This Planet Knows my Name

Cosmologies of Emancipation Against Ecologic Collapse

Abstract

In the times of Reconciliation, more and more voices are challenging the myth of Canada as a benevolent nation towards racialised and Indigenous communities despite its celebrations of cultural diversity. Controversies like those surrounding the TransMountain pipeline expansion or the Taseko Mines trial reveal the contradictions of the settler nation-state in its relations with Indigenous peoples. Indigenous writers are exploring the possibilities of science fiction to envision possible Native futures, hopes, and to make sense of the present moment, expanding the expectations of indigenous writing beyond “reservation realisms” and surpassing the tropes of sf. From this Indigenousfuturism part Celu Amberstone’s “Refugees”. At a time of the global ecological collapse, aliens called "Benefactors" have abducted earthlings to repopulate a new planet to save the human race from extinction. What appears to be a pious act gives rise to a complicated dynamic between the narrator, her biased trust of the colonizers and the last comers from Earth, urban natives disconnected from indigenous modes of knowledge and relationality with the land.

Stemming from the indigenous modes of knowledge by Zainab Amadahi and Leanne Simpson, and contributions from the sociology of space by Doreen Massey, this article aims to address Celu Amberstone's “Refugees” to explore the possibility of articulating decolonial politics, exploring new forms of sovereignty in decolonization, and the interconnection with the land versus the impending ecological collapse and fiduciary gridlock exercised by the Canadian neoliberal, settler colonial state. Amberstone allows not only to imagine the existence of Indigenous communities in a future of ecological collapse but also to comment on the current situation and clash of cosmologies in the Canadian colonial context.