#indigenous fantasy

[ravenkhor]

Quick sketch of Ikumak <3 I'm going to be drawing Kalea next!!

Ikumak's design and the culture he's from feeds a lot of inspiration from Yupik and Inuit cultures, but also feeds a little bit from other canadian tribes like Ojibwe, at least when it comes to the stories meant to originate from his home, Astivia, since Astivia is made up of 5 major groups rather than just one large group.

[ladyimaginarium]

indigenous westeros: wylla manderly vs. house frey.

"they killed lord eddard and lady catelyn and king robb [...] he was our king! he was brave and good, and the freys murdered him. if lord stannis will avenge him, we should join lord stannis!" [...]"i know about the promise... maester theomore, tell them! a thousand years before the conquest, a promise was made, and oaths were sworn in the wolf's den before the old gods and the new. when we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, the wolves took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. the city is built upon the land they gave us. in return we swore that we should always be their men. stark men!" [...] "wylla. did you see how brave she was? even when i threatened to have her tongue out, she reminded me of the debt white harbor owed to the starks of winterfell, a debt that can never be repaid. wylla spoke from the heart... not every woman can be as brave as my wylla."

[specialagentartemis]

story about a heist team doing a heist of colonial museums and returning unethically stolen sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to their original communities

but the story isn’t about them

the story is a legal thriller about the repatriation coordinator and the pro bono lawyer who get frantically called in by that community when an artifact goes missing from a museum and shows up unexpectedly at their doorstep and now they are in a shit ton of (potentially international) legal trouble because the heist team did not take the legal ramifications into account, and no one else believes them that they didn’t steal it, and The Law is saying they are legally obligated to return it to the museum and are also probably going to go to prison for this, and activists are protesting, and it’s rocking the repatriation world, and it’s turning into a huge Thing

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

I loved this book so fucking muuuuch....

From our collection: Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (2020) ed. by Joshua Whitehead.

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories. Here, readers will discover bio-engineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, motherships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492. Contributors include Darcie Little Badger, Mari Kurisato, Kai Minosh Pyle, David Alexander Robertson, and jaye simpson.

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[noahhawthorneauthor]

Be thankful for who you are today, and do better than those who came before you.

I live on Iroquois land, specifically the Mohawk region. The Iroquois, or Five Nations, was brought together by Deganawidah the Great Peacemaker, and it was composed of the nations Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca.

Later on the Tuscaroras joined, and they became Haudenosaunee, or 'six separate nations.'

Happy Thanksgiving, keep your minds open, never stop learning, and don't let history become forgotten. The majority of us are already do a damn poor job of not repeating it.

[ravenkhor]

WIP art of Nuvua Tuktulok and her son, Ikumak Tuktulok.

Nuvua and Ikumak are both healers, though only she can use her abilities due to the fact Ikumak doesn't have all ten fingers on his hand. Though, both of them have physical features of the Tuktulok family's magic, giving them green eyes when naturally they would be brown.

There's a lot of antler coding in the patterns in her gloves (which are made to be similar to Kakiniit, which she does have on her face) to call back to the Caribou spirit they descend from :)

Ikumak has a lot less of a natural-themed design, as he takes on a completely new role unlike any of his ancestors.

[ladyimaginarium]

indigenous mermaid moodboard.

[hiwaaranit]

Final fantasy XIV characters commission, I had so much fun with this commission! She’s so gorgeous 🩷💖💜😆🎀

[rs-hawk]

Kinda gross you're sexualizing your culture. Literally playing into colonist fantasies about the "sexy savage Indian"

I have been trying to find a way to respond to this because I think this brings up the debate of cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation. This is my personal take, and if any other Indigenous people disagree with me, that is their opinion, and they are right to have it.

Here's the thing, you're talking about my culture. My heritage. My ancestorial beliefs. I have talked a few times about how growing up I didn't have much positive representation for that part of myself, and how hard it was for me. That is a large part of why I write about Indigenous coded characters or about Indigenous creatures. Before I began writing my own stories, I had never read a single romance novel with any Indigenous main character (if you know any, definitely let me know!), aside from Cowboys and Indians novels, which for me is not included in "positive representation" (but if other Indigenous people want to, that is up to them).

