Rupturing settler time: visual culture and geographies of Indigenous futurity

Abstract

This article focuses on the implications of the work of two artists on discourses of temporality and Indigenous futurity. I analyze the work of Skawennati and Bonnie Devine, with particular consideration of their resistance to the hegemonic temporality of extractive and capitalist lifeways and what Mark Rifkin calls ‘settler time’ [Rifkin, Mark. 2017. Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination. Durham: Duke University Press]. Skawennati provides a spiraling narrative of Indigenous pasts and futures in her machinima series, TimeTraveller™. In her sculptural installation, Letters from Home, Bonnie Devine calls upon the viewer to consider the stones from the Serpent River First Nation as elders. The casts of these stones are framed as texts, and viewers are encouraged to learn how to read these lessons, collapsing the divide between deep time and the present. Ultimately, I argue that these artists use emerging, experimental, and established media as a method of creating ruptures in Euro-Western notions of time, providing an embodied experience of a temporal otherwise and glimpses into decolonized futures.

Keywords:

• decolonization
• settler time
• futurity
• indigeneity
• deep time
• visual culture

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Skawennati and Bonnie Devine for taking the time to speak with me about their work, trusting me with this material, and offering generous feedback on this article before publication. I am also thankful to Barry Anderson, Hank Rudolph, and Dave Jones for stimulating conversations that deeply influenced this article during a Signal Culture residency in March 2018. I appreciate the thoughtful questions posed by the audience members present for a panel I organized on ‘Decolonial Geographies’ at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (2018), and the support and feedback offered by Suzanne Fricke, editor of this volume. Finally, I acknowledge the contributions of my partner and family, who always make time to read and rigorously critique my work.

Notes on contributor

Amber Hickey recently received her PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writing explores decolonial aesthetics, art activism, visual technologies and the military, landscape politics, and radical pedagogy. Amber is an affiliate of UCSC’s Center for Creative Ecologies, and a member of the Education Working Group at the Interference Archive, a volunteer-run archive and gallery space. Her forthcoming publications include a chapter entitled 'Pathways towards Justice: Walking as Decolonial Resistance' in the edited volume, Violence & Indigenous Communities: Confronting the Past, Engaging the Present (Evanston: Northwestern University Press).

Notes

1 A longhouse is a style of communal home that was often used by nations of the Haudenosaunee confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga).

2 Kateri Tekakwitha is a well-known Mohawk woman from the seventeenth century.

3 Second Life is a virtual world that was created in 2003. Users can add to the virtual world and interact with each other and their virtual environment using avatars. AbTeC Island, a location in the online platform, was built by Skawennati and her collaborators, and also serves as the set for Skawennati's machinima films. Additions to the territory are regularly made in preparation for these films, and the location is sometimes open to guests. For more information on interacting with AbTeC Island, see: http://abtec.org/iif/activating-abtec-island/.

4 For an excellent introduction to how settler-colonial national narratives are communicated through American visual culture, see Truettner (1991).

5 It would be unwise to generalize Indigenous conceptions of temporality, so I want to emphasize here that each nation has particular epistemologies regarding time. Here, I am simply trying to state a few of the most prominent othered conceptions of time. For more on what Grace L. Dillon has termed ‘Native Slipstream’ writing, I highly recommend the anthology Walking the Clouds, edited by Dillon (2012).

6 Deep time is the scale with which gradual geological changes are often understood.

7 The Kanehsatà:ke resistance saw Mohawk protectors and their allies reclaim an area slated for golf course expansion during a 78-day encampment. The Alcatraz reclamation of 1969–1971 saw hundreds of Indigenous activists create a temporary community on Alcatraz Island, following the closure of the federal prison. Both of these events are important in the history of creative resistance led by Indigenous peoples.

8 Kanien'kéha is the Mohawk language.

9 See, for instance, Nation to Nation (2005).

10 I use the term ‘Turtle Island’ to refer to the North American continent as a nod to the multiple Indigenous nations that use that name – including the Mohawk and Anishinaabe, who are discussed most closely in this article. I also acknowledge that there are many other names given to the continent (and parts of the continent) by Indigenous nations.

11 Uranium tailings are a byproduct of the uranium extraction process. They are highly radioactive and difficult to contain.

12 For more on these interconnected structures, see, for instance, Pulido (2017).

13 Writing Home was curated by Faye Heavyshield and first exhibited at Connexion Artist-Run Centre. It features several related pieces, including Letters from Home.

14 Here I use the term ‘rematriation’ as a nod to the work of Eve Tuck and Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández (2013). They emphasize the pedagogical potential of rematriation. I extend this notion more broadly to that which has been constantly threatened through settler colonial efforts. For instance: cultural practices and land, as well as understandings and experiences of temporality.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Visual Studies Travel and Research Grant (University of California – Santa Cruz); Signal Culture Researcher in Residence Program in Owego, NY; University of California President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship.