Approaching Our Futures with Care: Indigiqueer and Two‐Spirit Speculative Fiction Responses to Environmental Devastation Free

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 postapocalyptic contemporary and the ability of such care to transform and transfer across bodies, space, and time. This article engages with the radical care present within/through Adam Garnet Jones's “History of the New World” and jaye simpson's “Ark of the Turtle's Back” and considers how it allows 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.

What does the future hold for us? What do we hold for the future? How can we survive? For an answer we need only to turn toward stories. Joshua Whitehead's (Oji‐nêhiyaw) edited anthology Love after the End (2021) centers Indigenous wonderworks from Two‐Spirit and Indigiqueer writers and explores the possibilities of going beyond the apocalypse.¹ Two stories stand out within this anthology: “History of the New World” by Adam Garnet Jones (Cree/Métis) and “The Ark of the Turtle's Back” by jaye simpson (Oji‐Cree‐Saulteaux), each uniquely about love. Garnet Jones's (2021: 46) short story propels us into a not‐so‐far‐off future where a small queer family must decide to leave the earth and become transdimensional colonizers of a twin planet or stay and fight for the deteriorating planet. “The Ark of the Turtle's Back” is a story of sacrifice, loss, ceremony, and home. In this tale, a small Indigiqueer family makes an impossible choice at the end of the world to sacrifice the earth for the survival of a few to avoid colonial subjection. Reading these works together presents a reflection of colonial pasts and opens the window for potential trans and Indigiqueer futures where we might survive and thrive. These short stories provide a speculative model for embodying and storying care as a method for transforming contemporary apocalypses.

Many Indigiqueer scholars during the Native American renaissance—a period of prolific publication and literary production by Indigenous authors beginning in the late 1960s—emphasized storytelling as resistance. Their work exposed the impacts of colonialism on our stories and communities, asserted the presence of Indigiqueer living and writing in the present, and argued for an ongoing political solidarity between Black and Indigenous peoples as a way to reshape our world (Allen 1992; Chrystos 1988; hooks 1992).² These authors explore the tangible effects that queer Indigenous literature can have on Indigenous peoples. Their early work in the field of queer Indigenous literature has prevailed in contemporary Indigenous scholarship through explorations of care and representation such as Daniel Heath Justice's (Cherokee Nation) “Indigenous Wonderworks and the Settler‐Colonial Imaginary” (2017) and Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) and Tamara Kneese's “Radical Care” (2020). However, none of these explore how we can utilize radical care as it specifically applies to queer Indigenous futurisms. Where Hobart and Kneese identify the need for lateral and sustainable care work that defies current neoliberal fashionings of care, I offer “aftercare” as a way to practice radical care through a literary framework that centers Indigiqueer peoples and asserts that reading futurist texts through this framework can functionally create new worlds; equally, it is a tool that focuses on the intersections of queerness and Indigeneity and considers the transformative capacity of care strategies represented within literature and that take place through the form of the literary in the present postapocalypse.

Indigenous scholarship centered around practical and ethical care practices provides an alternative approach to future thinking, shifting from narratives of apathy to ones of imaginative power. Radical care within Indigenous frameworks disavows a futile future with knowledge that the work of hope is what has brought Indigenous peoples to this point and what will carry us forward. Conceptually, radical care aspires to coalition and solidarity building across race, gender, class, and identity with an emphasis on ethical and sustainable approaches to care as a method of surviving and imagining otherwise, particularly in apocalyptic times (Hobart and Kneese 2020). Queer, trans, and Two‐Spirit Natives, who often encounter violence within their communities in addition to the external violence routinely faced by Natives and BIPOC, non‐cis, poor queer folks, are surviving and “[daring] to thrive in environments that challenge their very existence” (3). The Indigiqueer body has always been a target for violence, but also a site of expansive love and kinship entangled and embodied across time and space.³ Beth Brant (1995: 18) (Bay of Quinte Mohawk) succinctly speaks to the impact storytelling has in Two‐Spirit and Indigiqueer lives: “Two‐Spirit writers are merging the selves that colonialism splits apart.” And yet everyday queer and Two‐Spirit Natives are fundraising to support their community, committing everyday acts of radical care and presence that are world making.