If you were to bring this up about say the Straggele, I would understand more because just because I have studied folklore and culture from around the world, doesn't make it mine. If someone who was Swiss reached out to me and said something, I could understand where that came from. However, allowing parts of my history to influence my writing, getting to create characters that I see myself in, reading more into the history of my nations and our cousin and sister nations, amongst so many other things, is not sexualizing my culture. I am not appropriating myself or playing into stereotypes by writing what makes me happy.

I also want to add that the colonist fantasy includes a lot of racist stereotypes, which I don't put in my writing. There are no Indigenous women who use their body to get what they want or trick European men into helping them. There are no damsels in distress Indigenous women who just blink their big brown eyes and sling their braids over their shoulders as they ask for help. They're not naked and flaunting themselves or anything like that. Also, how are any of my characters "savages"? All of my stories are written in roughly this day and age aside from an ongoing commission.

It is not playing into colonist fantasies to write about Indigenous people. It is not playing into colonist fantasies for me to want to write about creatures from my own culture. Just like it would not be playing into colonist fantasies to sexualize a Kelpie as I'm also mixed with Celtic, or a Babau as I'm also mixed with Italian.

I am allowed to celebrate and use aspects of my culture and history, any and all of it from any part of my culture from any part of my family.

[burdockeverdeen]

by clicking on the source link you will find a page with 133 gifs, all made from scratch by myself, of amber midthunder in avatar: the last airbender. amber is assiniboine, thai-chinese, white and is currently 26 years old, though she must have been 24-25 during the filming of this season. i don’t care what you do with these, just don’t be gross and don’t claim them as your own. if using these, give this post a reblog. thank you !

[mordredsgun]

Yearly re-read of my comfort book 🌿

[theghostavocadoe]

every time someone draws Genesis and makes his lips thinner, an angel loses its wings and a part of me dies inside

[skylessknights]

GET TO KNOW ME: ♡ favourite underrated tv show - Trickster

There was a time when we were all family. Witches, Ancient, Tricksters. Cycle and balance...harmony. You're called ancients? Why do you want my son? Your son? The son of a trickster and a witch. I've never seen that before.

[alpaca-clouds]

The Stories We Are Missing

I hate Disney. I really do. I hate them, because they are shitty to a lot of workers. I hate them, because they consolidate so many IPs only to then make the most generic stuff with them. I hate them, because they don't invest in new ideas anymore. And I hate them for being such cowards.

However... I will give them credit for producing Iwájú and Kizazi Moto. Two afrofuturist series. Iwájú being one series that actually just tells one story - while Kizazi Moto is an anthology series like Love Death + Robots on Netflix. Well, that is all that it has in common with LD+R is that it is a scifi anthology series. It has less issues with the sexism and racism of LD+R.

And thinking about this has brought me to the one aspect of our lack on Solarpunk media, that I think gets ignored too much. Again, because white people. And this is... Well, the lack of well published afrofuturist and amazofuturist stories - or movies. And I would assume also the equivalent for other indigenous cultures. (I think the name right now is "Pacificafuturism" for the polynesians, I have no idea whether the indigenous people still living in Asia have something along the lines.)

The irony is that I actually think, well... Let's face it: There is a reason why Disney of all people is investing in some Afrofuturist projects. And that reason is that there is a big audience for this stuff. Disney probably just saw how Black Panther was printing money and was like: "I guess we'll make more of that!"

Now what does this have to do with Solarpunk?

Well, I will remind you: Solarpunk originated with Amazofuturism. And futuristic indigenous stories tend to have a lot of Solarpunk vibes at the very least. Not all of those stories will be Solarpunk, no, but even those that are not will offer us things to learn. Because I will say it once again: We really, really do have a big issue in a lot of SciFi/Fantasy that way too white and way too stuck in the storytelling conventions of western society.

And here is the thing: I doubt most people will be able to name a lot of afrofuturist media other than Black Panther, and maybe the series above. Or maybe you actually can think of some novels like the ones from N. K. Jemisin, Octavia E. Butler, or Nnedi Okorafor. But not much more.

Now, in terms of Afrofuturism there is a bit more - but the other things? Most Amazofuturism is only ever published in Portugese or maybe Spanish in some cases. And I am honestly not certain if there is even anything that is not self-published out there in terms of Pacificafuturism. (I mean, I know a few Maori movies that I guess you could consider, but...)

What I am trying to get at: I think we need more indigenous futurism/indigenous scifi. Not only so that we read more that breaks out of western storytelling conventions, I think we also just need other perspectives on the future. Because our western, white perspective is limited - and we got to imagine the future for way too long.