Making love in(to) the future: Queer indigenous literatures and the politics of aftercare

Abstract

Indigiqueer speculative fiction offers a reflection of colonial pasts and opens the window for potential Indigiqueer futures where we might survive and thrive. The author establishes aftercare as a methodology and a practice of reading essential to understanding the presence of care within literature in the post-apocalyptic contemporary and the ability of such care to transform and transfer across bodies, space, and time. The author additionally takes up a metaphor and methodology of traditional pottery making to encapsulate steps of embodied care through each chapter. This dissertation engages with the radical care present within/through Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories, Leanne Simpson’s As We Have Always Done, Amanda Strong’s Biidaaban: The Dawn Comes, Louis Esmé Cruz’s “Birthsong for Muin, in Red,”Adam Garnet Jones’s “History of the New World,” jaye simpson’s “Ark of the Turtle’s Back,” as well as auto-ethnography, and considers how stories allow for transitions to new futures while simultaneously holding space for the complexities of loss and life, mourning and joy, and an abundance of queer Indigenous love. The author concludes that Indigiqueer speculative fiction as a genre offers us unique glimpses into futures of radical care that will help us become as we move toward more uncertain times.