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Navajos on Mars: Native Sci-Fi Film Futures
Bunky Echohawk’s (Pawnee) “If Yoda Was an Indian, He’d be Chief”
Willi Lempert, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has written a fascinating piece on Native SF films. That there is such a thing is news to me. It’s interesting to see a non-western take on the future in the short films that Lempert examines. These films offer an alternative to the typical stereotypes found in most genre movies – when there are any native people in them at all.
“This article is a brief attempt to draw on Indigenous futurisms as a way of introducing the diversity of Native sci-fi films in conversation with mainstream sci-fi.”
Lempert divides native SF into utopias, dystopias, and alien encounters and offers multiple examples of each for you to experience for yourself. Check it out.
2 Comments
I trained in futures. It’s been a very hard road for Futures to break away from White, Male, Western, Univeristy/think tank orientated, Capitalism centered, progress is automatically good, atheistic subtexted, science can know everything, knowledge and reason are driving forces of society, types of futures.
This is the viewpoint that all of Futures started as, grew up in, and it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that non-white culturally diverse envisioning has been gaining inroads as a working accepted methodology of value.
As far as i’m concerned, the more voices from diverse quarters, the options that open up are more diverse and of higher quality. Something which is sorely needed.
Great points Glenn. The hope is that creative projects like Native sci-fi films can begin to change who controls discourses about futures. Thanks for the comment.
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