(just a thought)

 … Dillion’s emphasis on Native mischievousness; namely, as being “tricksters.”  She’s basically arguing that “trickster fashion” is a characteristic trait of First Nations people; and thus it is a good thing – contrasting with heteropatriarchy, and how it loathes defiance, disorderly conduct, (criminal) mischief, etc.   I chose to focus on Indigenous identity with an interest in Hawaiian identity this semester.  And, like the writers in this anthology, I share the controversial idea that defiance is at the essence of indigeneity.  Defiance is trickery in the sense that both manifestations undermine the stability of heteropatriarchy.  Take, for instance, the murder of Captain Cook (as well as San Vitores’s).  Their deaths suggest that indigenous people have, from the start, been deathly defiant to foreign encroachment upon Native way-of-Life.  Mo‘olelo like these should not be forgotten.  The famous Hawaiian proverb, i mohala no ka lehua i ke ke‘ekehi ‘ia e ka ua, should be visualized as a defiant, resilient, and yet prosperous life in spite of difficult adversity.  “Tread” is understood as (the rain) trampling (on the plant) – invoking the sense of harsh environmental forces.  This is much different than Pukui’s translation, which gives us the ethical suggestion that “People respond better to gentle words than to scoldings.”  Do you guys think characteristic traits like trickery, mischievousness, defiance, etc. ought to be promoted for the sake of indigenous identity?    

I found this week’s narrative to be more thought-provoking and effective than last week’s Shell Shaker.  If sf as a genre has not been adequately explored by indigenous writers; then it should be.  In Dillion’s words, what sf provides is “an equally valid way to renew, recover, and extend First Nations peoples’ voices and traditions” (1-2) through a genre that defies colonial metaphysics, epistemologies, and ontologies.  Especially useful is the concept of Native slipstream, which estranges the colonial understanding of linear space/time.  Thus, sf is an effective vehicle through which identity can be forged within a more “Native-centered theory” (86).  Native expression through sf is also advantageous because as it disrupts linear space/time, it also disrupts the “first principles” of heteropatriarchy (i.e., God created the world and then time started) – which, in turn, refutes Manifest Destiny as justification for colonialism.  Creative possibility in “the spirit of imagining Indigenous futurisms” (150) is what sf offers us.  This flexibility allows uniquely Native narratives to challenge heteropatriarchy with alternative realities.  Sierra S. Adare’s quote on page 171 sums up why sf is both practical and efficient, “[S]cience fiction is the only genre that suggests that First Nations peoples and their cultures have a future that has not been assimilated into the dominant society.”  Overall, I think this anthology shows that sf can be an effective tool for Native self-expression.