Indigiqueer storytelling is not simply about survivance,⁴ but also about thrivance—the idea that our Native stories assert a radical future where we exist, flourish, and become good ancestors. How can good storytelling propel us toward a future where we are present and thriving? Where Indigiqueer peoples are not simply visible and surviving each day, but uplifted, cherished, nourished, and loved? Indigiqueer storytelling is this reparative and caring work. If we want to end the problem whereby colonialism eliminates the possibility of Indigiqueer futures, we can rely on literary and care strategies that embody the healing power to build tangible and accessible ways to create decolonial futures that disrupt violences. The building of this care structure has the power to span generations and offers an alternative genealogy grounded in collective kinship and a celebration of queer Indigenous life rather than death and fracturing.

A Living Theory of Aftercare

I center an Indigiqueering of radical care to expand beyond the initial definition and consider how the realities and futures enabled through Indigiqueer radical care do not simply have a people's solidarity and coalition across borders, nations,sexuality, and so forth but also solidarity with species, land, and the cosmos. This collectivized concept and enactment of care—one that encompasses humans and other‐than‐human beings and transforms systems of white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism—is what is “radical” about care. I constellate this application of radical care with the term aftercare. Aftercare, in its simplest form, means care that comes after something. Often we think of this as children's after‐school care, postsurgical care, or the support given to folks post‐carcerality. Additionally, aftercare is popularized through the BDSM community, defined as the loving/intimate attention provided at the end of a scene intending to offer physical/emotional comfort and strengthen the bond between partners. The care that follows these above listed events is essential to people's health and provides possibilities for growth and community. This article uses my analytic of aftercare as both a methodology and a reading strategy. I define aftercare as a novel, viable, and necessary lens that acknowledges the postapocalyptic existence of colonized peoples postcontact; the consistent wounding of human nature; and the genealogy and materiality of care across bodies, space, and time, and that reading through this lens engages, informs, and creates the future.⁵ Aftercare is a refusal of an assumed settler futurity and continued colonial dominance. Settler stories of the future expand extraction, capitalism, and abuse to the furthest ends of the galaxy. Aftercare is, in its boldest and most ambitious application, an exploration of continuity and care to its furthest ends. To the future.

Aftercare is engaged in three primary modes (fig. 1); first, the author must create or explore future‐bearing care worlds as an essential element of their text. Aftercare operates doubly. Care is embodied in the act of creation and takes form in otherwise worlds where readers can imagine, desire, and create new futures for themselves and their kin. Second, for a text to be considered aftercare work, we must see its uptake across time, bodies, and space. The stories that hold aftercare are not simply “gathering dust on the museum shelf” (Justice 2017). Aftercare is taken up and embodied—care builds as it travels from ancestor to ancestor and beyond. Finally, works of aftercare are stories toward futures and the after, stories that push us toward otherwise worlds where care is more radically present. Aftercare acknowledges harm and shows us how to build and sustain care worlds after that harm. It is important to note that aftercare does not solve our problems—and it does not seek to do so—rather, aftercare is a tool to take up when your world collapses: a tool to rebuild and restore, to dismantle, and to build community. Indigenous speculative fiction, or wonderworks (Heath 2017), are one such example. These stories allow us to occupy and invent new worlds of possibility, encourage readers to think about their own contemporary worlds, how they could look differently, and even offer a model to follow.

Beyond recognizing aftercare as a tool designed to create these possible futures, I will engage with aftercare as both a reading practice and an analytic applied to the stories presented here. If aftercare identifies the genealogy of care as it transfers/transforms across bodies, space, and time; acknowledges the historic and contemporary postapocalyptic existence of colonized peoples; recognizes the consistent wounding that accompanies human nature; and establishes that radical Indigiqueer futures can become concrete through the articulation of this care, it becomes a viable lens through which to understand aftercare as that very tool. In an aftercare loop, the witnessing of care within/through literature gives Indigiqueers real power to change their worlds through the application of that care. In my analysis of Garnet Jones's and simpson's wonderworks, I call attention to the second and third elements of the theoretical aftercare loop; again, stories provide visions of other, hopeful worlds for readers, and the uptake of these stories leads to tangible actions toward caring and loving futures. This reading serves as evidence of such material uptake. As these actions build on themselves, we collectively survive into the future and care for others better. The future‐bearing element of these stories is essential: these texts explore the “after” of aftercare. Critical analysis of these texts through the lens of aftercare will show how the act of reading and writing speculative fiction can create tangible futures of change.

