Niigaan Sinclair - Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology

 Niigaan Sinclair also wrote a foreword to Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology. He begins with historical non-Indigenous reactions to a two-spirit person from the 1800s (p.12-13). Then he discusses contemporary use of the term “two-spirit” and their roles in historical and contemporary Indigenous communities (p.14-15). He points out that LGBTQ and two-spirit Indigenous individuals experience double oppression – racism and homophobia (p.16). He says “I would add that science has been the predominant foundation for arguments supporting colonial hatred and fear of Indigenous LGBTQ and two-spirit traditions. Arguments based in biased and Darwinian understandings of science, constructing what is ‘normal,’ ‘civilization,’ and ‘order’ formed the basis for Christian ideas of ‘natural law’ and legal principles that legislated and justified hate. These systems perpetuated violence against Indigenous peoples and created cycles that undermined community principles, divided families and clans, and constituted not only ‘cultural genocide’ but actual, physical genocide.” (p.16). He notes that writing (fiction, laws, media) has been used to misrepresent Indigenous LGBTQ and two-spirit identities. He also notes that over the course of three centuries, some Indigenous people have internalized these oppressive narratives. However, “Indigenous two-spirit community members continue to gift us one of the longest and most extensive stories of revolution and agency in North American history. Indigenous two-spirit artists have been using love to overcome hate across time and space – and even beyond it.” (p.17). He says that this collection is “a recognition of Indigenous LGBTQ and two-spirit traditions,” but “none of these stories are solely about history. These narratives are about the future, time-travel and other worlds. They are visions and re-visions of a complete and full Indigenous tomorrow.” (p.17). He notes that this collection takes these tools of oppression – fiction and science – and “re-makes them.” (p.19). The stories “gift us ways of seeing reality beyond that which we have inherited and see science and fiction of what it always should have given us” dreams, hope, and possibilities beyond what we think we see.” (p.17). 

Niigaan Sinclair teaches at the University of Manitoba, is head of the Native Studies Department, and has published both academic and creative writing. According to Wikipedia, he's also the son of TRC Commissioner Murray Sinclair. 

In September of 2020, he published an editorial regarding Indigenous identity fraud. One of the authors in this anthology (Gwen Benaway) had been openly questioned about her Indigenous identity in an open letter signed by five Indigenous authors (Alicia Elliott, Terese Mailhot, Nazbah Tom, Joshua Whitehead, Tyler Pennock). Rather than answering the call, she closed down her Twitter. In his editorial, Sinclair provides personal anecdotes about the prevelance of identity fraud in the public service and problematizes the self-identification process used in the public service. As a solution he states: 

It appears the only route out of this confusion surrounding Indigenous identity is to hand absolute control of Indigenous membership over to Indigenous communities.

Let’s recognize Indigenous decisions and laws when they’re passed after being debated in Indigenous courts and parliaments.

While you’re at it, Indigenous governments need to actually govern, so give their land and resources back, too. All of it.

No? Well at least then let’s fulfil the treaties and recognize Indigenous governments on par with Canadian governments.

I guess identity is tricky after all, but not for Indigenous peoples.

I do think it's interesting that there are a lot of science fiction stories that explore tricky details related to identity and identity fraud. Dale Turner, writing in This is not a peace pipe (2006), said: 

The problem of authenticity, of who can speak for whom in an indigenous intellectual culture, is no doubt a thorny one - but it is our problem to discuss and solve! Determining what we can and cannot talk about goes a long way towards resolving the authenticity problem, but I suspect this problem will never go away. My hopes lie not in my own work (I am only, at best, a guide to intellectual landscapes), but in the intellectual work of future indigenous intellectuals. By showing our young minds that they can participate as intellectual equals in the world without giving up who they are as indigenous peoples, we will empower ourselves to some day return our ways of knowing the world to their rightful place in the landscape of human ideas. (p.117).

Nearly 20 years later, we are the "future intellectuals" that Dale speaks of.  

