RPH vs. Indigenous Futurism

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Welcome back everyone to another episode of Red Power Hour. This is Melanie Yazy calling in from Minishto Makoce, a co-host and I'm joined by my other co-host, the lovely as always, Elena Ortiz. If you would like to introduce yourself.

[00:00:15]>> Hello, I'm Elena. I'm calling in from where am I? Oh, I am Ooping.

[00:00:22]Um and um we are here today to finally talk about something we've been promising to talk about for a long time, which is indigenous futurism. So I'm excited about this.

[00:00:37]As am I. Um so h where should we start? I think something not really a disclaimer, but just to let listeners know, uh, Elaine and I are not experts on indigenous futurisms. Indeed, we're not experts about TV and film, even though we talk a great deal about it and we have a lot of perspectives and analyses of it. Uh, and so this is, I think, our foray into indigenous futurisms. Um, but I I don't know, just kind of like how we always do here on RPH. uh hoping through just like some conversation and as we call it the indigenous feminist freestyle uh maybe being able to develop uh a good working framework I think for indigenous futurisms. Um I'm in fact not even entirely familiar with uh you know the the analytical literature that's been written um either within the academy or other spaces u maybe art criticism that has also been written on indigenous indigenous futurisms uh and perhaps we can bring some folks on uh here as we work through a growing cannon I guess for lack of a better term uh who might be able to speak to some of those things with more expertise than we have Uh today I think what we're going to try to do is just maybe develop a basic working definition of what indigenous futurism or in futurisms is in conversation with a piece we read uh it's an anthology uh published by is it pulp Arsenal Press I think is the name of the press? Arsenal Pulp >> Arsenal Pulp. Yep.

[00:02:20]>> Arsenal Pulp Press came out in 2020. I believe that's a Canadian press and it is Love After the End, an anthology of two spirit and indigiquer speculative fiction uh edited by Joshua Whitehead, who is a celebrated uh LGBTQ2 um author of Johnny Apples Seed, which was like an award-winning um piece of fiction uh literature as well up in Canada. And so the anthology includes one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine different short stories uh that all seem to be written kind of in the context of like a apocalypse unfolding or like a post-apocalyptic moment. Um, and so yeah, just imagining what like who indigenous people are, where they're at, and what they're doing in some future world. Um, and the worlds or the worlds seem to be on the edge of destruction or having already been destroyed like catastrophically like to kind of an extinction level kind of scale. And so that seems to be like the the setting for all of these stories in this anthology. And so yeah, we thought it would be the perfect place.

[00:03:40]>> Really not light reading right before you go to bed. Um, I I was glad to have this as a starting point for our conversations about indigenous futurism because I was telling Melanie earlier, um, my interest in it really was sparked because we have, um, visual artists, um, in the southwest who do a lot of very cool stuff. So, we've talked about Virgil Ortiz, Ryan Singer does a lot of paintings around Star Wars themes. Mike Toya, um, and I I have a bunch of his stuff, um, that he he does around Star Wars themes, too, because I'm a Star Wars geek. Um, but I had never really read anything about indigenous futurism. So I before I started the stories I did a little dive um online and um found that the term indigenous futurism was actually coined by anishabi professor Dr. Grace Dylan in 2003 that indigenous futurism was inspired by afroofuturism and it's just um a way of um creating an intersection of indigenity and science fiction. And um so I started reading these and it's interesting also because Melanie and I both highlighted the same paragraph in um Joshua Whitehead's introduction to the anthology and the the paragraph is um from him them um originally the project was designed to be geared toward the dystopic and after careful conversations we decided decided to queer it toward the utopian. This, in my opinion, was an important political shift in thinking about the temporalities of twospirited, queer, trans, and non-binary indigenous ways of being. For, as we know, we have already survived the apocalypse. This right here, right now, is a dystopian present.

[00:06:01]What better way to imagine survivability than to think about how we may flourish into being joyously animated rather than merely alive.

[00:06:13]So after reading that, I kind of um started thinking about Gerald Visner's definition of survance and um how survance is not just um that we are still here, but that we are actively res continue to actively resist colonization and um despite the apocalypse and that the apocalypse that we're talking about is colonization. Um, and that a lot of the the dystopian stuff is just sort of window dressing for what what we're talking about as the apocalypse, which is colonization itself.

[00:07:01]Um, Dr. Grace Dylan put together an anthology called Walking the Clouds, which I haven't read. This was the first thing that that I read was was um uh this uh this anthology that we're talking about. So I don't know how that lines up, but but I did feel that a lot of these stories, all of the stories were really dystopian and were really um like post-apocalyptic.

[00:07:35]And even if you look at it as the apocalypse as being a metaphor for colonization and that um and that we are surviving and in many of the stories resisting um I still found them really depressing.

[00:07:58]>> Yeah.

[00:08:00]As did I. Uh, you know, um, before I build on that in relationship to the this anthology, Love After the End, you know, I did that whole like disclaimer or kind of like apology at the beginning. We be like, we're not experts on indigenous futurisms, but the thing is cuz then you said like I am a total Star Wars nerd.

[00:08:23]Like I love Star Wars and like a lot of native people love Star Wars, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast. And I think the the love that native people have for science fiction specifically is something is like actually one of the reasons why we started Red Power Hour or started doing pop culture analysis. Um because yeah science fiction and fantasy are like beloved genres for just everyday native people. you know, Star Wars has been translated, you know, into indigenous languages and like those shows are sold out, you know, when they're they're played at theaters. And so if we're going to take Dylan's kind of definition of what is indigenous futurisms, it's the intersection of indigenity and science fiction, then it would it would seem There you go.

[00:09:12]Actually, hold that. Hold on. Hold that back up. For people who can't see what we're doing, um Elena has uh her mug of I'm assuming that's water. And there's a sticker of a Stormtrooper but overlaid with butterflies and like an indigenous design in the back. Do you know who did that?

