Their use of speculative fiction and utopianism can never be separated from settler colonial modernity. Prefer centering indigenous perspectives as a critical intervention of their political project.

Towards Indigenous Futurisms: Decolonizing Utopia The Indigenous critical theories discussed above are themselves examples of the distinctly Indigenous concepts of survivance and transmotion, and are indeed reflective of Indigenous intellectual histories and sovereignties. The assertions of continued Indigenous presence and active critical interventions in other discourses act as a means of both demanding and attending to the concerns of Indigenous peoples. But they also compel comparative work on, and collaboration with, non-Indigenous peoples in order to add to, complicate, and extend the work of critical theory, as such, as a means of contributing to the broad and diverse projects of decolonialization. This project attends to the constituent role of utopia in colonial modernity, especially the tradition of utopian narratives, which both prefigured and contribute to the naturalization of settler colonialism. While Indigenous authors of poetry and prose have received increasing critical and popular attention, especially since the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn, there has been relatively little attention paid to Indigenous narratives that fall within “genre” literature. This includes speculative narratives, including, but not limited to, those often categorized as “sf”—science fiction, fantasy, or speculative fiction, under which the somewhat amorphous subcategory of utopian literature falls. However, Anishinaabe scholar Grace L. Dillon’s work is foremost in the ongoing establishment of the field of what she alternately describes as “Indigenous futurisms” and Indigenous sf. Dillon characterizes Indigenous science fiction within the broader science fiction community as …thought experiments that confront issues of “Indianness” in a genre that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century context of evolutionary theory and anthropology profoundly intertwined with colonial ideology, whose major interest was coming to grips with—or negating—the implications of these scientific mixes of “competition, adaptation, race, and destiny.”74 Thus the broader genre of sf is explicitly identified for its contributions to the horrors of the nineteenth century holocausts of the Indigenous peoples while it is simultaneously recognized as potential means of redress and reimagining. As I will discuss in greater detail in the fourth chapter, the tradition of utopian narratives of white settlers itself has evolved considerably with respect to its orientation towards Indigenous peoples and the condition of settler colonialism. I will also engage with contemporary examples of Indigenous sf as well as examples of narratives created by authors of mixed identities as a means of addressing the relationship between postcolonial and Indigenous sf. In her edited anthology Walking the Clouds, billed as the first ever collection of Indigenous sf, Dillon identifies several themes and strategies in contemporary Indigenous writings that involve science-fictional, fantastical or otherwise speculative narratives.75 In her introductory essay to the collection, Dillon centers the Anishinaabe concept of biskaabiiyang, arguing: It might go without saying that all forms of Indigenous futurisms are narratives of biskaabiiyang, an Anishinaabemowin word connoting the process of “returning to ourselves,” which involves discovering how personally one is affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post-Native Apocalyptic world. This process is often called “decolonization,” and as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Maori) explains, it requires changing rather than imitating Eurowestern concepts.76 Indigenous futurisms, as expressed through Indigenous science fiction narratives, therefore serve several functions at once. They are a means of “internal” creative exploration, healing, and entertainment, as a means of biskaabiiyang. But they are also compelling critical interventions in the wider sf, literary, and indeed societal narratives concerned with Indigneity, race, settler colonialism, and decolonization. Ultimately, I maintain there are significant and meaningful implications of attending to both the historical and contemporary effects of utopia on colonial modernity. Concepts developed by Indigenous critical theory, including those of Indigenous nationhood and Indigenous futurisms, may work to end the deferrals of Indigenous concerns and the naturalized dehumanization of Indigenous peoples within the resilient, often interrelated narratives of utopia and colonial modernity. These concepts challenge non-Indigenous scholarship, including that of utopian studies, to center Indigenous peoples and, in doing so, to re-evaluate and re-articulate their respective critical frameworks in light of Indigenous critiques of colonial modernity.