Where No Michif Has Gone Before: The Form and Function of Métis Futurisms

• Author / Creator

  Vowel, Chelsea May

• Indigenous futurisms, a term coined by Grace Dillon in 2003, and indebted to Afrofuturism, seeks to describe a movement of art, literature, games, and other forms of media that express Indigenous perspectives on the future, present, and past. This research outlines the scope of Métis futurisms as being a specific kind of Indigenous futurism, rooted in otipêyimisiw-itâpisiniwina, Métis worldviews.

  Using autoethnography and research-creation, I wrote four speculative fiction short stories set within the kinscapes of Métis from manitow-sâkihikan as a form of what Scott Lyons calls rhetorical sovereignty. Each story is an exercise in worldbuilding/prefiguration as a way of imagining otherwise, with the intent to kwêskîmonaw, change our own shapes and destinies as Métis people.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Michif Man
  • Buffalo Bird
  • Indigenous futurisms
  • Dirty Wings
  • Métis futurisms
  • âniskôhôcikan

• Graduation date

  Spring 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-4x0v-hy03

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.