FNIS 401F – Indigenous Futurisms

I will begin this post by defining Indigenous futurism and further illustrating how this concept applies to Skawennati’s Timetraveller™. Following this, I have included a machinima treatment for a new episode of  Timetraveller™.

Indigenous futurism, as a concept, is a way of approaching the idea of ‘Indigeneity’ by understanding it through a digital and contemporary framework. Simply, as contemporary Indigenous artist Skawennati articulated, Indigenous futurism is a way of imagining Indigenous people in the future, through digital means, in order that such a future may be able to take place. The origins of the word “futurism” comes from the Italian futurismo, referencing a movement occurring in the early 20^th century. Though, this is where the word originated, the Italian futurism movement and Indigenous futurism share very few similarities in ideology or history. Italian futurism focused almost exclusively on the replacement of anything considered ‘traditional’ with new ‘modern’ technology and beliefs. To this end, Italian futurism incorporated significant violence into their ideology. Indigenous futurism instead primarily focuses on digital and interactive media techniques that can be used to convey tradition and storytelling.

Several moments in Skawennati’s Timetraveller™illustrate this concept, however I have selected one episode that truly characterizes some of the main themes. In the episode titled “A.D. 2112”, Karahkwenhawi travels to the Powwow of the Future and witnesses not only Indigenous peoples in the far future but a far future that is defined by Indigenous peoples and their cultures. This episode embodies the understanding of futurism as picturing Indigenous peoples in the future  – it does so and goes beyond. Not only do indigenous peoples exist in 2112, according to Skawennati, due to Indigenous activism, Indigenous people are strong and deeply connected to their histories and cultures. A connection to culture is specifically demonstrated by the powwow aspect and traditional dancing styles. However, the Indigenous fashions that were promoted at the event were considered modern and chic, illustrating the widespread acceptance of Indigenous culture. The emcee of the event told the story of how Indigenous peoples were treated by American and Canadian governments, focusing on the acts of resistance by Indigenous peoples, ending with their sovereignty and freedom. Overall, Indigenous futurism combines aspects of technologies, new media and storytelling to assert sovereignty. Sovereignty, in this context can mean screen sovereignty, ownership of their culture and traditional stories as well as land sovereignty and stewardship.

Episode: ‘A.D. 2016’

Basic Premise: Karahkwenhawi and Hunter are now full-time time-travellers using their Timetraveller™ glasses from Hunter’s time in year A.D. 2121. They have been happily cohabiting and travelling through important periods in Indigenous history. Hunter suggests that they visit an occurrence closer to Karahkwenhawi’s time – similar to Oka, where they first met. Hunter wants to show Karahkwenhawi that not all Indigenous rebellion in her lifetime is bitter and hopeless. They time travel to Standing Rock, North Dakota, arriving on December 28^th 2016. The US military is set on building a pipeline (Dakota Access Pipeline) on the traditional unceded territory of the Lakota Sioux. The land is currently being held in peaceful protest by Indigenous people who are known as the “Water Protectors”. They aim to protect the Missouri river from potential oil pollution. They also are on the territory to assert sovereignty and protect traditional Sioux burial grounds. This event has since gained fame, and remains renowned in the future as an example of successful Indigenous resistance.

Sets: Here I have included several examples of the digital sets I have envisioned for the Oceti Sakowin camp. I found each reference on Second Life, a platform where an individual can interact with chat spaces using a digital avatar. These spaces are beautiful, incorporating the natural landscape alongside the versatile interactive space. I also chose a number of these for their interaction between the “new” and the traditional as depicted in this digital space.

Aside from these pre-made spaces on Second Life, there are existing images of the actual Oceti Sakowin camp that could be used to create specific spaces. Emphasis in set-building must remain on the proximity of the militarized police forces to the perimeter of the camp, and the spaces of prayer within the camp.