Tracing the Material Lines of Care across Bodies, Space, and Time

Queer Indigenous survival demands care. Without a loving community of care, Indigiqueer youth are significantly more likely to experience housing and food insecurity and are more likely to be placed into foster care than their non‐Native queer counterparts.⁶ Subsequently, Indigiqueer youth are significantly more likely to attempt or commit suicide than their non‐Native queer counterparts. Indigiqueer youth, situated in this world and experiencing this reality, survive through communities of care and by building systems of relationality between themselves and others. Garnet Jones and simpson are examples of how care can transform Indigiqueer life and provide a pathway toward survivance and thriving into the future. In this section I excavate—through interviews, articles, and a network of kinship ties—the genealogy of care established for and through these two Indigiqueer authors. Particularly, simpson's abundant interviews and articles offer the oft‐neglected perspective of trans Indigenous women.

Adam Garnet Jones (he/him) is an urban Cree/Métis Two‐Spirit author, filmmaker, and bead worker from Treaty Six territory in what is colonially known as Edmonton, Alberta, and is currently living in Tkaronto (Toronto)—the backdrop for “History of the New World.” Garnet Jones's childhood began in a nest of multicommunity Indigenous intelligence. Garnet Jones was raised experiencing his father's commitment to Indigenous activism and pursuit of Indigenous knowledge. On his personal artist's page, Garnet Jones (n.d.) also notes that “my family has been and continues to be shaped by the colonial history of Canada.” Intimately connected to this colonial history, Garnet Jones (2015) shares in an interview that in childhood he was abused and neglected, which led to fear, anxiety, and suicidality starting at the age of seven and lasting into adulthood. His life shifted, however, when he attended the Gulf Islands Film and Television School. Garnet Jones (2016a) remarks, “I really do feel like if I hadn't found that place, if I hadn't started doing that, I wouldn't be alive today.” From that point, Garnet Jones was able to make his mark on the Indigenous arts scene as a Two‐Spirit filmmaker and author and build opportunities for other Two‐Spirit youth. At the heart of his works, Garnet Jones tackles a question all too familiar for Indigenous (especially Indigiqueer) youth: do you leave your home community to find your place in the wider cosmos, or do you stay to try to make change? Ultimately, Garnet Jones (2016b) asserts that “the answer isn't just for people to leave their communities. . . . You really have to think about what it means when the best and brightest of a community leave, generation after generation.” Even as the world is ending, Garnet Jones (2021: 46) reminds us that it is revolutionary and world making to “dig in and stay.”

jaye simpson (she/they) is an Oji‐Cree Saulteaux Two‐Spirit trans woman poet, drag queen (Persephone Estradiol), and decolonial activist living on the unceded territories of the Xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil‐Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples. simpson's personal history with care structures began within the foster care system. As she remarks, simpson comes into her creative work from a place of trauma, particularly as a trans and Two‐Spirit Indigenous woman forced into the foster care system by the Canadian government at the age of three. I bring simpson's history to bear on this work to recognize the spaces and systems where care has failed, and that violence is the purpose of colonial systems. As simpson (2018) notes, the foster care system has “never been broken, it's doing exactly what it's been designed [to do]—this is the grandchild of residential school. . . . We can't fix a system that's been designed to destroy us. The only flaw in this system is that some of us survived” (brackets in original). simpson has always been vocal about the power of poetics and literature as something that has saved her, and her voice joins a “vanguard” of trans Indigenous authors in Canada alongside Arielle Twist (Nehiyaw [Cree]), both of whom succeed the visionary trans Indigenous elder and multimedia artist and storyteller Aiyyana Maracle (Haudenosaunee).⁷