[00:09:33]>> Yeah, it's Mike Toya.

[00:09:35]>> Mike Toya. Okay.

[00:09:36]>> Mike Toya from Hus PBLO. and and like I melan were talking about earlier, he does a lot of Star Wars stuff and stickers and posters and t-shirts and every time I see him at whatever um arts and crafts place I am, I buy whatever stickers he has because I just think there's and there's actually another one of his on the other side of the water bottle which is um stormtroopers on horseback um >> with like a stereotypical kind of like planes headdress and plane style.

[00:10:08]Y >> warriors maybe.

[00:10:11]>> So it's I mean obviously this has really permeated indigenous culture and particularly with visual artists and as well as as literary artists and and it's very it's very cool and I think it's also sort of joyous and hopeful.

[00:10:35]I mean the question you know comes to mind and I was going to say like we've reviewed like when we hate on Avatar for example like Avatar is a vision of an indigenous futurity like it it is it's like it's a kind of a messed up one you know for the reasons that we've articulated in multiple episodes but uh I think we've maybe talked about Planet of the Apes on RPH or um is this Dune we talked about Dune on RPH and so you know one of the reasons why we talk so much about science fiction is precisely like what those stickers represent. Native people really love science fiction and fantasy.

[00:11:13]And I think the question that arises from that is like why why is there such an interest um that contemporary native people have in Star Wars or in science fiction? And you know on this podcast in the past we've talked about how like pretty much all science fiction is just about colonization, right? So every there's always like a a population that's being oppressed or their planet is being obliterated or being like colonized by like an evil galactic empire and those people from those planets are always coded as indigenous.

[00:11:48]Um you know stormtroopers are often coded as like cowboys.

[00:11:52]uh you know there's always the themes of like colonialism and imperialism and settlement, displacement and genocide um that's at play in pretty much all sci-fi. And so I think that this is one of the reasons why native or native people gravitate to science fiction is because it's like a it's like we're living out like our lives, I think, in a way. But uh we also really love the imagination of it. I think it's so creative and uh it's so like spectacular um that there's Yeah, I think the the fact that it's so much of indigenous futurisms live within film and literature and art like the spaces in which like worlds come alive where you can imagine something into existence uh I think is something that's really captivating for native people as well. It's so vibrant and descriptive. And so I have often thought it's like those two things um are maybe one of the major reasons why native people gravitate towards sci-fi. Um I would argue that I I would argue that most of the native people I know, and these are just like everyday native people, I'm not talking about people who have PhDs or specialize in like literary critique and those kinds of things. Um, I think what they like about sci-fi is like the stories, not the stories of like the dystopian um, futures that indigenous people are expected to traverse, but how like indigenous people or those things those populations coded as indigenous in sci-fi are able to thrive despite being almost completely wiped out. or they engage in like what seems like an impossible form of resistance and then they they prevail. You know, they're able to overthrow the empire. And you know, we we do, as Joshua Whitehead said, we do live in post-apocalyptic conditions. And you know, oppression is very colonial and imperial oppression is like very extreme for native people.

[00:13:57]Just because like massacres, you know, aren't happening anymore doesn't mean that like the slow death of genocide isn't still just churning churning its way through our people and our lands every single day. I mean, it's why like uh suicide rates are so high amongst our population. It's why our life expectancy is the lowest of any group in the United States. Um, you know, it's why like native women um experience violence at higher rates than any other population.

[00:14:22]And you know, like those are those are still tools of kind of like this slower, longer term genocidal project of settler colonialism. And so I don't know if sci-fi allows us to like escape the nightmarish presence of of the po post-apocalyptic conditions in which we live and gives us the survance, right?

[00:14:44]It's like a vehicle for us to kind of like imagine like what that almost heroic resistance would look like or like the heroic feat of surviving something that was intended to completely wipe you out. And uh it would be interesting to actually ask more native people why they love sci-fi so much. But in my mind, like that's part of the reason I love sci-fi. And I don't and I guess that's a long-winded way of saying like I don't love sci-fi because of the amount of violence that you get to see indigenous people or populations coded as indigenous experience in sci-fi. Like that's not why I watch sci-fi cuz that's the reality. Like it's like the world in which we live is like a world structured by indigenous death. Um and if we think of death as like a finality, right?

[00:15:35]death is like what places indigenous people firmly in the past tense meaning like oh they used to exist but they disappeared. Then in my mind something that projects us into the future tense is one in which like indigenous life is flourishing or that we have a commitment to indigenous life and everything that we can do to sustain indigenous life under post very extreme violent post-apocalyptic conditions. but that like what we're imagining in the future is like thriving and abundant and just like beautiful indigenous life teameming with all of our languages and um you know our communities and I I don't really know what that looks like. I don't think it means going back to where we used to be. I'm not interested in like issuing or rejecting technology, you know, like what I guess for my mind like what an indigenous futurism is um is like the hopeful future and like really believing in like that hopeful future where we're not just surviving but we're thriving. And so in this anthology, I don't there isn't any of that in this anthology. Um, yeah.

[00:16:52]It's interesting that Joshua Whitehead said, uh, we were originally going to gear it towards the dystopic, but then we decided to queer it toward the utopian. I actually find that this is like kind of a queer dystopian vision of indigenous futurisms, which is fine. I don't think indigenous futurisms necessarily has to be what I just described as like a hopeful future of abundance and like indigenous thriving in life. But yeah, it's not really it's not really my cup of tea. The the dystopian.

[00:17:24]>> Yeah, me either because I mean I we're living in the middle of it and and as imperialism and um capitalism destroy, you know, our planet and um our way of life.