Characters and Costumes: Hunter and Karahkwenhawi are both charcaters from previous episodes of Timetraveller™. If you are unfamiliar with this series of machinimas (digitally-created films), you can find previous episodes here. For certain scenes in this episode, both Hunter, Karahkwenhawi and Kaya all wear traditional regalia associated with the Mohawk nation and indicative of status. For most scenes, however, they wear warm contemporary clothes fitting for the icy weather in North Dakota. As additional clothing pieces, they also sometimes wear bandannas to cover their mouths for protection against pepper spray.

Summary of Events:

Upon arrival, they meet Karahkwenhawi’s mother, Kaya (unnamed in the original series so I have chosen a name), who is an elder at the Standing Rock Oceti Sakowin camp. The Oceti Sakowin camp is the largest camp at Standing Rock. She emerges from a sweat tent and immediately recognizes Hunter and Karahkwenhawi. The camp has spaces like sweat tents and drumming circles for prayer and spiritual practices. It would be a relatively peaceful experience if not for the constant threat of violence and the military tanks parked a short distance away. Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from every part of the world are recognized here and are praying in solidarity with the Lakota Sioux.

While this gathering happening, Hunter explains that, all over the world, protests are being held by environment activists and Indigenous groups. Their aim is to show solidarity and to get National banks to pull their funding for the Dakota Access Pipeline. They also wish to highlight some injustices experienced by the Water Protectors at the hands of local police, including the use of water-cannons and rubber bullets. The infamous Republican United States President-Elect Donald Trump, following a months-long campaign based on fear and racial discrimination, is poised to assume power following the more liberal Democratic Obama government. Rumours circulate that he has invested in the DAPL, and would be unwilling to consider a sovereignty claim. All the media sources across the world are focused on North Dakota in this moment.

Days pass at the camp. The atmosphere of the camp is predominantly beautiful interspersed with moments of violence. US military veterans arrive in the hundreds to volunteer their time. Hunter, Karahkwenhawi and Kaya spend their days with behind the scenes helping prepare meals for the camp, engaging in prayer and listening to elders’ stories. Karahkwenhawi and Kaya reconnect after being separated for so long. They are also hearing rumours that people (mainly young non-Indigenous environmentalists) are becoming increasingly violent at other camps.

December 31^st, New Year’s Eve 2016: RVs parked at the site receive very little satellite reception but just enough to watch the ball drop in Times Square on a tiny TV screen. The whole Oceti Sakowin camp counts down together. Hunter of course knows what will happen, however he does not tell Kaya or Karahkwenhawi. At 12am, the banks’ contracts with the pipeline expire, and due to the conflict over the last few months, none wish to resubmit to a new contract as it may never be fulfilled. The police forces remain, but social media interactions become frenzied within the camp. The campers with RVs are now focused on tuning in to media channels.

Hunter, Karahkwenhawi, Kaya, and the Oceti Sakowin camp begin dancing and drumming at the front line and don’t stop until the early morning. By late afternoon on the 1st of January, the Sioux Water Protectors order that the militarized police units turn back, leaving the camp free. The video cuts to the last tank slowly leaving the encampment. The episode ends with Karakhwenhawi and Hunter saying their farewells to Kaya and others they had met at the camp. Hunter and Karahkwenhawi put their TimetravellerTM glasses back on an appear again in their 2121AD apartment.

Who really owns the Internet? The Internet, since it has become accessible to most of the world, has been known as an infamous cyberspace of few laws, uncontrolled and unowned by any government. Any effort by the government to restrict Internet privacy has been met by public outcry, asserting that because it is unregulated, it is a sort of sacred space of personal freedom. In contradiction, the Internet can also be viewed as personal property to a certain extent – domain names, like physical addresses, can be bought and sold so that an individual can own a small section of Internet. But how much can an individual control access to their domain? How do we navigate bearing in mind both understandings of this cyber-territory?

