Abstract
Since contact, colonial visions of the future have excluded the Native. Indeed, since Natives have often been forced into compromises between cultural loss/revival, technological exclusion/integration, sociopolitical marginalization/empowerment, Indigenous people’s lived reality has been characterized by ustopia. However, as Lakota journalist Nick Estes’ eponymous monograph declares, “Our [Native] history is the future.” This chapter convenes the mythic and reverential work of artists Cannupa Hanska Luger (Lakota) and Skawennati (Kahnawakeronon), who problematize colonialist futures absent of Indigenous cosmology. In their place, Luger and Skawennati imagine future terrains celebrating Indigenous life: Luger’s Watȟéča character embodies the scavenger, whose technology destroys death and shelters the living “from the intricacies of death’s omnivorous annihilation;” and Skawennati’s She Falls For Ages retells the Haudenosaunee creation story using machinima, territorializing a decolonized Indigenous cyberspace. I argue that each artist crafts a compelling vision of Indigenous futurist cosmology by interweaving traditional knowledge and futural landscapes. The artists’ illuminating ustopiae challenge and reshape Western epistemologies of temporality and spatiality. That is, through their art, Luger and Skawennati demonstrate that Indigenous futures are not only adaptations or responses to colonial impositions but innovative, visionary expressions of futurity in their own right. The artists construct decolonial technologies of survivance, asserting Indigenous agency, resilience, and creativity.