Thriving Indigenous Futures
In this day and age, the idea of a thriving Indigenous future seems incomprehensible. In order for that to happen we’d have to decolonize the social and political structures that are foundational to how this country runs in the first place. Capitalism, the essence of our economic system and proponent of the “American Dream,” itself is a colonial construct that feeds into the marginalization of minority and lower socioeconomic groups, and the way it is implemented in this country has played a major role in keeping them there. That alone is daunting to think about. To decolonize a system that is foundationally colonial, you have to tear it all down. And how do we go about doing that?
I think a good first step would be to acknowledge the fact that history was indeed written by rich, old white men. It seems pretty obvious to us, seeing as how we’re taking these classes and making an effort to think deeply about these issues, but I mean for everyone else. Not everyone who goes to school chooses to take these classes, and to each their own, but if we could alter the national education curriculum and, at the bare minimum, have them teach the cultural and physical genocide of Indigenous peoples as it is – an ongoing process, not an extinct one – then maybe we could get somewhere. If we are to make any reparations for the wrongdoings of our government, we ought to start by exposing them.
Another, admittedly more elusive and intangible, step would be to acknowledge the implicit biases we all have. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, these innate preconceptions we have about everyone and everything in our world. While these aren’t things we can necessarily change, we can learn to recognize them and train ourselves to think differently. In a lot of sociology classes, the notion of implicit and explicit biases comes up in the discussion of race, and it’s valuable to think about in this context too. Realistically, humans have been subjugating each other for thousands of years, and there’s no reason to think that that would just go away. Proactively teaching and resetting these biases, however, could accomplish essentially the same thing. Seeing as how this is a paper for a contemporary Indigenous literatures class though, I digress.
More on par with the content of this class, we need to recognize Indigenous literatures and works of art for what they are. Indigenous author Craig Womack said:
Tribal literatures are the tree, the oldest literatures in the Americas, the most American of American literatures. We are the canon. [(Womack)]
And that’s important. While Indigenous literatures have only recently been gaining prominence and recognition, they’ve been around for much longer than the American canon… and America in general. I don’t know that adding them to the American canon would do any good, seeing as how it’s a settler construct itself, but to continue to recognize and give them the respect they deserve would be an adequate step forward, I think.
An aspect of Indigenous literatures that has been discussed and debated widely is that of Indigenous speculative fiction. Are these fantastical universes created by Indigenous authors helping to perpetuate the notion of a “vanishing” or “imaginary Indian?” Or is their existence in and of itself a challenge to the settler-colonial narrative? A quote from Postcards from the Apocalypse, by Rebecca Roanhorse, while lengthy, is essential to understanding this:
We stand with one foot always in the darkness that ended our world, and the other in a hope for our future as Indigenous people. It is from this apocalyptic in-between that the Indigenous voices in speculative fiction speak… [we rewrite] the past to reimagine the present. [(Roanhorse)]
Reading Indigenous SF in this context brings a whole new level of meaning to the stories. Obviously, we can’t change what has happened in the past 500 years, but these novels can offer some insight of where we go from here. In breaking from “conventional postmodern literary criticisms,” we can learn to engage the literature as well as the community it comes from. [(Womack)]
Daniel Heath Justice’s central questions in Why Indigenous Literatures Matter can help us to frame this idea of a thriving Indigenous future as well. He asks:
How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? [(Justice)]
Give me a hard-and-fast answer to those questions and I’ll give you a million dollars. There is no easy answer, since nothing in life is ever easy, and I think some serious introspection is needed if you want to answer these questions for yourself. Indigenous author Thomas King said it best when he said: So, let’s agree that Indians are not special. We’re not … mystical. I’m fine with that. Yes, a great many Native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world. But that relationship is equally available to non-Natives, should they choose to embrace it. The fact of Native existence is that we live modern lives informed by traditional values and contemporary realities and that we wish to live those lives on our terms. [(King)]
How do I see a thriving Indigenous future? I see it as one where Indigenous peoples are not collapsed into a category that fails to represent the immense diversity among and between them. I see it as one where their productions, whether they be literary, cinematic, or otherwise, are revered instead of shamefully criticized. And finally, while I have absolutely no idea what this would look like, I see it as one where we deconstruct and rebuild our social, economic, and political institutions in a way that doesn’t marginalize groups deemed inferior and isn’t run by the wealthiest 1% of the country.
Bibliography
Justice, Daniel Heath. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018.
KING, THOMAS. INCONVENIENT INDIAN: a Curious Account of Native People in North America. UNIV OF MINNESOTA Press, 2018.
Roanhorse, Rebecca. “Postcards from the Apocalypse.” Uncanny Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, 2018, https://uncannymagazine.com/article/postcards-from-the-apocalypse/.
Womack, Craig S. Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1999.
© Copyright Mady Ashworth, 2019