Thriving Indigenous Futures
In the short film, The Sixth World, Earth has been used up and is no longer a habitable planet. The film follows Tazbah Redhouse, a Navajo astronaut on a mission to terraform and then colonize Mars. Humanity is fighting for its survival by escaping the hellish environment that they created. The colonizer's desire to extract Earth of all of its natural resources has given them the ability to leave the planet to never return on a slim hope that everyone can make a habitable home together elsewhere. It is unknown whether they will be successful, but the most celebrated victory will also be a tragedy in this scenario. Humans will never again see their birthplace again outside of viewing it in a telescope or recorded history.
Unlike what many believe Capitalism is not morally evil; instead, it is devoid of morality. It is apathetic. If effectively self-regulated Capitalism has the transformative power to grow massive monetary value and support a community as a whole. Consequently, if Capitalism is poorly self-regulated, it has the detrimental ability to accrue unsustainable wealth and negatively empower a few individuals, and harm the rest. In history's past, the church gained unsustainable wealth and power, and, in its corruption, it used wealth to colonize and wreak incalculable damage onto the world. Furthermore, it used its power to indoctrinate its followers into believing that this was a form of social progress.
We are living in a world that was born out of the church's narcissistic image. Consequently, corporations have been shaped to be so poorly self-regulated that several monopolies have formed, giving unsustainable wealth and power to a few individuals. A couple of examples of this include Richard Murdoch and the Koch family. And now once again these unchecked powers have used their wealth to further colonize and wreak incalculable damage onto the world. Furthermore, using their power to indoctrinate their followers into believing that this is a form of social progress or better yet not to think at all. They do not care about or support any communities. They only care about bolstering their wealth and are either blind to their damage or see it as collateral and forget about by Sunday night football.
In The Sixth World, a similar entity exists in The Omnicorn Corporation, which intends to terraform Mars with its brand of genetically modified corn. If they are successful, they will create an agricultural monopoly for the new world. One that will not only be in control of what humanity eats but how they breathe. Omnicorn will do anything to make this happen even if it means endangering the colonization mission (which they do.) Their goal is not to benefit the community but rather to close off an open market and grow unsustainable wealth.
In their haste to be the first to market, they limit the potential of their product. As General Bahe said, "Corn with no husks? No stalks or tassels? That is creepy. Some people use those parts. If they have use on Earth, they can be used on Mars." To this, I ask where are the voices inside the corporation are saying this? Not allowed to speak or like Bahe not invited. Either way, the corn is made limited of use and unprotected when sickness does come and its oxygen-giving abilities end. Omnicorn is ignorant of history, its product, and their consumers, and because of this, they grow irrelevant, unsustainable, and then go extinct.
In order to ensure the future of Indigenous life and the lives of the colonizers, we need to listen, respect, and take heed of experts especially if they represent a different way of life. In The Sixth World when the Navajo general has initial misgivings about the genetically altered breed of corn he was ignored. He was a respected official who had the foresight to see the film's driving cataclysm before it happened. The corn might have been healed, and an emergency might never have occurred if he had been heard. There are similar disasters on Earth today that can be avoided by involving a diverse group of voices.
The Sixth World's story proves that if history is not learned from, it is doomed to be repeated. Nowhere is this more evident than in the arc of the unfortunate astronaut, Tazbah. After failing to convince the scientists that the corn was failing, she curses under breath and blames herself for not learning from her ancestor's collected knowledge. She knows that something is wrong but doesn’t have the knowledge to prevent it. In the end, if it were not for the Indigenous collective saving the day, everything would have been doomed.
Some of humanity's most significant accomplishments have resulted from acting as a collective. In The Sixth World, all Indigenous nations come together, including the Navajo Nation, and they form an example of one such sustainable and empowering collective. Moreover, these people are the ones to come in and rescue the mission with their corn. They saved the day using the stored knowledge of corn cultivation gained with respect and care over the land and its offerings — which they learned over generations of ancestors. Indigenous futures thrive when their knowledge is mindfully cultivated and their history is well respected.
Works Cited
Schmidt, Diane J., and Navajo Times. “Vote for Diné Sci-Fi Film 'Sixth World'.” Navajo Times, 24 May 2012, navajotimes.com/entertainment/2012/0512/0524126th.php.
“The Sixth World.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheSixthWorld.
© Copyright Samuel J. Robbins, 2019