The World Wide Web was originally created as a space for military communication, and as Lewis and Skawennati have noted, “the ghosts of these designers, builders, and prime users continue to haunt the blank spaces” (2005, p. 108 (course-pack)). It is not a proverbial ‘blank slate’, but a space which is more complex and nuanced, easily influenced by new media and individuals. As we have learned from Angela Haas, Western hypertext – a main function of the Internet, connecting ideas into a “web” which links them together – is a concept historically embodied in wampum. Wampum – a belt-like structure made from clam shells, woven together to create a symbolic pattern or image – “embodies memory, as it extends human memories of inherited knowledges via interconnected, non-linear designs” (Haas 2007, p. 80). With these foundations in mind, connecting the World Wide Web to both Indigenous and colonial ideas of interconnected memory, what would a term like ‘screen sovereignty’ entail?

In this blog post, I will be firstly defining ‘screen sovereignty’ drawing on Kristen Dowell’s work on this topic. I will define this idea as it specifically relates to audience, identity and politics. Following this, I will be discussing an interactive website, Kevin Lee Burton’s God’s Lake Narrows , in relation to screen sovereignty and Indigenous self-representations. Throughout this latter discussion, I will be including screenshots of this website to more easily narrate and guide the reader through this process. Overall, in this post I seek to further complicate how we choose to view the Internet, both as a free space and a sovereign space.

Screen sovereignty is a term that comes from an idea of ownership, not personal but cultural, within the vast consumption culture of the Internet and other forms of new media. Similar to land sovereignty, from which this term is borrowed, the ruler has absolute control above all. To unpack this concept further, it means having choice in how you represent yourself, who you include inside of the space on what terms, and to some extent, how that representation of yourself is politicized. In an Indigenous context, having a claim to one’s own cyberspace and representation is especially important because there are significantly fewer opportunities for Indigenous self-determination as it relates to identity in the mainstream media. In terms of the key audience, Indigenous filmmakers for example “articulate a sense of making films for their Aboriginal communities first and foremost” (Dowell 2013, p. 3). This drastically changes the context in which media is created, and determines how others interact with and understand the piece. To some extent, through the choices made in self-representation and audience, screen sovereignty also has significant power to challenge the dominant (outsider) narrative. Screen sovereignty, by my definition, means the outsider access to Indigenous cyber-territory only by invitation and on Indigenous terms, whatever those may be.

God’s Lake Narrows is a piece that embodies certain aspects of screen sovereignty, especially in ways that speak to identity and choice regarding self-representation. In this close reading, I will be moving through the God’s Lake Narrows web page linearly, specifically analyzing the changes in background sounds, the significance of the pictures used and the message that the content intends to send.

First, as I entered the page, it became apparent to me that I was no longer an anonymous user, as I am allowed to be on most sites, but instead a guest. The software of the site allows the site to know your geographical location, so as to tailor each individual’s experience (Img. 1). Such a very simple acknowledgement changes the power dynamic very subtly, but importantly: it challenges a colonial understanding of knowledge as being available for consumption without reciprocation. Being met with this opening, I was suddenly aware of my position as a colonial body, and as an outsider to the community of God’s Lake. In asserting who is an outsider, the site also asserts who is considered an insider, including people from God’s lake, but more broadly, simply Indigenous peoples. Although particularly impactful for myself, I am left wondering if this interface is designed solely for non-Indigenous peoples or if the opening sequence changes if one were located on reserve land instead.

The second feature of the site, which became apparent immediately following the introductory slide, was the soundtrack.

At first, I was unable to place the sound but as I clicked the “next” arrow (see Img. 2) , it became obvious. Snow crunching and being shovelled. Being from southern Canada, this is an uncommon sound, cementing further my position as outside this community. Even further, it positions the viewer as literally outside the houses. Several slides, interrupted only by the narration slides, show snowy houses from the outside, as if the user is waiting to be invited inside. The houses, as part of the website’s main theme, are also meant to outline how challenging it can be to live on a reserve, especially one with little funding.

