“Lands of Chemical Death”

Pollutants are inextricable from the geopolitics of land sovereignty, but Indigenous Futurisms suggest that new forms of posthuman kinship, obligation, and futurity can emerge in even the most polluted lands. This chapter traces these networks of toxic kinship across two works of Indigenous Futurism: Gas Masks as Medicine, a series of paintings by Bunky Echo-Hawk (Yakama Nation); and Red Spider White Web, a 1990 cyberpunk novel by Métis writer Misha. Echo-Hawk and Misha’s art explores the tensions between the desire to bear witness to damaged lands and peoples and the political need to decolonize and unmap these surveilled toxic landscapes.