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Grace Dillon - Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology

 Grace Dillon also wrote a foreword to Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology. She asserts “colonial gender-binaries and sexual regimes” were “imposed by the legacy of nineteenth-century white manifest destinies,” and that Two-Spirit stories are “refashioning ancestral traditions in order to flourish in the post-Native Apocalypse.” (p.9). She says “SF [science fiction] survivance stories are not about survival. SF survivance stories are about persistence, adaptation, and flourishing in the future, in sometimes subtle but always important contrast to the mere survival, or the self-limiting experience of trauma and loss that often surrenders the imagination to creeds of isolation and victimhood, the apprehension of hopelessness, helpless entitlement to an extirpated past. SF survivance stories project near and far futures where Indigenous peoples reclaim sovereignty and self-determination” (p.9-10).

If you would like to know more about Two Spirit perspectives, I recommend checking out Marie Laing's bookUrban Indigenous Youth Reframing Two Spirit. As a researcher, I find it interesting that she begins the book with an explanation of why she chose not to define Two Spirit. 

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Hope Nicholson - Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology (2016).

Hope Nicholson wrote the letter from the editor for Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology (2016). As a non-Indigenous person, she speaks to balancing the tension between her own desire to share stories and Indigenous and LGBT individuals’ right to privacy (p.7). She notes, for example, that there are reasons why Indigenous people restrict certain stories to their community and there are reasons why transgender people “do not discuss aspects of their transition.” (p.7). She says “I selected the genres of speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy for this collection as it is my belief that there is a tendency to restrict Indigenous stories to one time, one place, and force culture to be something to be looked at from a distance. I hope that by having stories unburdened by time, place, or space, that it creates connection.” (p.8). She says that all of the authors identify as Indigenous and most of them identify as queer, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, or lesbian (p.8). 

Hope had her own publishing company, Bedside Press. It also published Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection Volume 1. Hope was also the editor of that book. 

In 2018 Tres Dean published an article online about how someone more powerful in the publishing industry sexually abused him at a publishing industry event. In 2019, Hope wrote an article about how she had behaved inappropriately, and announced that she was closing Bedside Press and leaving the industry. Similar to the previous post, when I learned all of this I was again faced with the ethical question around citational politics. And again, instead of choosing to ignore her work entirely, I choose instead to surface the messiness and undertake my own personal reflection about whether or not there is anything baked into her work that is potentially harmful. In terms of the introduction above, I think it's fairly benign. Some people might say "but by promoting her work, you're promoting her, and she stands to gain financially from that." First, I'd be surprised if my post made that much of a difference. Second, I balance that possibility against the fact that in posting her introduction, I'm also promoting the book, including the Indigenous authors of the book. And when I take those two things into consideration, I choose to promote the book. Third, she's already financially penalized herself by closing down the publishing house and leaving the industry. Which is far beyond what most Me Too perpetrators have done, and in removing herself from a situation where she is in a position of power over authors, and by announcing her transgression, perhaps she has created structural changes in her life to safegaurd herself against engaging in similar behaviours in the future. 

Also, just a quick aside. I'm not purposefully seeking out contentious individuals to talk about their transgressions. It just so happens that the topic I'm currently working on involves these folks. Are people engaged in Indigenous science fiction prone to violence? I hope not. I do think it's weird how often it comes up, though. 

Further volumes of Moonshot were published through a different publisher, and the sequel to Love Beyond Body, Space & Time was published by Arsenal. 

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mitewacimowina: Indigenous Science Fiction and Speculative Storytelling

This book was published in 2016 by Theytus, an Indigenous owned publishing house in Penticton, BC. 

It has a lot of familiar names in it like Cherie Dimaline, Eden Robinson, and Lee Maracle. There's a lot of diversity in the types of stories in here. I would say my favourite is Harold Johnson's Spaceman, which is both fun and funny. If you have siblings, I think you'd enjoy Spaceman. As an educator, Okienkwaon:we was my favourite, as it speaks to the decisions that Indigenous youth make when planning their education and careers. Old Man from the South had a moment so poignant that I actually had to stop reading and just sit with it for a bit. But what's weird is that I didn't actually understand the larger story itself. Anyhow. 