Maracle's presence in the care network is paramount. simpson identifies Maracle as being one reason she can exist today and take up space in the Canadian literature scene as an Indigenous trans woman (Morgan 2021; simpson 2021a). I evoke Maracle by virtue of her stature as an Indigenous trans elder. Maracle, within queer and trans academia, is remembered for her article “A Journey in Gender” (2013) in which she called for “an alternative way of perceiving and understanding gender” through “an Indigenous sense of gender” (39). Maracle remarks that, before her intervention, much of the scholarship around Two‐Spirit peoples in the twentieth century reinforced colonial binaries of gender and ignored the presence of trans peoples within this community (49–52). Opposing Mohawk male elders’ assertions that “we didn't have [gender diverse Kanienʼkehá꞉ka] like that” (43), Maracle worked from the assumption that the Iroquois traditionally had a fluid understanding of gender based on the principles of Six Nations society: “Am I to believe that, unlike in every other culture and race among humanity, I am the first trans person to have ever appeared among the Mohawk people in their thousands of years?” (47). This question, posed and refuted by Maracle, is reflected in simpson's own work and words. In a 2021 interview with Martlet, simpson (2021b) conveys the profound invisibility of Indigiqueer people: “i grew up thinking i was the only queer Indigenous person ever because that's how the system and my experience was designed.” This affective response by Indigiqueers is not individual fear or pain, but a collective mourning. The obscuring of trans Indigenous life is clarified through Arielle Twist's archival work; Twist documents the state of the archive three years after Maracle's death, noting that Maracle's work and artifacts had been severely mislaid and mistreated. It is only through trans Indigenous women that Maracle's vital narrative is revived and remembered:

In tracing this genealogy, strands of care weave across a tapestry of the past, present, and future for Indigiqueer peoples, an experience of aftercare via an embracing of the archive. Maracle generously gave to the community, to her kin, to the trans daughters birthed in her wake; in a 2015 interview, she remarked, “There is no mirror for who I am. From necessity I became the mirror for all the younger ones.”⁸ Along with other trans Indigenous creators in the sphere of Canadian literature and arts, simpson reflects the bountiful care inherited from Maracle. simpson's presence in her community—through her activism,⁹ performance, or writing—is moving us toward the future for the next generation.

Loving Aftercare for the Indigenous Postapocalypse

While introducing Love after the End, Whitehead (2020: 9) posits the question, “What does it mean to be Two‐Spirit during an apocalypse?” He acknowledges Indigiqueer existence as already always postapocalyptic; if we understand colonial contact as the apocalyptic event, “right here, right now, [the] dystopian present” (9) is the bedrock for our reality. The collection materialized during COVID‐19 when Indigenous communities experienced disastrous outcomes,¹⁰ owing to infrastructural, resource, and funding disparities. Consequently, the collection shifted dramatically from centering around dystopia to one “[queered] toward the utopian” (9). The work acknowledges the history of colonialism, which establishes the postapocalypses of their respective story worlds and reveals a future where Indigiqueers thrive through care. Their approaches offer glimpses into the possible futures ahead and the difficult decisions that await us and our relations. Through each story we are exposed to immeasurable loss, yet at the core of these futures are visions of bountiful care that foresee Indigiqueers thriving.

“History of the New World”

Garnet Jones (2021: 41) introduces us to a small, queer family composed of Em Callihoo (a “brown‐eyed Two‐Spirit nehiyow”), Thorah Anderson (a white “blue‐eyed liberal atheist”), and their daughter Asȇciwan. Em must choose between listening to her wife's attempts to force the family to abandon the earth for their survival, or to stay on the planet and join the Nagweyaab Anishinaabek Camp (the Rainbow People's Camp) and face the potential planetary devastation being projected. Em cycles between standing her ground—to stay on the earth—and leaving for the sake of her family, but fractures come when news arrives from the new world about “intelligent” beings, and Em asserts that she can't and won't go. Thorah ultimately boards the shuttle—leaving behind Em and Asȇciwan, who head to the Nagweyaab Anishinaabek Camp together. The final paragraph reveals that this is a story told by future generations of Indigenous peoples thriving on earth through their recognition of “shared responsibilities between the people and all [their] relations” (49).