[00:17:42]Like I don't really want to focus on that. that I mean we're this is our lived reality. This is our lived experience and like the Star Wars and um well I'll stick with Star Wars because it's what I grew up with. I mean I was the age I was 12 years old when the first movie came out and it is it's coded cowboys and Indians. It is not a new story. Um, the story is by no means um, you know, when George Lucas wrote it and put it on film, um, it's by no means a a new story or a new experience. Um, it's an old story and it's just retold over and over again. as cowboys and Indians and um the the rebels are coded as as Indians and that includes, you know, Luke Skywalker, all the Jedi, um Han Solo, Chewbacca, of course, and as we look at those stories, um the stories are the same, but they're all about journeys and they take me back to our emergence stories and the characters are different and I'm talking about okaying um specific our myth of emergence. I have some knowledge of the DA um um emergence story, but it's not my my they're not my people, so I'm not going to talk about it. Those are the stories that um about the journeys that our people took and what they went through and the the sort of trials and tribulations to to end up at that center place where we are now in our communities. And um these were stories where where animals talked and um where women were in charge and um where journeys involved um tribulations um and monsters. And so that's where I get my love of of Star Wars. And although it will never end because they make too much money out of it and it's like deeply entrenched within this capitalist system. Um you know the ultimate sort of goal of the movies is to show a help a hopeful future. And when Luke Skywalker goes to Yoda, um we relate to Yoda because um you know, we have we have Chay, we have the the um grandfather um horn toad, and we have um you know, we have other beings that have that wisdom that might not necessarily be human. So, like you said when when when you were talking about, you know, this sort of hope and and bringing an idea of what our future could look like into indigenous futurism, that's what I was looking for, too.

[00:21:13]Whereas, with these stories, I feel like there was some interesting concepts.

[00:21:22]Um definitely um decolonization um and a return to um nonlinear I have this written down nonlinear temporalities um this idea of native slipstream which is where oral history and oral tradition um merges with technology um I thought was was interesting Um, but at the same time, I felt like there were way too many stories in which they just gave up um, Earth and accepted a future offplanet.

[00:22:12]Um that kind of disturbed me like that that these writers were already, you know, giving up on saving this this this home, this mother of ours. Um, there was one, and I don't remember which story it was, but there was one there was a great line, um, in one of the stories where they're leaving on this huge ship and the the main character says, "I don't know how to build a relationship with a new planet."

[00:22:54]And they they said that, I think, to their sister. And the sister replied, "You build a relationship just like you would at home. You ask them out."

[00:23:08]And I thought that was an interesting comment because um all of our relationships are placebased and place centered. So our relationships with our land are based on where we are and that temporality um that's unchanging.

[00:23:33]The place is unchanging.

[00:23:36]And even though we may be looking at nonlinear time, the place is where we like the center place is where we we start and end.

[00:23:47]That's that idea of that spiral and how all motion is cyclic and it returns to its starting point. And the idea of leaving our home just was disturbing.

[00:24:09]Yeah, those are excellent points. Um, that story was The Ark of the Turtles Back by Jay Simpson. It's the third short story in the anthology. Um, before I wanted to go back to what you said earlier about how science fiction is about a journey and it always brings to mind our emergence stories because I think that's one of the other reasons why native people really love science fiction and fantasy. I'm so glad you said that cuz it hadn't even crossed my mind. It's because of our emergence stories. It's because, and this is what's interesting about temporality, right? because from kind of an indigenous like a queer and feminist indigenous perspective, you know, like uh Laura Harjo who's a Muscogi Creek um feminist has written about this and Spice who's a Clinket um anthropologist like um who does like at the intersection of like queer theory and anthropology and indigenous studies does this. Um but an indigenous like a queer indigenous feminist understanding of temporality is not linear. It's not chronological. There isn't like a past, a present, and a future. It's like you said, it's a spiral. Actually, Laura Harjo's book is called Spiral to the Stars. And um and so emergence stories, yes, there are like origin stories, but they don't necessarily exist in the past. Like things can exist simultaneously.

[00:25:44]And we understand that like ancestors for example are like present in the here and the now and that we are ancestors of the of the future. We are like ancestors forthcoming. So in one of the stories actually by Navajo author Nazbot Tom uh it's actually a grandmother and her granddaughter who go back in time to warn the mother the grandmother's mother and the daughter's mother. The grandmother's Yes. the grandmother's daughter and the daughter's mother of like there's this apocalypse that's coming and she needs to come back to the nitra like between the four sacred mountains for to get take cover to survive. Um and so I really like the the play with temporality like the it was kind of like a indigenous queer play I would say with temporality and that happens a lot in these pieces which I really like. But what I'm trying to say is uh emergence stories aren't from the past because it's through the oral tradition. The whole way that the oral tradition works is you tell stories and you pass them down generationally, but every time you tell that story, you're invoking a different kind of temporality. It literally brings that origin and that emergence into the present. And in that way we are like reliving that emergence over and over again through the telling of those stories. It's like one of the ways in which we react we enact relationality and kinship is through that temporality that spiral temporality. I know this sounds very yoded and I hope people can follow what I'm saying but emergent story what I what this means is that we actually live and embody our emergence stories as indigenous people that feels very familiar to us and it's very real.

[00:27:33]It's not like a story from some sort of like fantastical old past. You know how like anthropology or pop culture has like racistly labeled our origin stories as quote unquote myths, right? that somehow these are like fantastical worlds with like all of these other than human beings where animals could talk and animals had animacy and trees could talk and what we would think of as ghosts and like ancestors had agency.

[00:27:59]Like these worlds that we come from as human beings are replete with like other species and other beings that have as much agency and in some cases more than human beings do or did.