This section ends with the website creator’s understanding of how the reserve has typically been portrayed. The final words are: “It’s time to repaint the picture”, meaning that we are being invited to listen to the community in their self-representation. The soundtrack completely changes after this slide, replacing the snow and outdoor sounds with indoor ones. I recognized the guitar, but it was not until a class discussion that I understood the voice overlay. The voices consist of a woman’s voice speaking quick announcements, interspersed with a man’s voice calling out bingo numbers. The woman’s voice is intended to re-create a closed radio system, a primary form of communication for some northern communities. Though I was being invited to look inside, I was still keenly aware of my outsider status.

My last point of analysis is the photos presented after the soundtrack change. Following this change, the images presented are about the people in the space, rather than the territory alone. In each photo, the family is depicted inside a building, but always with one family member looking directly at the camera, as if recognizing the user’s presence and challenging it (Img. 4). The slideshow ends abruptly, with a picture of a woman looking at the camera while holding a young infant. The presence of young children is significant, as if portraying those who will be affected by misrepresentation in the future. The adults who face the camera seem to be asking, ‘what are you willing to do about it?’

In summary, I have defined screen sovereignty as a concept that embodies some ways that Indigenous peoples are engaging with new media. Screen sovereignty is being used as a way to better represent Indigenous individuals and their communities. I have applied this concept to the web page God’s Lake Narrows, which is overall an example of screen sovereignty: the community’s story being told on the terms of the community. There were choices throughout through which individuals determined how the community was viewed, the positioning of the user being one of the strongest features. Altogether, this experience as it was mitigated by individual community members, was certainly an act of sovereignty.

Bibliography:

In his best-selling 1967 book titled The Medium is the Message, and later erroneously published as The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan asserts that, in the age of new media, the content and the form this content is presented in are increasingly intertwined and cannot be separated. This concept is explored over the course of the book – whether it is the content or the form that defines ideas present and developing in these new technologies. McLuhan’s book combines the use of images and text to demonstrate the symbiotic and sometimes competing ideas of form and content. In this blog post I seek to explore concepts from McLuhan’s book, including the way he discusses the environment as a medium, the written alphabet and the “tribal man” and “global village”. Intersecting with these discussions, I also will include several points that Steven Loft makes in his essay “Mediacosmology”. Loft takes some of McLuhan’s broader ideas and recontextualizes as they may apply to Indigeneity and cyberspace in particular – a concept far beyond the 1967 world of McLuhan’s book. Overall, I seek to discuss critically the intersections between Indigenous traditional knowledge, Indigenization of cyberspace, and McLuhan’s broad ideas surrounding new media and cyberspace. At the end of this post I will discuss several of the shortcomings of the McLuhan piece, especially in its application of Eurocentric thought and ideas surrounding “progress” and technology. I will be using images –  to punctuate each idea, and hopefully to add context and depth to McLuhan’s and Loft’s theoretical discussions.

One of the main concepts to come out of McLuhan’s book is in its highly interpretable title(s). In the case of the original title Medium is the Message, this is a reoccurring theme throughout the book and is fairly obvious where he chooses to discuss technology as the medium and also as the message that is expressed through this media. More interesting to consider, in my opinion, is the choice of McLuhan himself to leave the book titled medium is the “massage” rather than the message, and what that means for the content of the book. As McLuhan is explaining his introductory statements about medium being the message, he makes several statements that seem to hint at “massage”. For example, he states that “media works us over completely” (McLuhan 1967, p. 26), this statement accompanied by images of feet and toes that illustrate new media as an “interface” that is an extension of the human body. As discussed in class, the play on words is present in so that massage can be seen as “mass age”, hinting at the concepts that McLuhan later discusses surrounding the “global village” that new media might create.