“History of the New World” is a story about the creation of a new world through Indigiqueer love and radical care. Em Callihoo, the Two‐Spirit nehiyow narrator, is our primary navigator through this story world, and within her we find the first inklings of dissent against the global colonial effort. Throughout, we see Em's internal monologue, which serves as a reflection of her Indigenous knowledge and values, in conflict with the narrative presented by the government and by her non‐Native wife. When politicians call the new earth an “identical twin” and remark that the highest intelligence and self‐awareness of animals on the planet was that of a crow or dog, Em internally responds, “Twins share a womb. . . . Crows have funerals . . . dogs will always find their way home” (31). In opposition to the “leading experts” (expert colonizers) who are attempting to assuage settler guilt about colonizing new planets, Em's dialogue reveals her investment in ethical multispecies relations. Rather than devaluing an individual (be it animal, land, or children) and enforcing hierarchical matrices of intelligence or power, Em consistently thinks about her relationships and responsibilities to those in the world around her and appreciates their knowledge. She attempts to affirm the agency of those around her, particularly those not granted such agency under the oppressive structure of settler colonialism. Em's tumultuous back‐and‐forth conflict with Thorah reflects Garnet Jones's guiding question posed earlier: What does it mean to leave home as a Native? What does it mean to stay? The answer to this for Em, though complex and conflicting, is to stay for the sake of the planet, this new twin world and its inhabitants, and her daughter. Thorah, however, is divested from these interests and this kinship: “Travel to the New World is the only way for us to survive” (35). Though her position and persistence stem from the fear of a lost future, her vision for a viable future is hindered by the settler colonial program of progress and control. The separation between Em and Thorah is this Indigiqueer radical care. While Thorah degrades staying earthside, remarking that only the sick, elderly, and paranoid remain, Em argues, “Our people had been rebuilding our languages and cultures for the last three generations, returning to the land as the rest of the world prepared to abandon it” (34). It is not paranoia that keeps Indigenous people on their lands in this story, but this act of radical resurgence and a care that reaches beyond their orbit. Em is guided by her insistence on not reproducing the colonial violence that her people have experienced. In her struggle to oppose Thorah's and the public's approach to the “apocalypse,” Em vacillates, but once news breaks about the Mermaids, manatee‐like animals on the new planet with the ability to speak and reason, she can no longer concede to Thorah's will. Em is pulled into the harrowing ancestral memories of the genocide of her people that cements her refusal. The act of compassion she asserts for unknown cosmic creatures is an example of the different ways that Indigiqueer radical care expands beyond non‐Native and cisheterosexual fashionings of radical care. Em is thinking and caring backward, forward, and beyond—acknowledging the past harm that befell her people and ensuring that she and her kin take no part in reproducing that harm for any other creature in our greater cosmos.

Garnet Jones is explicit about the stakes of this “adventure” into space and exhibits the need to center Indigiqueer radical care in oncoming generations. Em refuses to bend and says, “Ekosi. I can't go, . . . I won't” (38). This radical proclamation provokes Asȇciwan to hide from her parents at the shuttle station, knowing that Em couldn't bear to leave earth and would not leave her daughter. Though Asȇciwan has established relationships with both parents, Em acknowledges their shared, unspoken bond of “blood and spirit and iskwewak fire” (39). Their shared understanding of an Indigenous kinship to the land pushes her to a choice her white mother could never comprehend. Their collective decision to remain with the earth and their people and ultimately refuse to further advance a history of colonization is the embodiment of radical care. Despite being routinely coerced, corralled, and crushed, these two choose to protect the ones they love, be they human, more‐than‐human kin, or beings light‐years away. Em has established a world for Asȇciwan where she has, to some extent, been immersed in “a nest of [Cree] intelligence” through which she has learned to trust herself and her Indigenous community (Simpson 2017: 149–50).¹¹ This nurturing world follows centuries of colonial fracturing from the land and Indigenous intelligences. Em's creation of a world where Asȇciwan can make this deeply loving decision, informed by Indigiqueer knowledge, is a caring act that creates this future of abundance—whereas Thorah's abandonment only satisfies the colonial urge to protect the individual.