mitewacimowina: Indigenous Science Fiction and Speculative Storytelling was published in 2016 by Indigenous owned publishing house Theytus Books. Neal McLeod, editor, explains the title of the book in the introduction. It is a Cree word with two roots: mitew and acimowina. “The stem mitew refers to someone who has spiritual power, and someone who does thing beyond the ordinary – and perhaps beyond explanation. acimowina, simply means ‘stories.’ This collection involves two elements which overlap with one another: science fiction and speculative storytelling.” (p.4). He notes that science has been “used in the project of colonialism” (p.4) and that “within some streams of Indigenous science fiction, there might not be so much a celebration of the possibilities of science, but rather a critique of science, and how science and technology have been used to propagate colonialism.” (p.4). With respect to the theme of space exploration, he notes that some stories focus on “the space of the mind and the imagination. Space is not only the terrain of the physical world, but also the terrain of the soul… the stars within us, and within our bodies.” (p.4). He notes that some of the stories in the collection reimagine history and “explore Indigenous history and experience.” (p.5). He notes that some of the stories “bend time another way – by drawing on the past, our understanding of the present is amplified.” (p.6). He concludes the introduction by stating that Indigenous science fiction and speculative storytelling “provides a means for reimagining Indigenous political and social situations. These narratives provide a way to reshape Indigenous futures and also to reshape understandings of the past,” and that he hopes that “the publication of this volume will encourage the flourishing of this trajectory of Indigenous literature.” (p.7). 

Neal McLeod taught at Trent and the First Nations University of Canada. In 2017 his work was slated to be part of an anthology, but several women who were part of the anthology said that they did not want his work included because he had been charged with domestic violence in 2014 and pled guilty. The book publisher said that he believes in redemption and noted the Neal had undergone therapy. Neal withdrew his work and explained his decision in an open letter. This is part of a larger conversation around Me Too in the publishing world. Neal's case is actually unusual in comparison to many others because he was formally held accountable through the courts. It leads to the question - is there a path back? If so, what does it look like? Who is involved? And who decides? The focus on individual wrong doing should not obscure a larger question, though, which is what are the structural factors in place in Canadian society which make women vulnerable to violence? If you would like to explore that question in depth, I recommend reading the Red Women Rising report.

Neal's writing has been influential in shaping my own thinking. For example, his essay Coming home through stories (2001) helped shape my thinking early in my career. When I encounter a situations such as this, I go back and revisit the earlier work, and ask myself "is there anything in here that is potentially harmful which I have internalized?" We all grow and change over time, so it never hurts to look back at early influences and ask "does this still ring true to me?" In terms of the politics of citation, if there is an idea which shaped one's thinking, do we throw just throw the idea away? A different way to approach it (which I have seen done) is to kind of mention the idea but not cite it, but that is a little too close to plagarism for me. Another way to approach it is to find someone else who has done something else with the idea, and reference them instead. But sometimes that distorts both the concept and the logic behind it. To say "I will never cite anyone who has participated in gendered violence, racialized violence, abuse of power..." is like trying to do scholarship with one arm tied behind your back. Once you pull that thread, it all starts coming apart. For now, my approach is to name it, surface the messy questions, but not let it stop me from using the ideas in ways that serve my own projects. 

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Walking the Clouds - Grace Dillon

*Update - I noticed that the original version of this is riddled with typos. Blogger doesn't have spellcheck? Or maybe I turned it off somehow? Anyhow, fixed the glaring errors. 

When I encounter an author, I often look them up to see if they have any podcasts or lectures online. Then when I am reading, I can imagine their voice narrating it. Grace Dillon does have a number of lectures available online. She's a gregarious speaker with a delightful laugh. I recommend watching this video from the Future Imaginaries Symposium in Kelowna.

This post focuses on her introduction to the book she edited, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012). She actually has another collection, Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest (2003). I just recieved it in the mail. Grace Dillon does not address Indigenous fiction in the introduction. But I haven't looked too closely so maybe I am wrong about that. 

