Indigenous futurisms

Origins and theoretical foundations

The movement now known as Indigenous futurisms emerged from late 20th century experiments by Indigenous artists and writers with science fiction and speculative storytelling. Grace Dillon, a professor of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University, formally coined the term and edited the foundational 2012 anthology Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. Dillon framed the genre as a means of decolonization, using tools like slipstream narrative and worldbuilding to construct self-determined representations and alternative futures. A central Anishinaabe concept she introduces is biskaabiiyang, meaning the process of returning to ancestral roots to understand colonization's impact and recover traditions. The movement is explicitly inspired by Afrofuturism and is connected to related speculative aesthetics like Chicanafuturism and Latinofuturism, which encompass speculative works by U.S. Latinx communities. It critiques the digital divide and the historical exclusion of Indigenous peoples from both technology and modernity, arguing for the creation of networks of Indigenous self-representation. Chickasaw scholar Jenny L. Davis emphasizes the critical role of Indigenous languages in articulating and understanding these distinct Indigenous temporalities and futures.

Core themes and concepts

Indigenous futurisms is built upon several interconnected themes that reimagine Indigenous existence and sovereignty. A primary focus is anti-colonialism, speculating on futures free from Western interference and exploring communities that thrive in symbiosis with their environment or long for a return to pre-colonial lifeways. The movement directly addresses cultural genocide, including the legacy of American Indian boarding schools, by imagining worlds where Indigenous culture is taught freely to children. Environmental sustainability is another key theme, often portraying nature as a cyclical partner where community members actively maintain ecological balance. The movement also expansively explores Indigenous LGBTQ identities through the modern, pan-Indigenous term Two-Spirit and the more recent term Indigiqueer, coined by Plains Cree artist Thirza Cuthand in 2004 to describe queer Indigenous identities outside binary gender concepts. Literature such as How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls by Métis/Baawiting Nishnaane author engages directly with indigiqueer themes.

Perhaps the most distinctive theoretical contribution is its non-linear concept of time. Indigenous futurisms moves away from Western linearity, viewing the past, present, and future as interconnected and simultaneous. This allows artists to explore alternate histories, time travel, and multiverses, reexamining historical themes of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, conflict, and treaties to create new narratives. This temporal fluidity enables a critical play with race, privilege, and whiteness within speculative genres, linking culture directly to conceptions of time and space. The movement asserts that Indigenous peoples have already survived an apocalypse, and thus their futurism is inherently about resilience and the active creation of a willed future. This process of imagination is regarded as a way to bring the futures Indigenous peoples already carry within them into being.

Expression in visual and literary arts

Visual art is a significant domain for Indigenous futurisms, often incorporating iconography from oral histories and adapting popular culture through an Indigenous lens. Notable exhibitions like Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts featured the works of 27 contemporary Indigenous artists, and the collection was later moved to an online gallery with a VR experience. Artists frequently engage in cultural commentary by indigenizing science fiction iconography, such as Bunky Echo-Hawk's If Yoda was Indian or Ryan Singer's acrylic and silk-screen paintings of a Hopi Princess Leia, which critique George Lucas's appropriation of the Hopi butterfly whorl hairstyle and challenge the colonial gaze. Recent curatorial projects like Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology at the Autry Museum of the American West, co-curated by Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, Kristen Dorsey, Suzanne Newman Fricke, and Amy Scott, further demonstrate the movement's growth. This exhibition includes contributions from artists like Wendy Red Star, Andy Everson, Virgil Ortiz, Diego Romero, Marie Watt, and Cara Romero, whose works examine sovereignty, survivance, and historical reimagination through futurist frameworks.

Literature is the most diverse medium within the movement, encompassing novels, short stories, and scholarly works. Stories often feature Indigenous protagonists but are defined more by their perspective and engagement with Dillon's outlined principles. Joshua Whitehead's anthology Love After the End collects stories from queer Indigenous writers tackling colonialism and ideas of hope. Academic analysis continues to expand, with works like Darren Lone Fight's Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities examining Native American literary epistemology and analyzing Indigenous engagements with popular phenomena like Star Wars. The movement provides a framework for both creative expression and critical scholarly inquiry into Indigenous temporalities and knowledge systems, acting as a methodological approach that bridges narrative and theory.