What awaits Indigiqueers and Two‐Spirits at the end? We are led to the end of this tale on a pathway that professes decolonial love. As the mother and daughter choose to stay and join the encampment, they come upon a vision of Indigiqueers building the future: “Mohawk warrior flags flapped alongside rainbows and homemade banners with messages like THIS IS INDIAN LAND! AND UNITED NDN NATIONS! UNITED NDN SEXUALITIES! UNITED NDN GENDERS! Hundreds of them all flew high above a massive wall that surrounded a fortress of reclaimed Materials” (47). As they approach their new home, they are greeted with deeply loving and tangible representations of queer Indigenous presence and resistance. The banners and flags marking their approach emphasize collective support for diverse NDN genders and sexuality as equal in importance to land and nations. Here Garnet Jones asserts that any Indigenous future that hopes to thrive cannot solely come from “landback,” and that radical embracing of Indigiqueer existence is vital to building our futures and reestablishing the connections and power needed for nation building. The fortress itself is a formidable construction surrounded by a wall of mirror shards like a fierce gay disco ball glittering in the sun—both beautiful and terrifying. This fortress extends beyond the literary, as it embodies the Indigiqueer world building accessible through care work. Though the physical structure does not exist in contemporary geographies, it becomes a beacon for possibility, shining a light for all Indigiqueers to construct their own fiercely queer and trans fortresses of care. At the top of the fortress, community members call out to the pair in anishinaabemowin and then in nehiyawewin; Em and Asȇciwan introduce themselves in nehiyawewin and are joyful in this moment of reclamation as Asȇciwan “thrust[s] out her chin proudly” and Em is “drunk on the sound of nehiyawewin on [her] daughter's tongue.” They receive a response from the wall—“Um, I'm still learning my language. What did you say?” (Garnet Jones 2021: 48). This moment of humility juxtaposed with one of immense pride creates a world where language is being reclaimed and celebrated, where knowledge growth is valued—and where it is okay not to know everything yet. It asserts a knowledge that the future will hold more. Be more full with these words.

With “History of a New World,” we gain insight into a near future, to the “end” of the world and a glimpse of what comes after; and the epilogue reveals that the story is told from a time further in the future, after a radical resurgence of Indigenous peoples and the recovery of the land. A period of thriving. This regeneration is possible only through the decisive actions of Indigenous peoples defending their communities: “Our protectors dismantled the portal so that it couldn't be engineered to bring the chaos from the New World back home to us” (49). The dismantling that occurs here is not merely physical removal but also a dismantling of the settler colonial system and any potential “rescue [of a] settler futurity” (Tuck and Yang 2012: 3). The act of closing the portals is a generative refusal (Simpson 2017) of the projection of a settler future that deludes itself into thinking that there may be a peaceful process reestablishing a settler colonial state on their return. This refusal signal's Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's (2012: 35) declaration that “decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity.” Though this moment of radical refusal and resistance is crucial to the creation of this decolonial future world, the story acknowledges that it is not the only act of decolonization. In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon (1961: 36) reminds us that “decolonization, as we know, is a historical process” formed by Indigenous life persisting and by our continuous “build[ing] and rebuild[ing of] Indigenous worlds” (Simpson 2017: 246). We see through Em Callihoo's story generations of Indigenous peoples rebuilding their communities, learning their languages, returning to the land, being unapologetically queer, and forming responsible and reciprocal relationships to human and more‐than‐human kin. In the story's epilogue, a voice from this decolonial future shows us how quickly the land and community recover once we acknowledge “the shared responsibilities between the people and all our relations” (Garnet Jones 2021: 49). The story ends with this knowledge: “Of course, the cycles of war and peace, love and heartbreak, hunger and feasting roll on, but with the understanding that we must always strive for balance. Above all, our circle must be round” (49). This final assertion acknowledges, similar to the aftercare loop, that there will always be a need for radical care—that even in decolonial worlds there will be suffering, but that moving forward into the future through or with a system of care will create worlds where radical change and balance are possible.