In the introduction to Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012), Grace Dillon opens with reference to a Drew Hayden Taylor play in which one of the characters is an Indigenous science fiction writer who resists their writing being limited to a mechanism to educate non-Indigenous Canada about Indigenous people, and instead just wants to follow their own creative impulses while also making a living (p.1). Reflecting on the concept of Indigenous self-expression through science fiction, Dillon asks the question "Does s[cience] f[iction] have the capacity to envision Native futures, Indigenous hopes, and dreams recovered by rethinking the past in a new framework?" (p.2). She says the anthology “weds s[cience] f[iction] theory and Native intellectualism, Indigenous scientific literacy, and western techno-cultural science, scientific possibilities enmeshed with Skin thinking." (p.2). 

She says, "The stories offered here are thought experiments that confront issues of 'Indianness'” (p.2) and also describes them as a "mindscape" (p.3). The parameters of the mindscape are described through the names of the sections in the book: “Native Slipstream; Contact; Indigenous Scientific Literacies and Environmental Sustainability; Native Apocalypse, Revolutions, and Futuristic Reconstructions of Sovereignties; and Biskaabiiyang, ‘Returning to Ourselves’: Beyond the Shadow-Worlds of Postmodernity and the (Post)Colonial." (p.3). Dillon engages with Indigenous scholars as she: invokes Gerald Vizenor's Suvivance (p.6); invokes Lawrence Gross's concepts of post-apocalyptic stress syndrome, aakozi (Anishinaabemowin for being out of balance), and returning to bimaadiziwin (being in a state of balance), (p.9); and invokes Linda Tuhiwai Smith's approach to decolonization, which Dillon describes as "changing rather than imitating Eurowestern concepts." (p.10). She says, "In the end, Walking the Clouds returns us to ourselves by encouraging Native writers to write about Native conditions in Native-centred worlds liberated by the imagination." (p.11).

Dillon, G.L. (2012). Imagining Indigenous Futurisms. In G.L. Dillon (Ed.) Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (p.1-12). Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press.

There are a few stories in the anthology that I thought were pretty good. The book is laid out as a scholarly reader, with academic introductions to each piece. 

The front matter of the book has a page that says "Volume 69" and lists the (very impressive) editorial board, which includes Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Simon J. Ortiz, and Leslie Marmon Silko. I saw that and I was like Volume 69 of what?!? so I went to the website website and found this description: 

Launched in 1971, Sun Tracks was one of the first publishing programs to focus exclusively on the creative works of Native Americans. The series has included more than eighty volumes of poetry, prose, art, and photography by such distinguished artists as Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Simon J. Ortiz, Carter Revard, and Luci Tapahonso.

I do love collections of things. So maybe some day I will look further into this Sun Tracks collection. But not today because I have some other things to do today. 

In 2016, Extrapolation, a scholarly journal on science fiction and fantasy, published an Indigenous Futurisms issue and Grace Dillon wrote the editorial.

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Welcome Back

Hello Dear Readers, Some of you may have noticed that the blog went dark for awhile. I've had this blog for almost sixteen years. During that time it has played many roles - a place to share resources, a place to store reading notes, and a place to dream about the future. Over fifteen years there were almost 500 posts and almost a million visits. I've met a lot of people through this blog and it's part of who I am. However, a few years ago I started to have issues with curation. Some of the links were dead and I didn't have time to go back and update them. I shared some of my own resources via google docs without password protection, but people were always emailing me to ask for the password even though no password was needed. Some of the 'current event' type content had become stale. And sometimes, because I change and grow as a person over time, I no longer agreed with the content in some of my old posts. All of these curation issues bothered me, but I didn't have time or the emotional capacity to go back and edit/update/cull. It was too overwhelming. So, at one point I just restricted readership to myself and put the blog on pause until such a time that I could dedicate more time to it. In envisioning the act of revising the blog, though, I grappled with the question of what the blog is and what it does. Without knowing its core function, it was hard to imagine how I would go back and revise things. At times I have changed the mission statement of the blog to reflect where I was at in my career and life. The blog has changed with me. It's been a companion on my journey of life. Upon much reflection, I realized that there were two constant elements over time: 1) self-expression, and 2) sharing things that I enjoy as I encounter them. Going forward, in the short term, I am adhering to these core functions. And as such, at the moment, instead of going back and revising old posts, I have just reverted them to draft. So. Welcome back.