TimeTraveller’s Role in the Future

In a world where the success of colonialism is predicated on the erasure of Indigenous peoples in the aim to guarantee colonial claims to land, Indigenous futurism dares to challenge this end-goal. This radical literature does so by locating and centralizing Indigenous peoples in the future itself, subverting colonial ideologies and practices that promote and idea of the “Dead” or “Vanishing” Indian. This re-envisioning of the future through Indigenous perspectives aims to re-center Indigenous peoples not as victims of colonial genocidal efforts, unable to keep up with the modern world and its so called “progress”, but as living peoples who practice our own agency and whose very presence in these past, present and future settings is an act of resistance and a testament to the failure of these colonial genocidal efforts.

Skawennati’s Timetraveller™ engages these principles of Indigenous Futurisms on many levels. Locating Indigenous peoples not only in the past, but as central in future settings while drawing on and challenging our understandings of history by witnessing them through Indigenous perspectives. While doing so, Skawennati moves away from linear notions of time, bridging Indigenous experiences together over the boarders of time, geography and unsettling rigid understandings of history and its implications in the formation of how we envision the future. By doing so, Skawennati highlights the differences between future worlds centered on Western visions and understandings and the potential for these worlds as seen through Indigenous perspectives, thus transforming the sci-fi genre of literature (and other creative forms of representation) from one defined by Western ideologies of race, colonialism, “science and progress” into one that acts as a space for Indigenous resistance to these over-represented visions of the future.

The character of “Hunter” In Skawennati’s Timetraveller™ is an Indigenous man from the future who, through a futuristic invention of glasses that allows one to travel to specific moments and places in time either in the passive “Fly-on-the-wall-mode” or the more interactive “Intelligent Agent Mode”. Early on in the series, Hunter realizes the limits of “fly-on-the-wall mode” and opts instead for the interactive mode of the glasses. I believe this to be a commentary on Indigenous reclamations of agency and the limits one has as simply a spectator. While unable to directly change the course of events in the past, the “active agent mode” allows space in which Hunter as an Indigenous person can enact his own agency.

I do encounter several issues with the series however, for the most part in discussion with imagining the future differently, where it may fall short in this respect given the great potential the piece has. The character of Karahkwenhawi is an Indigenous woman and Hunter’s significant other whom he meets through both of their adventures through time and spark a relationship. This seems to center only a heterosexual relationship that forms through the past, present and future while still framing the future as a space seemingly void of any non-heterosexual people and relationships. There is great potential in this piece to locate and center LGBTQ2S peoples in the all of these different timelines, but in particular, I feel the future setting and the potential to imagine that space differently is where this piece has fallen somewhat short. Basically, why does heterosexuality continually have to be centralized in a piece that’s working to decentralize so many aspects of societal norms we experience today, including colonial discrimination against LGBTQ2S peoples!?

I am also curious about the consistent presence of capitalism in the piece, with the dancers in episode 4 competing for a large cash prize, framing tradition and its practice as a vehicle for capital gain. Again in episode 9 , Hunter’s travels lead to a cash reward and significant position in the media as a talk show host. This reward came from Hunter’s opting for what he “knows and loves, entertainment” in order to reconnect with his Mohawk heritage rather than direct interactions with the modern Mohawk community in his time which Karahkwenhawi suggests. I feel this sort of disconnection and preference for indirect relationship rather than person-to-person moves away from what my own understandings as an Indigenous person of the importance of relationship to community. This, to me it seems, still centralizes colonial capitalist motivations and mechanisms in the future and even encourages and rewards Indigenous separation from community and traditional ways of being in relationship in responsible meaningful ways.

With these critiques in mind as well as the incredible space Skawennati created for us to imagine our futures differently I feel another episode of Timetraveller™ can address these issues. FOr my episode, I used the game Garry’s Mod in order to create these worlds.

A few years after the point we left off in the last episode of the series, Hunter and Karahkwenhawi become disenchanted with the material wealth they have gained. They begin to see the real effects economic disparity has on the modern Mohawk Nation mentioned in episode 9. With new found understanding of how their role in the capitalist system serves only to empower the state, who actively covers these efforts by positioning Hunter as a prominent figure in the media. This, Hunter learns, is only thin veil misrepresenting the living conditions and treatment of Indigenous peoples around the world as equal to non-Indigenous folks. The state, in its current form is realizing the unsustainable nature of its own development, and begins once again to more overtly exploit Indigenous lands in order to continue developing its industries upon which its economy relies.

Upon these realizations, Hunter and Karahkwenhawi use their TimeTraveller glasses to see what the future will look like if these developments continue. Their travels show a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, occupied only by violent, faceless, voiceless colonial agents (represented here as stormtroopers).

A wasteland controlled only by state agents.

The two protagonists decide otherwise for the future, appearing on his show now in more traditional apparel (something the producers had always forbidden), Hunter announces his retirement as well as his intentions to use the wealth they have gained in order to repatriate traditional lands of Indigenous peoples in which they may act as sovereign entities, with each nation having the ability to put in place their own governance systems and seek/introduce more sustainable living practices as we once did.

State Agents and Resistance forces clash in the streets

After overcoming resistance from the state and holding strong through widespread revolution by the historically and currently disenfranchised peoples around the world, Hunter and Karahkwenhawi once again put on the TimeTraveller glasses to see if any change to the future has been made. As they sit back with their glasses, Hunter Simply says “wow” at what he is observing. The episode fades to black before we can see what the glasses show our two protagonists.

Skawennati. TimeTraveller^TM. Skawennati. AbTec. 2008-2013, video.