was given a copy of the game.

Games have also been picked up by schools in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and even all the way down in Phoenix, where a mail order catalog is highlighting the game.

The second run of TOPONA? is now in production. This run will produce 10,000 more copies.

The game features more than 500 questions about Aboriginal people of North America. And forget about dice. If you are making a game about traditional Aboriginal people, use some traditional artifacts. Playing sticks, similar to the ones used in Native hand games, are used to determine to where a player moves on the board.

Sanderson said the categories are broken down into regions of the continent so people from specific areas will have equal chances of answering questions.

All of the answers are in a multiple choice format. There are some easy questions, but there's also the real stumpers. Categories include traditional medicines and their uses, foods, and historical information.

Sanderson said the mix is a"real learning tool" for students, families and anyone in either Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal settings.

Sanderson, Manderville and a research team from the Keninu K'ue training program are responsible for all the questions.

"The questions came from many, many hours of reading," said Sanderson."

Sanderson and Manderville travelled from their homes near the Deninu First Nation to the nearest large library in Hay River regularly. It was a 160 km trip each time.

"Every couple of weeks we'd go in there and clean out the Aboriginal section," Sanderson said.

Finding time to collect the data and then create the board game was difficult for the two women who also work full time in the Fort Resolution area. Sanderson is the executive director at the Akaitcho Territory Tribal Council and Manderville works with at the Deninu First Nations office.

"We did all of the work in our spare time," said Sanderson.

And that's what it takes if someone wants to commit to a project and become an entrepreneur, she said.

"There's been a lot of struggling and patience. It has been a lot of work," she said.

But it all pays off in the end, right? You've got your board game and it,s selling, so now you can retire?

Wrong.

"We haven't got rich yet," she said. "With the first sale of the 2,000 units we pretty well broke even."

But, who knows, in time, Great Circle Entertainment might turn out to the be the early retirement nest-egg for the two hard working women of the north - especially with the game's growing popularity.

Sanderson said they are already filling orders for the second batch of games.

Sanderson has some advice for first time dabblers in self-employment ventures.

"You don't always get rich and it's a lot of work," she said.

It took almost two years from the initial idea for the game before the first one was ready for packaging. In that time there were six revisions to the prototype.

It took a lot of leg work, and some financial investment before the game was ready for the customer.

The women are currently working with the Northwest Territories Development Corporation and a Japanese investor to produce more of the games. It took the women some long hours and hard selling to find investrs willing to risk money in the board game, but the rewards can be worth it.

Sanderson recommends anyone with an idea they feel could be a winner to find some investors and put the idea into motion.

Investment and funding opportunities and people to help put plans to action can be found in many Aboriginal communities at local development corporations.

The second run of TOPONA? is now ready for sale -just in time for Christmas. It retails for $39.95 and can be ordered by contacting the western Canadian distributor at (403) 727-4360. Other places to look for the game are at national game stores or Winnipeg's Northwest Company's catalog.

Great Circle Entertainment is currently looking at more ideas for Aboriginal entertainment and a second set of questions for TOPONA? is one of those ideas.

Incidentally, the game's name itself is also a puzzle. It is an acronym standing for The Original People Of North America.