Indigenous Futurisms: Genre and World-Building

Abstract

This dissertation examines literary, digital, virtual, and multimodal texts and spaces in regards to genre and world-building in Indigenous futurist works. I argue that by studying different genres like speculative fiction novels, poetry, video poetry, and museum exhibits, we can gain a more encompassing definition of world-building in regards to Indigenous futurisms, including interspecies world-building and the creation of virtual and digital Indigenous worlds. Interspecies world-building entails balance and collaboration between human and nonhuman and enacts what has been, and still is, idealized in traditional Indigenous knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge systems. Indigenous artists construct worlds in digital and virtual spaces that function differently than worlds in print novels and poetry collections because of how they correct online representations, circulate self-representations, and create new platforms. Audience and user negotiation are also important in creating and maintaining these worlds, and in promoting healing. Therefore, Indigenous futurist genres are not just fantastical; these genres are representative of traditions and lifeways, and they also build sustainable models of the Indigenous futures. The first section, “Human, Nonhuman, and Interspecies World-Building,” focuses on human, nonhuman, and interspecies agency in creating and re-mapping Indigenous worlds in Cherrie Dimaline’s novel The Marrow Thieves and Jennifer Elise Foerster’s poetry collection Bright Raft in the Afterweather. The second section, “Constructing Virtual and Digital Worlds,” explores how Blake Hausman’s novel Riding the Trail of Tears, The Trail of Tears exhibit at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, OK. The video poetry of Heid Erdrich and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner constitute and construct virtual and digital Indigenous worlds.