Film, games and digital media

Indigenous futurisms has found powerful expression in film, often exploring themes of utopian sovereignty and dystopian assimilation. Notable works include Danis Goulet's short film Wakening (2013) and her feature Night Raiders (2021), Nanobah Becker's The 6th World about Navajo Mars colonization for the FutureStates series, and Jeff Barnaby's Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and Blood Quantum (2019). The movement also manifests in physical games like the tabletop role-playing game Coyote and Crow, created by Cherokee designer Kenna Alexander and set in a future America untouched by Old World contact. Digital media has been crucial since the late 1990s, with early collective expression found on the CyberPowWow website, launched by Mohawk artist Skawennati from 1997 to 2004, which was a direct precursor to her TimeTraveller™ machinima series about a 22nd-century Mohawk man.

Video games offer an interactive approach, though representation has been historically problematic with titles like The Oregon Trail depicting Indigenous peoples as dangerous. Contemporary Indigenous futurist games are designed with greater cultural integrity, often involving consultants from Native communities, as seen with Assassin's Creed III's collaboration with the Mohawk Nation. Key examples include Thunderbird Strike (2017) by Elizabeth LaPensée, where players as a thunderbird destroy mining equipment, using Anishinaabe Woodland or X-ray art styles as protest against the oil industry. The popular game Fallout: New Vegas includes a DLC titled Honest Hearts that presents Indigenous tribes in a dystopian future Zion Canyon. Mohawk designer Maize Longboat produced the game Terra Nova, part of a growing cohort of Indigenous game creators.

Virtual reality has become a significant frontier for Indigenous creatives to control self-representation and build capacity in technology fields. Companies like Indigenous Matriarch 4 provide resources to help Indigenous people participate in and remake the virtual world. Projects like the 2167VR Project (2017), in partnership with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, commissioned immersive VR works from artists like Danis Goulet, Kent Monkman, Postcommodity, and Scott Benesiinaabandan, whose work Blueberry Pie Under a Martian Sky imagines perspectives 150 years into the future. Platforms like AbTeC Island (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace) use VR to retell significant historical moments and connect to the present, fostering new forms of storytelling, health promotion, and cultural expression that foster self-esteem and community pride.

Academic and community engagement

Indigenous futurisms is actively cultivated within academic institutions and community research initiatives. The Indigenous Futures Research Centre (IFRC) is a key hub, hosting an annual symposium that brings together faculty, students, and community members. The 2026 IFRC Annual Research Symposium, themed Practicing the Future, features panels, workshops, performances, and artist talks aimed at shaping envisioned futures through research and research-creation. The symposium includes specific streams, such as one exploring Indigenous science as a living knowledge system that informs Indigenous-determined pathways in technology, health, and education. Another stream, presented by Mervi Maarit Salo, examines how Indigenous STEM projects in K-12 education actively shape futures by shifting who is recognized as a knowledge holder and how learning is valued. These gatherings highlight how Indigenous scholarship is actively constructing methodologies that bridge academic and community-based knowledge.

Educational outreach programs are also critical for fostering Indigenous futures in STEM. Actua's National Indigenous Youth in STEM (InSTEM) program represents a major national effort, applying a Two-Eyed Seeing approach that braids Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Their pedagogical framework centres land-based education, allowing students to earn high school credits through culturally grounded experiences, based on findings from their 2021 national discussion paper Indigenous Land-Based STEM Education. The 2026 symposium also features panels on Indigenous video games as sites of research and knowledge transmission, and on 2Spirit and Indigiqueer methodologies that centre gathering and relationality as forms of resistance and care. Scholars like Kim TallBear at the University of Alberta and Chelsea Vowel with her Métis in Space podcast contribute to the academic and public discourse, while presentations examine the emotional work required from non-Indigenous Canadians to support Indigenous resurgence and futurity.

Criticism and internal debate

While influential, the term Indigenous futurisms has received mixed feedback from some Indigenous artists and communities. A primary criticism, voiced by figures like Brazilian Indigenous rapper Kunumi MC, is that the focus on futurism is a Western concept tied to linear progress, which may not align with all Indigenous worldviews. Critics argue that for many communities living within tribal contexts, cultural preservation and living in the present, informed by the past, are more pressing priorities than speculative visions of the future. Kunumi MC has argued that the term is a white man's term unreflective of Indigenous people, stating that native Indigenous people living in tribes do not think about the future in the same way, as the white man has a vision of progress not shared by them. This perspective highlights a tension within the global Indigenous experience, where the movement's academic and artistic framing may not resonate with all grassroots realities. The debate shows the diversity of Indigenous thought and the importance of not applying a single theoretical lens universally, acknowledging that for some, present-day cultural continuity is the ultimate form of futurism.

