Grace L. Dillon is a professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program at Portland State University, and is of Anishinaabe and European descent. She edited Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction and coined the term Indigenous futurisms.
Indigenous peoples often say that from maewizhah, or time immemorial, we have gazed upon ae-iko-dawo-dunnauk-mishi-geezhik and created stories that are maumikaud-kummik. In other words, throughout our histories, Native peoples have looked to the heavens, pondered the universe, and composed fantastical tales that, translated literally, are “out of this world.”�?
This is the very definition of speculative fiction.�?
To us, storytellers are artists and medicine people who provide mishkiki: medicine, healing, and sometimes even solidarity — or, as we say in Anishinaabemowin, inauwinidiwin, which means collectively becoming a “group walking in a body.” When these creatives place frontline communities and characters at the heart of their stories, readers can challenge themselves to become inauwinidiwin, or the coming together as one body-mind on our beautiful yet ... Read more