[00:28:14]And so for us, it's not just plausible that an Avatar kind of world could exist. We know actually that those worlds not only existed, but they do still exist every time we tell these stories. And so I think this is why native people, one of the reasons why native people love sci-fi and fantasy so much, because we're like, "Hey, looks like home to me." You know, like, you get what I'm saying? And so it's like very familiar. It actually I think is very familiar to us. Probably fantasy more so than science fiction. Um or like in sci-fi when you get to enter a planet or you're introduced to a new world that has all of these like what I think we would maybe construe as like a very like queer understanding of animacy where it's like animacy is granted to all animacy and agency is granted to all kinds of beings and not just humans. Um, yeah, there's something about that that we really like because like that's like literally our oral tradition is basically telling those stories from the perspective of like a bird or the perspective of a holy being that lives at top a mountain. Um, or the perspective of a rock, for example. Um, and so yeah, what you said really brought that to my mind and I and I think that that's a really important aspect of what counts as an indigenous futurism.

[00:29:32]And so these are worlds we already know.

[00:29:35]They're not fantastical to us. they're real, which would make which seems like a anacronism if you're talking about fantasy and sci-fi because fantasy and sci-fi is supposed to be about the unreal. It's supposed to be about the imaginary and I don't think it is necessarily um if we're referring back to emergent stories and in this anthology minus the AI rat in Abacus by Nathan Adler, these stories are all very human ccentric. Yes, they're like they're a s human synthroidid. So they're like human uh cyborgs um or AI that are in like a human form.

[00:30:16]And so there is a lot of like meshing of human with technology and there are cyborgs but pretty much all of the protagonists in these stories are human.

[00:30:25]And so there's something about that that also felt a little off to me because I guess in my mind when I think about it, indigenous futurism, I don't necessarily think of the human being centered or the human being the protagonist because that's like not necessarily even how like our emergent stories are told. We are but one of many animate species um and and beings that yeah are in relation it that's that's yeah that was another that was a thing it felt very stark and empty and it wasn't just one story it was the whole anthology like there was no there were mentions of going and gathering medicine there were me mentions of trees and lakes um water and um but you know in in our emergence myth the the women. We we were led by women, two women, um blue corn and white corn.

[00:31:30]And and they send out runners. And the runners are the fox and the badger and the mountain lion and and the wolf. And they are not they are they are tiwa. They are that's who they are. So the idea of like a Chewbacca does not, you know, that's that's like, yeah, okay. You know, looks like a bear.

[00:32:03]Um, you know, I always thought he was in charge and Han Solo was like his pet, but um, but those those are beings that like make perfect sense to us. And and we like I didn't see that in in any of these. Um, in fact, the other thing that disturbed me was and I forget, I apologize. I read all of these stories in like five days and um the one story where um you I think it was about the ark and they're going to this other planet and the protagonist um says we're not displacing anyone like there we're not we're not colonizing anyone and no there's no life there there's no sentient life and to me that was like I don't know if we are in a place to be able to determine what is sentient life on another planet. Um and I don't know that that's okay with me.

[00:33:18]>> Well, it was in that same story you just referenced um the J Simpson story where one of the protagonists is like so how do we I don't know how to form relationships like on a new planet. And I think it might actually be one of the workers on the ark after they've uh taken off, but uh or or this protagonist sister, but and they're like, "Well, you do what you do anyway. You ask them out.

[00:33:41]You get their consent essentially." And I'm teaching a feminist and queer ecologies class uh this semester, and it's been an amazing class. My students are wonderful. But one of the things we've been talking a lot about is animacy and uh other than human agency.

[00:33:59]And so it's like how can you know if another being is consenting to something? Let's say your dog. How can you know that your dog is consenting to being a pet when you don't speak dog language and they don't speak human language of which there are, you know, many human languages? And so what does it mean to be like to be like to flippantly be like, "Oh, you just asked them out." And it's like, yeah, but how how do we know that there is consent? How do we know whether or not they're sentient? What do we know? How do we know what they're thinking? you know, if uh there isn't a language that's been established and some like reciprocity between these beings. And so if we assume, as I think we should, but then also I think indigenous futurisms asks us to assume that sentience and agency and animacy is much more diverse uh and absolutely exists beyond the category of the human and is in a lot of different beings. on this planet, let alone like other planets where we don't really know what those beings are, then you are going to their home. And so the terms of that relationality and the terms of that kinship, if you're in a decolonial register, should be on their terms cuz it's their home, you know? cuz we know what happens when you violate those terms of kinship uh genocide and all manner of domination technologies of domination um ensue. And so we don't want to replicate that. I'm assuming I guess I'm just assuming and maybe this is the wrong thing that like a future especially a utopian future a queer indigenous utopian future would be one in which we do not replicate relations of domination and hierarchy and we don't treat each other with violence like that's not the modality of our relationality. Um, and so I I think those careful considerations of relationality I found maybe also a bit missing in these stories. Not all of them, but kind of the my general impression from the anthology because something that is very very queer actually something that is very queer is to desenter the human and to think about life, the vibrancy of life and difference and diversity in like all of these different ways. Um because part of like a queer a a queer commitment is pushing back against normativities of all kind. And if this the human and the centering of the human and the supremacy of the human is a type of normativity, which it is like within the philosophical traditions of the West, then we should be working actively to like decolonize and to queer that. And so, yeah, I was thinking in some of these pieces like what wouldn't it have been cool if um like the protagonists of some of these pieces were like the land itself or you know what I'm saying? Or like a tree or a rock or an ances you know? Yeah. Or like a being we had never heard of like a yeti. I mean we've all heard of yeti but yeah there's something about that that would also feel like very queer and very indigenous.

[00:37:41]Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And and I I think the um the idea that in most of these stories accepting that the planet is dying or has died seemed way too easy.

[00:38:03]Um when you consider the work that indigenous people all over the world um not only on Turtle Island but the global south everywhere the work the hard work that that indigenous people are doing to try to mitigate climate change and try to save our earth. It felt almost dismissive of that work.

