The Present of the Future: Indigenous Futurisms in the Visual Arts
For at least two decades, a growing number of Indigenous artists have combined popular science fiction with Indigenous imagery and ideals, such as Bunky Echo-Hawk’s (Pawnee/Yakama) painting of Yoda wearing a feathered headdress, Jeffrey Veregge’s (Port Gamble S’Klallam) digital print of the Starship Enterprise executed in the distinctive Northwest Coast formline style, and Debra Yepa-Pappan’s digital print of Dr. Who’s TARDIS flying over Plains tipis. Indigenous Futurisms (IF), as defined by Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon, offers artists the visual vocabulary to construct a vision of the future based on the ideologies and aesthetics from previous generations. Predicated on the concept of biskaabiiyang, the Anishinaabemowin word for “returning to ourselves,” artists engage with “ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post-Native Apocalypse world.” (Dillon 2012) This field offers a narrative and visual language to address the aftermath of colonization, which includes the destruction of environments, disruption of lifeways, slavery, and imperialism, using rhetorical devices such as satire, parody, and irony to subvert the imperialist drive to erase indigenous peoples and histories. As the artist Skawennati (Mohawk) notes, IF offers a way “... to envision futures in which we are thriving [by] creating images of Indians in the future.” In this panel, we will address the theoretical framework of Indigenous Futurisms and consider how artists use technology, including Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, Indigenous philosophies, ethical frameworks, and Indigenous languages, to not only imagine the future but to create it.
Field of Study:
Canada
United States of America
Latin America
Central America
Twenty-First Century
Chairs:
Suzanne Fricke,University of New Mexico - suzanne@fricke.co.uk
,
Yvonne N. Tiger,University of Lethbridge - Tigery@uleth.ca
and
Suzanne Kite,Concordia University - suzannekite@alum.calarts.edu