On the topic of the “global village”, McLuhan complacently uses several pervasive ideas that commonly exist in colonial narratives. A “global village” refers to a post-globalization society where humanity has both “progressed” and “regressed” into a state similar to a pre-technology world that functions using a group mentality. McLuhan describes this world as “boundless, directionless” and as relying on “primordial intuition” to guide the society (McLuhan, p.48). It is very difficult to understand at this section what McLuhan’s opinion is on this society that is a result of new media. After my first reading, it seems apparent that he sees the creation of a “global village” as a distinct “regression” of society, using words such as ‘primordial’ which cast a negative tone over the subject, however he romanticizes the “tribal man” as also a figure of natural “progress”. Loft describes this as the romantic trope of the “noble savage”, still a pervasive in some of today’s ideologies. Mostly, McLuhan separates the ideas of ‘modernity’ and Indigeneity (though he does not use this word, it is heavily implied by McLuhan’s use of “tribal”) into categories that cannot coexist. For this reason, when applying any of these concepts to contemporary understandings of Indigeneity as it applies to digital spaces created through the Internet and cyberspace, readers must be extremely aware that McLuhan falls into this false dichotomy.

Another example of this false dichotomy – something which is also pointed out in Steven Loft’s article – is in McLuhan’s statements surrounding writing and the written alphabet. McLuhan considers the adoption or creation of a written alphabet to be a defining moment for any society, while appearing to be unaware of societies outside Europe. For him, a written alphabet is a milestone of “progress”, separating the “modern” societies from their “primordial” pasts or separating “modern” cultures from “tribal” ones. Such ideas are now considered to be overtly racist, beyond that, McLuhan’s observations are also overly simplified and incorrect. Loft argues that Indigenous languages exist in many complex non-oral forms, specifically citing the existence of Aztec codices and the Haudenosaunee wampum. Wampum is usually a string of beads made from the purple or white interior of a seashell, its arrangement signifying an important event or agreement. The most fascinating idea put forward by Loft’s article was the conceptualization of wampum – with the capacity to create a ‘database’ of stored collective memory – as a precursor to a digitally-based hypertext. In this way, other Indigenous groups in North America – including those using petroglyphs and other pictorial representations – have a claim to digital space as it is inherently an Indigenous space. As a person who grew up in a digital world, the cyberspace I was aware of was overwhelmingly marketed to a colonial male-bodied person even as race, class and gender are not obvious in the digital space. Thinking about cyberspace as a pre-existing Indigenous way of thinking, even before we had technological tools to access the space, is a very useful way to frame my own understanding of the (re-)Indiginization of cyberspace that has been occurring since the discovery of the Internet.

Lastly, I want to end by discussing some of artist Skawennati’s work on the subject of Indigenous cyberspace as demonstrated through CyberPowWow and several other SecondLife projects (hyperlink). Skawennati emphasizes the importance of imagining Indigenous bodies and Indigenous issues in the future, and therefore as part of the digital age rather than opposed to it inherently. What her work – and discussion of this work – showcases is the more physical Indigenous presence in the development of the new media, a key piece not explicitly explored by McLuhan or Loft. In cohesion with Loft’s more theoretical article, her digital art spaces provide a physical basis to the claim for inherent Indigenous cyberspace, rather than Indigeneity working within a digital colonial framework.

Overall, McLuhan provides an early contextual history of the digital age, even if he did not fully understand cyberspace or a digital age, the context of Indigeneity, or how the two ideas may interact in the years to follow. McLuhan provides more general insight into the way that new environments are constantly at play, so I feel that in a few ways this book is still accessible and relevant. Loft provides a more comprehensive analysis of Indigeneity and cyberspace. Loft also offers a contemporary critique of McLuhan as his views miss the mark in terms of Indigenous issues in a digital age, introducing the theoretical basis for understanding Indigenous cyberspace and what that might mean. Lastly, I think that Skawennati and other artists who focus on digital art and Indigenous cyberspace are doing incredibly important work bringing Indigenous new media and combining the old technology with the new in ways that McLuhan could not imagine.