“The Ark of the Turtle's Back”

Where Garnet Jones's future makes possible a thriving aski (Earth), simpson presents a polar future—one where abandoning Nimama Aki (Earth) in an exodus is the only escape from subjection, genocide, and the destruction of the planet. Nichiiwad is the Two‐Spirit, trans matriarch of their small queer family in this apocalyptic future. After the International Water Ration Act of 2167, the government reintroduced colonial tactics to keep the Natives in line and steal them for working in settlement camps. In the face of this danger, Ni protects their family, stays rooted in practice and ceremony, and—through help from their sister Dakib—maintains hormone replacement for themselves and their family. Dakib collects the family to take them off planet before they are stolen by the New Indian Agents (NIA). Indigenous scientists predicted planetary devastation and began preparing years ago, and now there is a habitable planet with no sentient life where they can live and survive, but it is revealed that the exodus they have planned will radiate the earth and potentially damage the established settlements. Although Ni asserts that “our people wouldn't leave her . . . we would stay until her last breath and go with her” as caretakers of the earth, the opportunity for a womb transplant surgery for themself and other gender‐affirming ones for their family members—and their continued survival—breaks Ni's resolve. After surgery, Nichiiwad awakes to discover they have left earth and consequently destroyed any potential future for the earth, her remaining inhabitants, and surrounding settlements.

“The Ark of the Turtle's Back” offers difficult questions for its readers: What will our futures look like beyond the life of Nimama Aki? How can we navigate this unmitigable loss? And ultimately, “How do we build a relationship with [a] new planet?” (simpson 2021a: 61). Once again we see resistance against colonial systems; we see a community created and bound by care and love, and growth toward a future of care through this exodus and incalculable loss. Nichiiwad, at the start of this short story, speaks of their return to the rez after having “run away . . . at fourteen to go to the City to experiment with strangers and figure out their gender identity” (52). Within these first scenes, simpson lays the groundwork for Nichiiwad's embrace of their Ojibwe ancestral knowledge as a means of survivance. Prior to the mandatory international water ration, Ni began secretly storing birch syrup and teaching community members how to gather the water stored in plants sustainably (confusing the NIA). Ni relies on their traditional knowledge of the land and an ancestral imperative to survive in the face of catastrophe. This method of survival is not new, nor is the necessity: “We are getting even less water now, but we are used to it, our tap water having been unsafe to drink for nearly two hundred years” (51). Even with traditional knowledge keeping their family alive, the water crisis presents an insurmountable obstacle: inaccessible gender‐affirming surgeries. Though Dakib keeps Ni's family's hormone replacements stocked, surgeries require clean water and the finances/status to access clean water. The scarcity of water and natural resources is embodied through trans Indigenous flesh. Nichiiwad understands the bodily suffering due to the scarcity that has impacted Indigenous life since contact, but also that to be trans and Indigenous signals a history and present of bodily deprivation—something they refuse to carry into the future. It is partly this potential for carrying children and obtaining surgery for their kin that breaks Nichiiwad's resolve. After succumbing to an exodus to the uninhabited, but habitable, terraformed planet, Nichiiwad, through deeply embodied wailing, mourns the sacrifice they made and the inevitable loss of Nimama Aki, while their lover notes, “This is [Nimama‐Ni's] Ceremony” (57). Though their decision ultimately generates unfathomable loss, Nichiiwad's broken resolve represents an Indigiqueer decolonial imperative: what could a decolonial future look like without gender‐affirming care? Contemporarily, trans and Two‐Spirit individuals who seek gender care often die waiting for it—Nex Benedict's (Chahta) case affirms this—either from transmisogyny, racism, and fatphobia within the medical system or through the rejection by one's own community. Any such world where gender‐affirming care is inaccessible could not dream to be decolonial; rather, that future would carry forward the colonialism that is an everyday apocalypse. “The Ark of the Turtle's Back” offers us the powerful wisdom to see blossoming within destruction.