[00:38:32]And um focusing more on um yes, survance is is crucial and um carrying forth um language and culture and ceremony is is important. And I'm talking about just in these stories, but it it felt like that was the goal like of of the ark of the turtles back was to move this knowledge and this culture to this new planet um with like you said no thought about um the living beings that were there and what their um attit attitudes towards kinship and and relationality would be and they would be um they would be the ones offering hospitality and as a as guests um it is their right to to determine what that hospitality looks like. But it just felt like like that was was sort of the goal of of a lot of the stories to pick up and carry this um this indigenity um to a new place, a new planet, ships, spaceships, whatever the boat was in that one. Um, without much regard for our current relationship with our with our current um mother, our current um relations here, the trees, the water, the rocks, the mountains, the other than human life forms, like these relationships that we've built here that have been um thriving alive for um millennia. Um you can't pick those up and move them.

[00:40:41]And if we were hypothetically, I don't think we would be us anymore.

[00:40:54]Yeah. I mean that that question of like what is indigenity I think is you can see it's an open-ended question mark that these anthologies really push us to think about and there's no like landing point. Um, and in my conversation with my students about this, cuz we read this in class, uh, I was saying like, you know, from like a Dette perspective, um, I feel like we would cease to be D, if we did not have the actual physical, geographic, and like geological reference of a homeland between the or sacred mountains. Like literally everything um about who we are is related to those specific places and even more specific places within that specific geography.

[00:41:52]And so what you know the spiral like Elena's doing the spiral thing. Exactly.

[00:41:57]And so what would it mean to for the planet to be like destroyed and for the whatever remaining Da people there are to like carry bundles or something right to like another planet like what would that do to our indigenity?

[00:42:17]Would the spirits that are attached to those bundles be able to find us? Um, how how would you reconstruct like the very essence of who you are in a place that is completely foreign to that because your entire being is wrapped up with the land itself. Um, and so this is like how I think about it. And um I think these pieces challenge us certainly to question that relationship with the land and who is and what is who is an indigenous person and what is indigenity. There are a lot of cyborgs right there are a lot of like in one of the stories uh which story is it the uh seed children by Mari Kurisado. Uh there's a syn a synthetic human. Um, so I guess it's like a hybrid of organic and like uh technology material. Um, and she has the brain of an Anesnab scientist.

[00:43:18]Uh, and so she identifies as an Anesnab woman. She actually uses that term in Ojiway to describe herself. And she's caring for all of these other synthetic children and then one native girl. Um, and she ends up having to engage in violence to protect the children so that they can make it to this like they call it the tree, but it's some kind of like um portal to uh a synthroidid refugee colony because all of the humans who are left on the earth are trying to kill all of the synthroidids because they're like abominations. Um, and so that was an interesting piece because this is like essentially an indigenous person in a non-indigenous body and and yet like the values that she has as like an indigenous woman caretaking the future cuz children are the future. It's literally called seed children, right?

[00:44:14]Seeds being that which will sprout the future of our nations. But where they find a new homeland and a new refuge is a isn't a ref a intergalactic refugee camp. Um that isn't probably constit isn't made up of like other Anesnab people. Uh and yet this is the only choice that she has like either that or just facing total death and probably the complete disappearance um of her species of synthetics um or synthroidids or whatever they're called.

[00:44:44]Um, and so there are a lot of those kinds of stories. Like I said, there are a lot of cyborgs. Um, the story that you had talked about a bit already, the ark of the turtles back. Uh, in that piece, those folks get on arcs and these are like the last arcs that will ever leave planet Earth. And planet Earth is in ruins. And the problem though is that the arcs will destroy the world in their takeoff.

[00:45:17]They do something like about like the Earth's magnetic um center. And so in order for these indigenous people in that story to have a future, they have to destroy the planet that is their home and all the living beings that are still on that planet. And so what does that mean? Like what you said, Elena, like what does it mean to destroy your home in order to be continue to be indigenous and to have a future? There's something about that that was like deeply disturbing to me. And in my class, we were saying like I was like in all of these stories, I would be I would be the person who would stay behind even if I was being told that like the planet was going to die and everyone had just become like a kill or be killed. like everyone had just like devolved into that attitude. I would like never leave my homeland. Sorry, I just wouldn't.

[00:46:11]That's what I think.

[00:46:12]>> Well, that's that I mean that does it does like hearken back to what are we as indigenous people? And um I know it's not true of every nation because um people were forcibly removed from their homelands, but for Da and for Pueblo people in the southwest, you cannot separate our culture from the place we are. And this is who we are because of where we are. And we are who we are because of the relationships that we have where we are. And so you you just you can't separate that.

[00:47:08]And um I think if it was PBLO people and probably D people if we were getting in that arc which I don't think anyone would um but it we would cease to be who we were and I think with that sessation would come just obliteration. There would be no culture. There would be no language. Our language is so languages are so um based on that relationality and that kinship. And yes, so it's it's hard to imagine what what it would look like. And you know, I really as I was reading these um and I I did look at the at the authors and and most of them are northern um Oji way cre and um so and I don't know an awful lot about those cultures. So it it made me I appreciate appreciated all of the writing. I think some of the the um stories were really amazing and you know the writing was was was fabulous. It was great. It made me want to look at D and and and Pueblo people and say is anyone done stories like this from here from the southwest? I don't think so.

[00:48:50]Yeah, we have a lot of um of visual artists who work um in indigenous futurism and most of them are about um are about hope and and survance.

[00:49:17]but in our places, in our homelands.

[00:49:22]And um you know, if you look at Virgil Ortiz, he's constructed this entire universe um well, not even a universe, it's it's it's a it's it's a temporality with the PBLO revolt um in 2180. I'm sorry. I I I don't know exactly when it's it's um set, but it's the PBLO revolt 500 years from now. And PBLO people are still fighting for their homelands, and they're still fighting the the Spanish. They call them Castellians. Um but it's this whole universe with with um with language and with um pottery, you know, with the things that are so um essential to PBLO people. And it's it is literally native slipstream. It's it is oral history mixed with sci-fi and it's in our homeland and it it's just you know the characters are amazing and I think Ryan Singer um whose pieces I love you know takes like the the Star Wars characters and puts them you know he puts an Ewok in front of a hogan and um and um puts you know, stormtroopers going into a trading post um on the rez, but there it's a melding of science fiction and traditional life that seems to signal a hopefulness for the future and sort of um a relationality between technology and tradition. and oral history and and technology. And that to me feels more more comfortable and more realistic than assuming that the apocalypse is something we have to prepare for.

