Of Song Makers and Dreamers: Indigenous Futurism and the Arctic, 5 cr

In the face of a pandemic and of increasingly visible climate change (which Indigenous peoples and communities have been the first to experience), the notion of sustainability – whether economic, ecological, or social – might seem a distant possibility. But imagining the impossibilites of possible futures in what seems an almost apocalyptic setting has long been a project of Indigenous thinkers and creators, or the song makers and dreamers. These Indigenous writers, visual artists, curators, game designers, and filmmakers have always presented alternative paths and futures the reflect their indigeneity by incorporating their histories, their cultures, and their knowledge systems. Their practice has in later years been named 'Indigenous futurism'.

Indigenous futurism is the expression of Indigenous perspectives on the pasts, presents, and futures in the context of various media such as art, literature (science fiction), games, comics, and more. Prioritizing Indigenous ways of knowing (epistemology), being (ontology), and doing (methodology), Indigenous futurism seeks to unveil and challenge Western epistemic ignorance, where 'other' and Indigenous modes of knowing and perspectives have been marginalized in mainstream media and narratives, if not completely erased (epistemicide). This marginalization/erasure has, in turn, created or reinforced common tropes and discourses that exoticize Indigenous cultures as either distant past or 'other', which purposefully constructs the notion that Indigenous peoples exist outside of modernity, barring them from the contemporary world.

Using various tools and concepts, both specific to the genre (slipstream, world building, futurity) as well as customary practices within Indigenous cultures (dance, storytelling, singing), Indigenous futurism creates spaces for diverse representation of Indigenous self as well as sites where alternative narratives about pasts, presents, and futures (of time itself) are created and distributed. These spaces serve as sites of empowerment, creating vast opportunities of fostering and/or negotiating Indigenous sovereignty and promoting non-Western systems of knowledge in the interest of reinserting Indigenous values and meanings, initiating processes of decolonization.

Rather than finding solutions, this course aims to encourage its students to raise questions and to disperse into multiplicities, envisioning many and various futures – fact-based and/or fictional, of epic proportions and in the smaller fragments of larger narratives, and from the catastrophic impact of climate change to the vibrant splendours of creation.