Reflecting on Indigenous superheroes, Indigenous
Futurisms and the future of diversity in literature
I cannot count the number of time I’ve been
told it’s unusual to be an Indigenous speculative fiction writer who tells a
story about an Indigenous superhero. But Indigenous superheroes are nothing new
– at least, not to Indigenous peoples. We have always had stories of the
Ancestor heroes, and through the long violence of colonialism, we’ve had other
heroes too. These heroes include the resistance fighters of the frontier period;
the undercover operatives of the protection era where intense government
surveillance required Indigenous peoples to engage in a thousand hidden acts of
defiance; and the child heroes who survived being members of the Stolen
Generations. In Australia and
elsewhere, Indigenous peoples have also long been able to interact with the
world in ways that the West might label as ‘magic’, but this is because the
West often defines the real (and hence the possible) differently to the
Indigenous cultures of the earth. There are many aspects of Indigenous
realities that might be called ‘speculative’ by the West (such as communicating
with animals and time travel). There is also much in Western literature that
Indigenous peoples regard as fantasy even though it is labeled as fact,
including the numerous negative stereotypes and denigrations of Indigenous
peoples and culture contained within settler literature. In this context,
speculative fiction has told many a colonial tale whereby Indigenous peoples
become the ‘primitive’ populations of alien worlds, overcome by the equivalent
of the colonial nation-states enacting their so-called manifest destiny across
the stars. Spec fic has also told yet more iterations of the ‘white saviour
story’ whereby it is only a white hero (and never an Indigenous one) who can
‘save’ the Indigenous peoples from their terrible plight (a plight that was
itself created by white invaders). And it is a genre which has continuously engaged
in the appropriation of Indigenous and other non-Western cultures, thereby
causing much distress to the marginalised peoples of the earth.
But there is a growing Indigenous presence
in speculative fiction. Indigenous Australian Young Adult and Children’s writers
who write spec fic include myself,
Teagan Chilcott,
Tristan Michael Savage,
graphic novelist Brenton
McKenna, and the group of young
Aboriginal people responsible for the NEOMAD comics. In the US, Anishinaabe
academic Grace Dillon has coined the term ‘Indigenous Futurisms’ to describe a
form of storytelling whereby Indigenous peoples use the speculative fiction
genre to challenge colonialism and envision Indigenous futures. Since
Indigenous cultures (and peoples) have long been relegated to the past in the
mythos of colonial settler states, the very act of imagining Indigenous futures
is one of resistance. There is therefore a
degree to which being an Indigenous spec fic writer is to be part of what might
be called, in Star Wars parlance, a ‘rebel alliance’, and it
is an alliance that fights – of course – against the forces of Empire.
Indigenous superheroes
are nothing new. Nor are Indigenous stories. But since colonisation began, our
voices have been silenced and our knowledges and cultures appropriated. So what
is new are the existence of spaces where Indigenous peoples can tell and
control our own stories. This is
not to say the battle to protect our cultural expressions is over. It most
definitely is not, and here in Australia, we don’t yet have what could well be
the single most effective measure of protection – a National
Indigenous Cultural Authority.
But there is a greater awareness of the need to deal respectfully and ethically
with Indigenous peoples than once there was. There is also an ever-growing
cyber-space presence of many diverse voices who are challenging
misrepresentations and drawing attention to the need to read the authors who
are writing to their own worlds. In 2015, spec fic author Corinne Duyvis – a writer with autism and one of the founders
of Disability
in Kidlit – invented the hashtag
#OwnVoices, to promote books
with a marginalised protagonist written by someone from the same group.
Websites such as Disability in Kidlit and, in an Indigenous context, American
Indians in Children’s Literature, provide a source of critiques that interrogate (mis)representations
in literature in way that is still generally not done by mainstream reviewers
and award judges. So do ally websites such as Reading While White, which is run by a group of White
librarians to support the struggles of people of colour and Indigenous peoples
in literature.
There isn’t an equivalent to these websites in Australia … yet. But questions
of authority, legitimacy, appropriateness, privilege and power are increasingly
being asked of literature and of the Arts more generally.
The way is gradually opening
for Indigenous peoples to speak our truths, whether alone or in equitable partnerships
with non-Indigenous peoples. We don’t yet live in a world where all voices have
an equal opportunity to be heard, and where all voices are heard equally. But
we are on our way to it, and therefore on a journey to the stories that will
exist when we do.
Welcome to the future.
***
Ambelin Kwaymullina is an Aboriginal writer, illustrator and academic who comes from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She works at the Law School at the University of Western Australia and is the author of a number of picture books as well as the YA speculative fiction series, The Tribe.