[00:51:44]Yeah, that's so that's so interesting. like that there's kind of like I don't know if it's even been regional there might be like some regional specificities to what we understand as indigenous futurisms. Um because in the second to last short story called Nameless by Nosbot Tom I'm assuming Nasba that's a that's a Navajo name and the story is centered on like a Navajo two Navajo characters. They're both women. That story is very different than the other stories in the anthology because what saves those characters from eraser um what allows them to survive the apocalypse is going home.

[00:52:32]They go back home to where between the four sacred mountains and they actually like live underground while the the the actual end of the world is happening around them and they kind of reemerge and they're able to continue on as da I'm assuming and most of the other stories in the piece are uh about individuals who seem to have already been very disconnected from their homeland or from like their larger nation. The it there isn't a lot of like collectivity I guess in these stories. A lot of them are just centered on small family groups or a lot of these protagonists find themselves alone and then they form like queer kinship with like found relatives, you know, or chosen relatives. Um or they're like refugees uh literally already on other planets. Like the the first story, Abacus, is written by um Nathan Adler, is the story of a a young Ojiway boy um who's living, I think, on a moon or like on another somewhere out in the galaxy.

[00:53:44]It's not on Earth. And he befriends this AI rat. And his parents are scientists.

[00:53:50]his Anishnab Jo Oj boy parents are scientists who bioengineer these synthetic um rats that become pets for like the ruling the intergalactic ruling class and so it's like basically the purpose of this particular planet or moon or something is to like create toys and pets AI pets for um wealthier people somewhere else in the galaxy and uh and so he's already his his grandmother only appears in hologram you know, and so there is like a continuity of his like identity and his his uh uh his understanding even like linguistically of who he is as an Ojiway person. But the end of that story, he actually he falls in love with the virtual reality boy that is the avatar for the actual synthetic rat in person.

[00:54:44]They fall in love virtually and then he follows the rat to like an AI refugee colony somewhere else and they leave whatever moon that they're on. And so this Ojiway boy is now going to be twice displaced.

[00:55:02]And so there are a lot of those kinds of stories like the stories about like the indigenous characters leaving planet Earth because it's been so utterly destroyed. they can't stay around or they'll be killed or they'll be turned into like I don't know um like enslaved they'll be enslaved um to work for the ruling or eaten cannibalized um so yeah so there's like cannibalism also in some of these stories and so there's I don't know there there seems to be a strong theme on this question of like what is indigenate or who is an indigenous person in a lot of these stories that's about like individual indigenous people who have been displaced and kind of like removed from their indigenous relationality in place or they're multiply displaced and they're already experiencing like inter like they're part of an intergalactic diaspora and and so I don't know what that means cuz I I think from like a da perspective Elena I I think I'm going to have to agree with you that you would kind of cease to be Da if that happened. If that was if that happened or if that was like a choice you made to like leave your home in order to have a future and what does that mean? What does it mean that an indigenous future would require indigenous people to like leave behind their home?

[00:56:30]And I understand like the histories of displacement, but there's something about that that feels like the completion of the project of settler colonialism, the the final severing of you from like what makes you like that that particular kind of indigenous person which is rooted and anchored in place. And so it's like is it is some of the commentary that like indigenous people can only have a future if we give up who we are and then we just become like individuals in space. Uh and we just make do with like the remnants of what we have. I guess that's what post-apocalyptic might mean. But that definitely doesn't that's not a utopia. That just kind of feels like liberal individualism to be honest with you. And so there's something about that that was a little bit strange to me. I was not expecting that.

[00:57:27]>> Yeah, I wasn't either. And it was it was really deeply unsettling actually. I read because I wanted to finish all the stories before today. So I read three the last three last night. Um and then I couldn't sleep. Um, but I I was trying I after the first couple I I I thought about it during the day and I thought, so if we're looking at um at this concept of the apocalypse as being colonization, then you know we are all in this um in the middle of the apocalypse right now.

[00:58:14]We are not post-apocalyptic. We are not pre-apoc apocalyptic. We are in the middle of an ongoing apocalypse, ongoing colonization.

[00:58:24]And if these stories are supposed to point the way towards a decolonial future and a return to um to indigenous ways, I'm not seeing that.

[00:58:39]And I'm not seeing this this nonlinear time. Um I'm I'm seeing sort of a surrender to what has already occurred because of colonization. And that surrender to me is dystopic and it's and it's and it's a for for us it it it would literally lead to um to a complete genocide of of our culture. we could not be we could not be who we are without our homelands. So that was um it was depressing to me and I was thinking about um I don't know an awful lot about the work that's being done in afroofuturism.

[00:59:47]Um, I have to admit I have not read um a lot of Afro um futurism um literature.

[00:59:55]Um I see things um the the the biggest example of course I have is is um the Black Panther. And I kind of thought to myself, why is it that they get this beautiful film um with Wakanda, this place that can combine um traditional African values and and rooted in place and um and cultural and um music and clothing and the market, the great market in Wakanda and they have managed despite, you know, the the diaspora of of the forced enslavement and removal of so many Africans, they have this place um where there are multiple cultures and multiple languages and multiple different people that um are protected and and in these stories, I felt like we who don't have a mass diaspora because we're still here, but there's nothing in these stories that celebrates culture. There's nothing in these stories that really celebrates um you know other than the one with the storyteller and the stories would appear on on their skin like there's nothing that really to me that celebrates that or that that highlights that and that um and that bothered me. I was like why can't we have you know a Wakanda forever?

