ABSTRACT
Focused on Indigenous dystopian fiction, specifically Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God (2017), this chapter discusses how these novels and their use of the dystopian genre address ever-evolving threats of colonialism. This chapter interrogates the ways in which these novels position Indigenous genetics as the key to human survival in times of dystopic destruction, while simultaneously featuring continuing colonizing oppressions and threats.
Both novels feature Indigenous communities that are threatened by colonial responses to dystopic realities. I argue that speculative Indigenous fiction is a critical commentary on increasingly devastating neocolonialist efforts to suppress and destroy Indigenous communities. Dimaline’s novel tells a story of the Indigenous people of North America being hunted for their bone marrow, in a near apocalyptic reality, because it is the only thing that will facilitate the ability to dream. Erdrich’s novel tells the story of Cedar Hawk Songmaker as she fights to evade panoptic efforts to control and monitor childbirth, as children begin being born as a more primitive species. Both of these novels position Indigenous genetics as a kind of antidote to dystopian colonialist efforts, which I identify as a critical commentary on 21st-century colonialism.
