If you think Native people are relics of the past, Indigenous Futurism is here to shatter that illusion. This movement imagines Native futures where Indigenous peoples not only survive but thrive—in space, in technology, in transformed societies where colonization isn’t the final word.
What Indigenous Futurism Is
Indigenous Futurism is a cultural and artistic movement that combines Indigenous traditions with speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and futurism. It imagines Indigenous peoples in future contexts, challenges narratives of inevitable Indigenous disappearance, and reclaims the future as Indigenous space.
Like Afrofuturism for Black communities, Indigenous Futurism centers marginalized peoples in visions of the future. It asks: what if Indigenous peoples weren’t erased by colonization? What if they led humanity’s future? What technologies might they develop? What societies might they create?
Why It Matters
Representation shapes what people believe is possible. When Indigenous peoples are only portrayed in historical contexts, it reinforces the narrative that they’re disappearing or extinct. When they’re absent from future visions, it suggests they have no future. Indigenous Futurism fights this narrative by insisting on Indigenous presence in every possible future.
It also matters because Indigenous peoples have always been futurists. Traditional stories often include prophecies and visions of times to come. Indigenous peoples have always planned for seven generations ahead, thinking about long-term consequences of actions today. This future-oriented thinking is fundamentally futurist.
Indigenous Futurism in Literature
Indigenous authors are creating speculative fiction that centers Native characters and perspectives. Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Trail of Lightning” imagines a Navajo protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world where Diné gods have returned. Stephen Graham Jones writes horror and literary fiction featuring Native characters navigating contemporary and supernatural challenges.
Cherie Dimaline’s “The Marrow Thieves” depicts a future where Indigenous peoples are hunted for their ability to dream—a metaphor for cultural extraction and appropriation. Daniel Heath Justice creates Indigenous-inspired fantasy worlds that challenge Western fantasy tropes.
These works do more than include Native characters—they center Indigenous worldviews, values, and perspectives in their narratives.
Film and Television
While less common than written work, some Indigenous Futurism exists in visual media. “Star Trek” has featured Native characters and actors, though not always well. Independent films by Indigenous creators increasingly incorporate speculative elements.
“Reservation Dogs” includes supernatural elements alongside contemporary storytelling. While not traditional sci-fi, it demonstrates that Indigenous stories can blend realism with other genres in ways that feel authentic rather than tokenizing.
Art and Visual Culture
Native artists are creating futurist visual art—imagining Native peoples in space suits, creating tech-integrated traditional designs, depicting Indigenous post-apocalyptic survival, and visualizing what Native-centered futures might look like.
This art challenges viewers to expand their conception of what Indigenous culture can be. It argues that tradition and technology aren’t opposites—they can coexist and enhance each other.
Traditional Knowledge Meets Speculative Fiction
Indigenous Futurism often incorporates traditional stories, prophecies, and cultural knowledge into speculative contexts. Creation stories might inform alien contact narratives. Traditional ecological knowledge might guide terraforming or climate restoration in fiction. Cultural values around reciprocity and balance might shape imagined societies.
This isn’t abandoning tradition—it’s demonstrating that traditional knowledge is relevant to future challenges.
Decolonizing the Future
Indigenous Futurism is inherently political. It rejects colonial narratives that position Indigenous peoples as obstacles to progress or casualties of modernity. It imagines futures where Indigenous peoples set the terms, where their values guide society, where colonization is overcome rather than permanent.
Some Indigenous Futurist works imagine post-colonial futures—what would North America look like if colonization had failed or been reversed? Others imagine Indigenous peoples spreading across the galaxy, carrying their cultures to the stars.
Technology and Tradition
A common theme is the integration of technology with traditional practices. Characters might use high-tech tools while maintaining cultural protocols. Future Indigenous societies might develop technology based on traditional knowledge rather than Western science.
This challenges the false binary that sees Indigenous peoples as either traditional or modern, implying they can’t be both. Indigenous Futurism insists that Native people can embrace technology without abandoning culture.
Survival and Resilience
Many Indigenous Futurist works feature apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. This reflects Indigenous peoples’ lived experience—they’ve already survived apocalypse. Colonization, genocide, disease, forced relocation—these were apocalyptic events. Indigenous peoples survived and continue.
Depicting Indigenous survival in future catastrophes makes sense—if they survived colonization, they can survive anything. These narratives honor resilience while avoiding toxic positivity that ignores ongoing struggles.
Reclaiming Science Fiction
Science fiction has often treated Indigenous peoples poorly—as primitive obstacles to colonization, as “planet of the week” aliens clearly coded as stereotypical natives, or as absent entirely. Indigenous Futurism reclaims the genre, insisting that Native people can be scientists, astronauts, inventors, explorers, and leaders in speculative contexts.
It also challenges the colonial assumptions baked into much sci-fi—the idea that expansion and conquest are inevitable or good, that “discovery” justifies claiming territory, that technology trumps ecological balance.
For Native Youth
Indigenous Futurism provides Native young people with visions of possible futures that include them. It says: you can be anything, even in the most imaginative contexts. You can be the scientist, the hero, the leader. Your culture has value in any time period, any setting.
This matters for identity development and aspiration. If you only see your people in the past, you might not imagine yourself in the future.
Challenges and Criticisms
Some criticize Indigenous Futurism as escapist, arguing that energy should go toward addressing immediate crises rather than imagining futures. But imagination is powerful—you can’t build a better future if you can’t envision one.
There’s also debate within Indigenous communities about what constitutes authentic Indigenous Futurism versus non-Native creators appropriating Indigenous aesthetics for speculative work. The distinction matters—Indigenous Futurism should be by and for Indigenous peoples, not just about them.
Moving Forward
More Indigenous creators need support to create futurist work. Publishers, studios, and platforms should actively seek out and promote Indigenous speculative fiction. Native youth should be encouraged to imagine and create future-oriented art.
Non-Native people can support Indigenous Futurism by reading, watching, and promoting work by Native creators. Recognize that Indigenous Futurism isn’t just diverse representation—it’s a distinct perspective that enriches speculative fiction as a whole.
The Ultimate Act of Resistance
Existing in the future, even imaginatively, is resistance for peoples who were supposed to disappear. Every Indigenous Futurist work declares: we’re still here, we’ll always be here, and the future belongs to us as much as anyone.
Indigenous Futurism isn’t just about entertainment or art—it’s about reclaiming the right to imagine, to exist, to shape what comes next. It’s about ensuring that when humanity reaches the stars, Indigenous peoples are there too, carrying their cultures forward while adapting to new contexts.
The future is Indigenous. Always has been, always will be. Indigenous Futurism just makes that explicit.