[01:01:47]>> Yeah.

[01:01:49]No, but for real, if you really indigenous futurisms is like the combination of indigenity and science fiction or like the native slipstream oral history merged with technology like honestly like Wakanda is kind of that.

[01:02:04]And um and and so yeah, I I completely felt the same way. And what you just said was so poignant about how these characters in these these stories seem to all have just like surrendered to genocide or it's like just a foregone conclusion that the earth is like irredeemable at this point and that the only option for a future i.e. life is to leave. um and to leave your homeland and to abandon it. And I guess that that premise doesn't make any sense to me because as you said and as Whitehead says in the introduction to the anthology, we already live in a po post-apocalyptic present. Like what we're living is in a post-apocalyptic period. And so our people haven't surrendered to the foregone conclusion of settler colonialism which is elimination. It's like the total elimination the extinction of of our people in our nations and like that isn't a foregone conclusion to us. Like even though like what is it like 90 in some cases like 99% for some of us of our people have like perished because of genocide like some somehow like people are still speaking language our languages and still being able to communicate with the stars you know and hold that knowledge because of the continuity um in a particular place and so and language sorry to interrupt language. Even languages that have been considered lost >> have used technology to preserve preserve the languages and they're retaching it to the younger people. So that is like the epitome of of indigenous futurism where the language may have died out in terms of native fluent speakers that are left walking the earth but it hasn't because it's been preserved through technology and it's being taught to um the people back to the people. So that to me is also a hopeful future >> and it's actually something we're doing and right and so it's like we're living we're what we're calling it indigenous futurism is actually something that we're living and building every single day that we make it through another day living in a world that's supposed to be premised frankly on our death on the total death the total extinction of our people. And so this being like the the historical and material fact of indigenity at least in North America from what I can see I don't I don't know why anyone would imagine a future where we did finally just acquies or like there was just such a totalizing apocalyptic catastrophe that we couldn't possibly continue to survive or to resist or to like we couldn't it ceased to be possible for us to be ourselves and to continue that and because that hasn't happened.

[01:05:36]We're living in a post-apocalyptic time unless there's like a different apocalypse. Yes, climate change might be that. But I I don't think that's real based on like experience like my understanding of history. And so if that is the case then I can't see any type of indigenous futurisms that would yeah that would that would posit that we would surrender and just give up and leave. Um, and so I don't is that indigenous futurism or is that indigenous pessimism?

[01:06:15]because that indigenous pessimism I think if uh we're thinking of like a correlary to afropesimism um which may or may not be productive but it would just it would suggest that the death is so totalizing like the the the death drive of elimination that underwrites settler colonialism is so totalizing that we can never possibly escape that and so it's really like our job then politically ally is to index endings essentially is just to index all of the indigenous endings. And I don't I don't understand because I don't think future isn't future the the opposite. If a future is about life continuing then like death and life ending would like by definition not be futuristic.

[01:07:07]I don't know. And and maybe I'm thinking too linearly linearly and not spiralally enough, but yeah, there's maybe dystopian is the right word. Um, but yeah, a lot of these stories felt very pessimistic and they do challenge me to think about what is the relationship between like an indigenous pessimism and an indigenous futurism. Um, I'm not going to change my perspective, I think, on what I would think of as an indigenous futurism in the vein of like a PBLO or a Navajo kind of understanding that you and I have been talking about here, but it does challenge me to think about where like an indigenous pessimism fits into other kind of frameworks of indigenous futurism that I like fundamentally disagree with like politically and I think empirically, but nevertheless, there might be a place for that within the broader kind of uh project of indigenous futurisms because I do think that some of these pieces would fall into that and within like queer queer theory there is like a really strong there are strong traditions of queer utopia and there are really strong traditions of queer I don't know if it's like dystopia but definitely like queer pessimism um and so they they they have like a ve they have different political projects, I would say, or at least their visions of what is possible or what liberation looks like are very, very different. And so, it would should be no surprise that for someone like you or me and like knowing the history of the Red Nation, for example, the organization we're a part of that we actually believe in liberation and revolution and decolonization. And so, uh, like I would never surrender, you know, I'm just not a pessimist.

[01:09:01]We're eternal optimists. That's our job as revolutionaries.

[01:09:04]>> It is because why would we fight if we didn't believe that we could actually achieve what we were fighting for? And I think that's why I was so unsettled last night is is just the idea of leaving my homelands.

[01:09:27]And I, you know, I've been very fortunate in my life. I've traveled a lot. I have seen places that I love. I have seen places I would never go back to. Um, but I can't call any place else home but between our four mountains, too. And when I'm outside of them, I feel it. I know I'm outside of Taywa homelands. And um I always know that, you know, I'm coming back. So our our time, the way we position ourselves, our temporality is is um spatial and it's also um cyclic. So it's everything based on where we are and that spiral of you know the center place the home place and it goes out to the village and it goes out to the to the hills and it goes out to the mountains and then it goes out you know to to surround us in the four mountains and then it comes back to where we are. And the way we measure time is through ceremony. And the way the ceremonies um you know mark where we are in our lives and that's why you know co was so unsettling to placebased people because we mark time um by ceremony. And if we can't get together in our communities to mark ceremony then what does that mean? Where does that put us? And you know, we did not leave the planet. We did not give up. We did not surrender. We did not, you know, a lot of people were lost. But the minute we were able to gather again, the minute we were able to do that, we did. And it restored that. And it was it was that restoration which renewed all of our faith again in in our communities. And I can't imagine transporting that to someplace else and being even remotely the same. So what does indigenous futurism look like? Um, as a PBLO person, you know, I would like to think it it is a hopeful place where we can use technology. And I know they are um, you know, I know that that people in some of our communities are recording things that will never be seen by outsiders, but they're recording things so they don't get lost.

