{"id":216,"date":"2024-02-18T16:04:16","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T16:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gildedgreen.com\/indigital\/?page_id=216"},"modified":"2025-10-24T19:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:21:23","slug":"survivance-and-futurity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gildedgreen.com\/indigital\/survivance-and-futurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivance and Futurity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This module introduces a variety of concepts and artists related to Indigenous survivance and futurity. We will encounter artists who imagine futures that do not assume or center the presence of settlers on colonized lands, and that celebrate the ongoing contemporary existence of Indigenous people, which prevents settler-exclusive visions of the future from coming to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unangax\u0302 scholar-educator Eve Tuck (enrolled member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska) and settler scholar-educators Marcia McKenzie and Mary McCoy described Indigenous futurity<\/strong> this way:<\/p>\n\n\n

Replacement [settler replacement of Indigenous peoples] relies on fantasies of the extinct or becoming-extinct Indian as natural, forgone, inevitable, indeed, and evolutionary (see Tuck and Gaztambide-Fern\u00e1ndez 2013). Replacement is invested in settler futurity; in our use, futurity is more than the future, it is how human narratives and perceptions of the past, future, and present inform current practices and framings in a way that (over)determines what registers as the (possible) future<\/strong>. (Tuck, McKenzie, & McCoy, 2014<\/a>, p. 17, emphasis added)<\/p>\n\n\n

Scholar Gerald Vizenor (enrolled member, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe) described survivance <\/strong>this way:<\/p>\n\n\n

Native survivance is an active sense of presence over absence<\/strong>, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories<\/strong>, not a mere reaction… Survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, detractions, obtrusions, the unbearable sentiments of tragedy, and the legacy of victimry. (Vizenor, 2008<\/a>, p. 1, emphasis added)<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading and Learning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Read all three of the three readings below to explore. Each provides a different lens on how digital technologies (for artmaking and for other purposes) participate in Indigenous Futurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Taipua, D. (2020, May 29). What a video game about a futuristic Tauranga can tell us about our present. The Spinoff<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Taipua (\u200b\u200bWaikato-Tainui M\u0101ori) writes about the science fictional video game Umurangi Generation<\/em> by artist Naphtali Faulkner (Ngai Te Rangi M\u0101ori), and discusses how “[e]very single artistic vision of a M\u0101ori future or a future for M\u0101ori is an act of resistance against extinction.”<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Running Wolf, M. (2020). Dreams of Kuano\u02bbo. In J. E. Lewis (Ed.), Indigenous protocol and artificial intelligence<\/em>, (pp. 117-122). The Initiative for Indigenous Futures and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Running Wolf (citizen, Northern Cheyenne) writes a science-fictional vignette of visitors’ experience of an AI system that manages cultural preservation in a decolonized Hawai’i, and then draws upon his Computer Science background to talk about the practical ways Indigenous communities may leverage AI technologies in cultural preservation work.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group. (2019, September). CARE principles for Indigenous data governance<\/em>. The Global Indigenous Data Alliance.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This short piece by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance briefly describes how the settler-devised “FAIR” (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles for digital data management don’t wholly meet the needs of Indigenous cultural preservation, and describes a complementary set of CARE (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, ethics) principles.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reflect After Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Image,<\/a>
Labaachi\u2019 (Noah Hinson). 2015. Nittakfokhamg Tali\u2019 hattakat Chikash[sh]anompola\u2019chi! “In the Future, Robots will Speak Chickasaw!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n