Future Tense: Potentiality, Portents, and Permutations in Native North American Art

Abstract

This dissertation examines the ways in which living Native North American artists envision and engage possible Indigenous futures. Indigenous Futurisms (IF) investigates the many ways Indigenous peoples conceptualize, visualize, verbalize, and speculate on the future. Working within an IF visual and conceptual lexicon, the artists in this dissertation elucidate the ways in which Indigenous peoples have always employed diverse modes of future-thinking. Building upon the work of Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon, I identify four major tenets of Indigenous Futurisms examined in this dissertation: reimagining lived histories to envision potential futures; living apocalypses; navigating space/time; and privileging Indigenous knowledges, technologies, and traditions. To connect a comparatively diverse selection of artists and artworks, I consider Virgil Ortiz’s (Cochiti Pueblo) Pueblo Revolt 1680/2180 series as my primary case study, then include other artists as correlative studies in each chapter. I compare differing notions of histories and futures in order to problematize representations of time, space, existence, and apocalypse. I analyze representations of space/time travel, and relate those narratives to the artists’ personal and/or community experiences. My research culminates in an analysis of how artists devise futures that are dependent upon ancestral teachings and practices. For Indigenous peoples, science fiction and futurism are not just fiction and are not purely speculative; futurity is deeply rooted in autochthonous cultural narratives, knowledge systems, and ways of being.