[01:12:20]um they are um you know using technology to sustain and um and create a future where knowledge is not lost. So how do we transfer that into you know into a world of indigenous futurism? And I think we've talked so much about film and TV on Red Power Hour because it really is a reflection of where we are um in, you know, in a larger society. And we get, you know, indigenous people get um Dances with Wolves and we get, you know, all of these movies that that um that already assume that we are gone that um that Native culture is in the past and it has um it has ended. You know, can we flip that and create visions of a future that have this native slipstream in it, but show a hopeful and optimistic future. And I think we're just going to have to do it ourselves because we know no one else will. as we say at the end of most of these episodes. Uh yeah, I I feel you. I feel like that would be like a queer indigenous feminist futurism. At least that's how I would construe it. It's like it's a certainty that we will have a future and that we are the stewards of the future and that that future isn't necessarily centered on humans, but it is one where the entire web of relations that make up life are cared for um are healthy uh and are treated with mutual respect.

[01:14:30]Um, I guess that's what I think of as a queer indigenous feminist future. And maybe we'll be able to read some stuff as we go through this journey of examining indigenous futurisms that has more of that. Uh, and yeah, where technology is embraced.

[01:14:48]um you know where like indigenous excellence uh like scientific excellence thinking about tekk in relationship to um technology it'd be really cool to encounter some of that but yeah where we are we're we're world making uh these kinds of really cool spaces where we're like we're all healthy and beautiful and that are replete with like queer queness, right, where humans aren't centered, where queer love, which I actually one of the things I really did love about this anthology is all of the queer love and that all of the protagonists are queer um in this, which in and of itself is a pretty amazing because that almost never happens that indigenous queer folks are protagonists of any story. Um, and certainly, um, because you know, like obviously like the amount of violence that's directed towards like queer folks, particularly like indigenous trans women and trans women of color, is like very extreme and high, at least in the United States.

[01:15:54]Like there is this assumption that queerness equals death. Like that, you know, queerness is not allowed to have a future because it's like such an abomination or an aberration, right? And so I think even imagining like queerness into the future is in of itself a pretty liberatory thing. And so I can I can see how that might that that seems to have been a commitment with all of the writers here. And I do really love that about these pieces. I don't quite like what they do with the queer characters um uh for all of the reasons that we've articulated here. But but yeah, I'm excited to explore this. But they are honored and they are celebrated in whatever possible way you can celebrate them in a post-apocalyptic world. Um, yeah, world making like that's I think that's the the thing, you know, can we have indigenous people who can do that level of world making?

[01:17:01]So the opposite of a declenion narrative but a creation is that the opposite a creation nar not creation but >> what is the opposite of declenion is like what a decline towards disappearance >> ascendance >> ascendance yeah >> maybe ascendance yeah >> that would be good I could I could go with that like could we have an ascendant narrative that's complete with world making like George Lucas made a world in Star Wars.

[01:17:35]Um Tolken made a world in Lord of the Rings. All of these things that Red Nation people love. Um and um you know, could we see that? And I think the closest I've seen to that is Virgil Ortiz, but could we see that in indigenous futurism? And you know, let that be a beacon that guides um now I'm getting really Lord of the Rings D would be really happy. The beacons of Minister are lit. Here are the beacons. like let's create an ascendant narrative um and a world um for indigenous futurism that can celebrate queer feminist um indigenous all over Turtle Island um culture and survivants and bring hope.

[01:18:33]>> Yeah. And like maybe following in the vein of these like how like queer and feminist relatives like embodied politics and embodied practices are like combined with indigenous embodied knowledge is like the bridge to the future. It's like the rainbow path that we're going to follow to the future. And that's that's that's what we must do, I think, in order to have a future. Um, I think like in real terms, but then also in our wildest dreams, and that's what I would love for native people to do. I would like for us to dream like what what would be the future that we could dream of because you know I think so much of like the harshness of settler colonialism has made it so that we don't even dream or that imagination is completely destroyed and you're not even allowed to imagine uh a world otherwise and that world making is yeah you can't even you can't even get to the next day because you're you don't know what the next day will hold um because you're struggling to survive in the present. But yeah, what a beautiful thing to imagine something otherwise and then to go even a step further and to make an entire world to dream a world and then to build it into existence.

[01:20:03]That's what I that's what I want to do.

[01:20:05]That is what I act that is what I do actually.

[01:20:09]That's why I like that's why we like created the red nation. Like that's literally what we do. We have our own particular method of doing it. We're not the only um you know native people who are doing that. But yeah, we dream a world that we want to live in and then we do what we can to build it into existence and to make it a reality.

[01:20:28]So we are engaged actually in indigenous futurism and the work that we do.

[01:20:35]Wow.

[01:20:38]Well, that was a good that was a good note to end on.

[01:20:41]>> It was a good note. And and now maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight. Yeah.

[01:20:48]Yeah. And not be like trapped in some like really really depressing dystopian post-apocalyptic scenario. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:20:58]It was depressing. Yeah.

[01:21:00]>> Well, >> so stay tuned because we're going to dive deeper into this and see what we can come up with. Um, but definitely I mean I recommend reading this book because I think it will make you think and and um and I'm going to keep searching for for other um um for other literature and um definitely I think there's a lot of performance art out there. Um there's a there there's just a lot of I mean I I just looked briefly. Um but there's a lot of really cool stuff.

[01:21:40]Koopupa um Hansuga is doing some amazing stuff. Beautiful stuff. So I think it's going to be a cool series.

[01:21:52]Heck yeah. And maybe if um any of our listeners have recommendations that you might know of, but like other kind of uh art or literature or anything really um that we can take a look at and talk about here on the podcast as we make our way through indigenous futurisms, that would be really welcome.

[01:22:11]Okay. Well, thanks everyone for listening. Uh we will be back soon with another episode of RPH. Take care.