Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
ShareThis
Javascript must be enabled to continue!

“In search of our better selves”: Totem Transfer Narratives and Indigenous Futurities

View through CrossRef
Much contemporary science fiction urges us to focus on eco-activism and sustainable futures in order to prevent environmental catastrophe. From a critical Indigenous and anticolonial perspective, however, the question becomes “for whom are these futures sustainable”? Set in a nondescript desert dystopia, George Miller's film Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 alludes to the westerns of yesteryear and the Australian “outback”—spaces coded as menacing in their resistance to being tamed by settler-colonial interests. This article charts how Miller's film, while preoccupied with issues pertaining to global warming and ecological collapse, replicates and reifies settler replacement narratives, or what Canadian literature scholar Margery Fee has referred to as “totem transfer” narratives (1987). In these narratives, ultimately the “natives” transfer their knowledges and then disappear from view, helping white settlers remedy the self-created ills that currently threaten their worlds and enabling them to inherit the land. In the second half, I also consider how Indigenous futurist texts offer decolonizing potentials that refute the replacement narratives that persist in settler-colonial contexts. In particular, I examine how Indigenous cultural production emphasizes the importance of the intergenerational transfer of Indigenous knowledges and refuses the hermeneutic of reconciliation that seeks to discipline Indigenous futures in the service of a settler-colonial present.
Title: “In search of our better selves”: Totem Transfer Narratives and Indigenous Futurities
Description:
Much contemporary science fiction urges us to focus on eco-activism and sustainable futures in order to prevent environmental catastrophe.
From a critical Indigenous and anticolonial perspective, however, the question becomes “for whom are these futures sustainable”? Set in a nondescript desert dystopia, George Miller's film Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 alludes to the westerns of yesteryear and the Australian “outback”—spaces coded as menacing in their resistance to being tamed by settler-colonial interests.
This article charts how Miller's film, while preoccupied with issues pertaining to global warming and ecological collapse, replicates and reifies settler replacement narratives, or what Canadian literature scholar Margery Fee has referred to as “totem transfer” narratives (1987).
In these narratives, ultimately the “natives” transfer their knowledges and then disappear from view, helping white settlers remedy the self-created ills that currently threaten their worlds and enabling them to inherit the land.
In the second half, I also consider how Indigenous futurist texts offer decolonizing potentials that refute the replacement narratives that persist in settler-colonial contexts.
In particular, I examine how Indigenous cultural production emphasizes the importance of the intergenerational transfer of Indigenous knowledges and refuses the hermeneutic of reconciliation that seeks to discipline Indigenous futures in the service of a settler-colonial present.

Related Results

Yemapoetics: Towards a Theory of Healing in Indigenous Poetry from Sikkim
Yemapoetics: Towards a Theory of Healing in Indigenous Poetry from Sikkim
Literature that is being composed from or about the politico-geographical category of Northeast India focuses on violence and ethnic movements in major ways (Hazarika, 1996; Barpuj...
Indigeneity and Homeland: Land, History, Ceremony, and Language
Indigeneity and Homeland: Land, History, Ceremony, and Language
What is the relationship between Indigenous peoples and violent reactions to contemporary states? This research explores differing, culturally informed notions of attachment to lan...
Hyperrealism and Other Indigenous Forms of ‘Faking It with the Truth’
Hyperrealism and Other Indigenous Forms of ‘Faking It with the Truth’
This essay introduces Visual Anthropology Review’s Hyperrealism and Other Indigenous Forms of ‘Faking It with the Truth,’ a special collection of essays on new media art, ceremony,...
Reclaiming Indigenous Identity and Cultural Diversity in Canada
Reclaiming Indigenous Identity and Cultural Diversity in Canada
Linguistic diversity is the key to Canada’s multicultural identity which it has been struggling to maintain for decades. Its language policies are rooted in two kinds of languages,...
Indigenous Futurisms and Decolonial Horror: An Interview with Rebecca Roanhorse
Indigenous Futurisms and Decolonial Horror: An Interview with Rebecca Roanhorse
This interview with Black and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo author Rebecca Roanhorse explores the innovations she has brought to horror and science-fiction genres by speaking from the colon...
Subverting Colonial Choreographies of Memory: Drag the Red and the March for Tina Fontaine
Subverting Colonial Choreographies of Memory: Drag the Red and the March for Tina Fontaine
Winnipeg, Manitoba is located on the sacred territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene, and the Métis Nation. Like most Canadian cityscapes, though, these unceded ...

Back to Top