In “The Space NDN's Star Map,” Lou Cornum (2015) (Diné/Bilagáana) posits the question “What happens to indigeneity when the indigenous subject is no longer in the location that has defined them?” and asserts that “this is not just a question of outer space,” as most Natives are separated from their homelands through settler colonialism. simpson's short story responds to this question. Nichiiwad's family, along with all the peoples of this new civilization, are forever separated from the land that nursed and fed them, the land that guided them and gave them life, and yet they remain NDNs even in the wider cosmos. What Cornum maintains, and simpson's story affirms, is that the space NDN—in their commitment to establishing reciprocal relationships with the cosmos, in their refusal of colonialist expansion, and in the maintaining of their traditions—remains Indigenous regardless of some “strict idea of location.” More than this, “dynamic traditions, themselves a type of advanced technology, help the space NDN to understand how to foster the kind of relationships that make futures possible” (Cornum 2015). As Nichiiwad is pressured to leave their home in haste, they place importance on grabbing their bundle, hand drum, and a picture of their ancestor with them; Dakib is exasperated at Ni's insistence, but it is this insistence that allows for a healing ceremony after the loss of Nimama Aki. As the family enters the atrium, the life breath of the ark revealed to be a greenhouse with the last remnant of Nimama Aki's soil, trees, and grasses, Nichiiwad lights the medicine and brings their loved ones into the ceremony—even Dakib, who “ran from inipis and pipe ceremonies,” joins them. These moments of ceremony maintain connection to history, ancestors, and practice, showing that it is possible to bring their medicine and healing into the future. Nichiiwad has ensured the continuation of these traditions, for themselves and for the generations beyond them. After healing from surgery, Ni shifts their relations with their lover, now sure that together they may raise “fat brown babies” and create a future full of language, love, songs, ceremony, and all the things they couldn't have on earth, under colonialism. They are a matriarch who holds ancestral knowledge and has this vision for the future, and yet at the end they pose a question to the attendant closing their cryopod: “How do we build a relationship with this new planet?,” to which the attendant laughs and responds, “I would assume like all consensual relationships: we ask them out” (simpson 2021a: 61). Through this narrative, we see healing enacted despite deep wounds and scars all too common for Indigenous peoples.

Care at the End

We are stories, we have always been stories, and we will always be stories. Good storytellers have the power to assert our presence, to present otherwise worlds of possibility and hope through their enactments of care. This is why Indigiqueer storytellers like Garnet Jones and simpson are necessary and powerful. Indigenous literature is where we can claim our truth, find ourselves, feel safe, and critique and crumble the colonial forces surrounding us. More Indigiqueer literature is needed so that others know we are here and we will be here. Indigiqueer youth need to know about the real joy that exists for them, joy and hope that is created, viewed, and manifested in these stories. For me, these two stories have changed the urgency with which I enact care work that can build futures and have brought radical hope into my life. It is easy, as a trans and Indigenous scholar, to get lost in the suffering our communities and our world is facing, yet reading these stories helped me concentrate on building joyous kinship that celebrates Indigiqueer life. My younger self could not dream of the day we would have these tales.

Similar to radical care, which offers us a world that is alternative to the crushing and diminishing one we occupy, “[these wonderworks] remind us that there are other ways of being in the world than those we've been trained to accept as normal. They offer hopeful alternatives to the oppressive structures and conditions we're continually told are inevitable material ‘reality’” (Justice 2017). The work done in Justice's “Indigenous Wonderworks” presents alternatives to the settler colonial–manufactured “real” Native—a diminished object, situated in the past and always only representing deficit and loss. Rather, these stories create the literary and the literal resurgence, recovery, support, and love in our communities: “The act of bringing new life to our Indigenous stories reawakens our lands and peoples to remember the power we have always had, to feed our families and strangers, to care for the past and future” (Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada and Aiko Yamashiro (2016: 20), quoted in Justice 2017). Garnet Jones and simpson present story worlds where not only are Indigiqueers primary characters, but the survival and continuation of the community occurs through Indigiqueer intervention. The story reminds us (or shows perhaps for the first time) that Indigiqueer individuals have power and presence; they can locate themselves in the story, within a community, and in a coming future. Their short stories offer up a future world for Indigiqueer and Two‐Spirit individuals and make real the radical care that they need in the present. To see Indigiqueers represented in stories where growth and relation and joy and hope and something other than loss are presented cares for us, tends to our bodies and minds and tangibly changes the worlds we inhabit. These stories make meaning, materialize the future, and care for our pasts, now. It is an act of calling to, calling forth.

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