Notable artists and works

The Indigenous futurisms movement is expressed in literature, visual art, comics, video games, and other media. It features a wide array of creators across multiple disciplines. Key artists include Grace Dillon, who edited the anthology Walking the Clouds and encouraged stories through the Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Science Fiction Contest. Other notable figures are Danis Goulet, a Métis filmmaker, and Ryan Singer, a Navajo visual artist. The movement also includes game designers like Maize Longboat, a member of the Mohawk tribe.

The list of creators is not exhaustive but represents the interdisciplinary spirit of Indigenous futurisms. These creators use tools like slipstream and worldbuilding to construct self-determined representations. They imagine futures where Indigenous peoples reclaim agency, sovereignty, and cultural continuity. Their work critiques the exclusion of Indigenous people from the contemporary world. It challenges notions of what constitutes advanced technology and questions the digital divide. Collectively, their work opens spaces for Indigenous ways of knowing to inform visions of the future.

Questions about Indigenous futurisms

What is Indigenous futurisms?

Indigenous futurisms is a creative and intellectual movement that uses science fiction, speculative fiction, and related genres to express Indigenous perspectives on the future, past, and present. Coined by scholar Grace Dillon, it is inspired by Afrofuturism and serves as a tool for decolonization. The movement spans literature, visual arts, film, video games, and digital media, challenging colonial narratives and imagining self-determined Indigenous futures. It critically redefines technology, time, and progress through Indigenous worldviews and concepts like biskaabiiyang, or returning to ancestral ways.

How does Indigenous futurisms relate to Canadian Indigenous communities?

In Canada, Indigenous futurisms provides vital frameworks for exploring issues of sovereignty, cultural continuity, and resilience in the context of reconciliation and Indigenous rights. It influences contemporary art, academic research at centres like the Indigenous Futures Research Centre, and public discourse. Canadian creators like Danis Goulet, Skawennati, and Elizabeth LaPensée are leading figures in the movement. The 2026 IFRC Annual Research Symposium at Concordia University, themed Practicing the Future, exemplifies how Canadian institutions are fostering this scholarship and community engagement to actively shape Indigenous-determined futures.

What are some common themes in Indigenous futurist stories?

Common themes include anti-colonialism and imagining futures free from Western interference, often featuring communities living in symbiosis with their environment. The movement addresses cultural genocide and the legacy of institutions like American Indian boarding schools by envisioning worlds where Indigenous culture flourishes. Environmental sustainability is a key concern, portraying a reciprocal relationship with nature. It also explores Indigenous LGBTQ identities through terms like Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer. A foundational theme is a non-linear concept of time, where past, present, and future are interconnected, allowing for the reexamination of history and the creation of new narratives.

Are there any Indigenous futurist video games?

Yes, several video games embody Indigenous futurist principles. A notable example is Thunderbird Strike (2017) by Elizabeth LaPensée, an action game where players become a thunderbird destroying mining equipment, using Anishinaabe art styles as protest. Mohawk designer Maize Longboat produced the game Terra Nova. These games represent a shift towards Indigenous-led creation, often involving community consultants to ensure accurate representation, moving beyond the problematic depictions found in earlier titles like The Oregon Trail. Another example is the game Never Alone, which explores Iñupiaq cosmology.

What is the connection between Indigenous futurisms and virtual reality?

Virtual reality has become a significant medium for Indigenous futurisms, offering tools for self-representation and storytelling. Projects like the 2167VR Project (2017), in partnership with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, commissioned immersive VR works from artists like Danis Goulet and Scott Benesiinaabandan, set 150 years in the future. Platforms like AbTeC Island (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace) use VR to retell history. VR allows Indigenous creatives to lead in a technology field where they have been historically excluded, using it to express culture, promote wellbeing, and imagine futurities on their own terms. The Indigenous Matriarchs 4 XR Media Lab, run by filmmaker Loretta Todd, supports this work.

Has the term Indigenous futurisms faced any criticism?

Yes, the term has received mixed feedback. Some Indigenous artists and community members, such as Brazilian rapper Kunumi MC, argue that the focus on the future is a Western concept centred on linear progress. They contend that for many communities, the priority is cultural preservation and living in the present, informed by the past, rather than speculative futurism. This criticism highlights the diversity of Indigenous thought globally and cautions against applying a single theoretical framework universally. It shows that the movement, while powerful for many, may not align with all Indigenous worldviews or immediate community concerns.

Sources and further reading

• Indigenous futurisms (Wikipedia)
• Indigenous Futurism, news.library.ualberta.ca, (news.library.ualberta.ca)
• Indigenous Futurism, Imagining our Future (blogs.ubc.ca)

Checked by the Nosy Mag desk. Last updated 2026-10-31.