Indigenous Futurism is a movement consisting of art, literature, comics, games, and other forms of media which express Indigenous perspectives of the future, past, and present in the context of science fiction and related sub-genres. Such perspectives may reflect Indigenous ways of knowing, traditional stories, historical or contemporary politics, and cultural realities.
Background
In the late 20th century, Indigenous artists and writers experimented with science fiction and images of Indigenous lifeways through different spaces and times. In her anthology, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science-Fiction (2012), Grace Dillon outlines how science fiction can aid processes of decolonization. Using tools like slipstream, worldbuilding, science fiction and anthropological First Contact scenarios, Indigenous communities construct self-determined representations and alternative narratives about their identities and futures. Indigenous Futurists critique the exclusion of Indigenous people from the contemporary world and challenge notions of what constitutes advanced technology. In so doing, the movement questions the digital divide, noting that Indigenous peoples have at once been purposefully excluded from accessing media technologies and constructed as existing outside of modernity. The widespread use of personal computers and the Internet following the Digital Revolution created conditions in which, to some extent, Indigenous peoples may participate in the creation of a network of self-representations.
Grace Dillon, editor of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, encouraged stories through IIF, the Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Science Fiction Contest. Lou Catherine Cornum is a writer, scholar, and Indigenous Futurist known for their work Space NDNs. Chickasaw scholar Jenny L. Davis emphasizes the importance of 'Indigenous language futurisms,' where she shows that Indigenous languages are important to articulating and understanding Indigenous temporalities.
Concept of time
The concept of time in Indigenous Futurism moves away from Western traditional interpretations, both culturally and within the genre of speculative fiction. Time, according to Indigenous Futurists, encompasses and connects the past, present, and future all at once. Artists may explore alternate histories, distant and near futures, separate timelines, time travel, the multiverse, and other topics in which time is not limited to a linear conceptualization. Historical themes of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, conflict, the environment, trade and treaties, which have impacted Indigenous cultures, are recurring and reexamined, creating new narratives in the process. Artists play with questions of race, privilege and "Whiteness", both in history and within the speculative genre; they are expanded upon, subverted, erased, reversed, etc., thereby linking culture to time, space, and what lies in-between. The term biskaabiiyang (Anishinaabe), used by Dillon, exemplifies how Indigenous creators reflect on the impact of colonization by returning to their ancestral roots, conflating past with present and future, as well as reframing what the world would or could be like.
In other words, Indigenous Futurisms do not solely address the future, but create a range of scenarios and phenomena in which reimaginations of space, time, and Indigeneity are celebrated.
Literature
Literature lends itself to many aspects of Indigenous Futurism. Many of the stories revolving around Indigenous Futurisms contain an Indigenous main character, however, this does not define the genre, when referring to literature in Indigenous Futurisms we are referring to the Author, or the conceptualized stories, as defined in Dillon's anthology.
Literature is currently the most diverse subject in Indigenous Futurism, works including: Love After the End, compiled by Joshua Whitehead,a collection of stories and perspectives from queer Indigenous peoples tackling colonialism and the ideas of hope.
Scholarly works including; Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities, by Darren Lone Fight, an examination of Native American literary epistemology and futurisms including an analysis of the Indigenous Star Wars phenomena.
Visual art
An early source of collective Indigenous Futurisms is on the CyberPowWow website, a site launched by Skawennati (Mohawk) for Indigenous artworks starting in 1997 to 2004. It was a precursor to her TimeTraveller™ Machinima series began with a 22nd-century Mohawk man.