The Temporal Imagination of Indigenous Futurisms

Abstract:If the very act of speaking back against colonial tropes has itself become an aspect of mainstream SF that cynically distorts the force and significance of the concept of decolonization while simultaneously serving as a way to avoid engaging with SF's own historical connection to colonialism, then how may we answer the crucial question that, as insists, artists and scholars must continue to ask themselves and answer in new ways: "what makes [Indigenous Futurisms] different from more mainstream science fiction?" This essay seeks to make a contribution to what must necessarily be a series of engagements with and answers to this question that together help us not just understand what indigenous futurisms are but also what they do. It is the latter relation to which this essay accords particular significance. Examining the temporality of IF, for instance, both on an epistemological and on a formal level, allows us not only to draw one important distinction between IF and what we may understand as settler futurism, but we are also able to catch one glimpse of the striking artistic, political, and social possibility of IF in our time.