Indigenous futurisms
Indigenous Futurisms is a movement in literature, visual art, comics, video games, and other media that expresses 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, oral history, historical or contemporary politics, and cultural perspectives.
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, 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.
Chickasaw scholar Jenny L. Davis emphasizes the importance of Indigenous languages to the articulation and understanding of Indigenous temporalities.
Themes
At its base, Indigenous futurisms envisions alternative futures where indigenous peoples are allowed to reclaim agency, sovereignty, and cultural continuity over culture, which may have been lost to time as well as cultural genocide. Through speculative storytelling, relationships are re-imagined with land, technology and spirituality, while interconnection and harmony of a social, spiritual and ecological nature are emphasized. Concepts of time, space, identity, and belonging are redefined to offer insights into indigenous worldviews and spiritual practices. Indigenous futurisms have been applied for recognizing colonialism and genocide and for determining how to achieve a more peaceful coexistence with one's gender and environment.Anti-colonialism and cultural genocide rhetoric
Much of Indigenous futurisms exists as a way to speculate about futures without the interference of Western countries, namely Spain, France, and Britain, and explores ideas about what an American community would look like without the influence of European colonization. Most of these stories include either a community thriving on the same scale as modern America while being more symbiotic with its environment, or a community of oppressed citizens or refugees who long to return to a time or place where such things were possible.While in some part, genocide in Indigenous communities might normally only be attributed to the early Americans. However, genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. American Indian boarding schools in the last 100 years have been responsible for beating Indigenous children into learning and accepting customs from America at the time. This interference has since been labeled as genocide, and Indigenous futurist novels often speculate on a future where this culture was allowed to grow and be taught primarily to children, instead of being integrated with American culture and language.
Environmental sustainability
In both the indigenous populations of today and the works of speculative fiction, each individual community member is often asked to take part in maintaining and sustaining the environment they are a part of. Nature is often viewed as a cycle akin to one's life and death, and thus individuals can contribute to the cycle they are a part of.LGBTQ identities
Two-spirit
The term "Two-Spirit" is a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous peoples to describe those who fulfill a third gender ceremonial and social role in their cultures. Those who identify themselves as two-spirit are neither a man nor woman, but can carry the traits of both sex represented in one complete body. The term was widely adopted in the 1990s to encompass the various non-binary gender identities and expressions among Indigenous peoples today.Indigiqueer
Coined by Thirza Cuthand in 2004, the term Indigiqueer is used as an alternative to two-spirit that does not rely on binary concepts of gender. There are many indigenous futurisms stories written with indigiqueer themes, such as How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls by two-spirit author Métis/Baawiting Nishnaane.Concept of time
The concept of time in Indigenous futurisms moves away from Western linear interpretations, both culturally and within the genre of speculative fiction. According to Indigenous futurists, time 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 to create new narratives. Artists play with questions of race, privilege, and "Whiteness", both in history and within the speculative genre; they are expanded upon, subverted, erased and reversed, amongst other things, thereby linking culture to time, space, and what lies in-between. The term biskaabiiyang, 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, and reframing what the world would or could be like.In arts and entertainment
To increase this movement's visibility and bring attention to Indigenous voices, the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts showed Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future, featuring the works of 27 contemporary Indigenous artists. Following the pandemic, the MoCNA has transferred the collection to an online gallery and made available a VR experience that the public can access through their devices.Visual arts
Many works of art by Indigenous futurists contain iconography or symbolism that reference Indigenous oral history. Another major facet of Indigenous futurists' artwork is the adaptation of existing culture and nomenclature. For instance, artist Bunky Echo-Hawk's “If Yoda was Indian” displays show a new perspective on Yoda from the franchise Star Wars.Kristina Baudemann focuses on storytelling, art, and the integration of science fiction into Indigenous art in Indigenous Futurisms in North American Indigenous Art. She says that Indigenous people are resilient and sustainable and their art incorporates those characteristics.
Navajo artist Ryan Singer paints in acrylic and silk-screen prints. He has two pieces of Princess Leia, from the Star Wars series that portrays her as Hopi, acknowledging George Lucas' cultural appropriation of the Hopi butterfly whorl hairstyle. In his first painting, Hopi Princess Leia, he shows the Hopi Princess Leia holding a gun pointing straight at the audience while also staring directly at the audience as well. In his second Hopi Princess Leia, named Hopi Princess Leia II,
Baudemann analyses this depiction and says it creates awareness of the colonial gaze, which is harmful to indigeneity. In these paintings, Princess Leia is seen clad in a Hopi blanket and wearing the hairstyle typical to unmarried Hopi girls. She is in front of her Pueblo homes, protecting them with her gun. Baudemann emphasizes the idea that Hopi homes should be seen as homes and not monuments that can be looked at by outsiders, and that they should not be appropriated. Princess Leia, in the Star Wars movies, loves her home and tries her hardest to protect it, which is why Singer chose Princess Leia to be depicted in these paintings.
Recent curatorial projects have also explored Indigenous Futurism as an emerging interpretive framework within contemporary Native art. Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology at the Autry Museum of the American West presents contemporary Indigenous artworks engaging with futurity, technology, and speculative visual traditions. Co-curated by Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, Kristen Dorsey, Suzanne Newman Fricke PhD, and Amy Scott PhD, the exhibition examines Indigenous sovereignty, survivance, and the reimagining of history through futurist and science-fiction frameworks.
The exhibition includes contributions from artists such as Wendy Red Star, whose work blends Indigenous cultural imagery with speculative or other-worldly settings, and Andy Everson, known for indigenising science-fiction iconography. Artists like Ryan Singer reinterpret pop-culture and science-fiction motifs through Diné perspectives, while multimedia installations by Virgil Ortiz—including ReVOlt 1680/2180: Sirens & Sikas—present futurist retellings of historical events such as the Pueblo Revolt. Ceramic works by Diego Romero incorporate narrative, satire, and historical reference to explore Indigenous continuity and cultural resilience, while textile installations by Marie Watt and photographic works by Cara Romero further highlight themes of representation, identity, and futurist aesthetics across diverse media.