The “First Peoples” of North America (its earliest known inhabitants) have cultures and oral traditions spanning thousands of years. Their storytelling traditions often have SCI-FI elements, like tales about Visitors from Outer Space.
“Indigenous people have always been writing and telling Science-Fiction stories, but it hasn’t been labeled as such,” said Blaire Topash-Caldwell, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians who has written about the rise of Indigenous SCI-FI. “We’ve always been interested in prophecy, alternate realities and different spheres of existence.”
In recent years, Native-American inspired novels, comics, and films have entered the mainstream.
Legends from the Sky — NAVAJO — (2015)
The Navajo Nation, also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. With more than 400,000 tribal members, it is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States.
In Legends from the Sky, a flying saucer crashes in the Navajo Nation, prompting a cover-up and the disappearance of an old man. His grandson, a recently-returned US Army veteran (burdened by survivor’s guilt after a disastrous military tour) must search for his missing grandfather after their ancestral land is mysteriously taken over by an unknown federal organization — and discover the secret of the saucer.
Night Raiders — CREE — (2021)
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where more than 350,000 people are Cree or have Cree ancestry — north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories. In the United States, Cree people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana.
Night Raiders is a Canadian-New Zealand SCI-FI dystopian film. In the war-torn world of 2043, an oppressive military government locates children — with unending drone surveillance — and brings them into a state-run institution called the Academy. Militant teachers brainwash children to become soldiers, forcing them to leave behind their families’ customs, religion, language, and names. Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), a Cree woman, joins a resistance movement to save her daughter.
Slash/Back — INUIT — (2022)
Nunavut is a Canadian territory that encompasses the traditional lands of the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of Arctic Canada. The Inuit are descended from the Thule, one of the earliest hunting societies that travelled across the Bering Strait into Northern Canada. The name Nunavut means “Our Land” in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.
Slash/Back is a Canadian Inuit SCI-FI film directed by Nyla Innuksuk in her feature debut.
Set in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, a remote community, the story follows four teenage girls who encounter a strange polar bear, shoot it and return home. Going back to investigate, one of them discovers an Alien Artifact, and sees the bear and an elk dragging a body to the Artifact that begins to drain its blood. A police officer and fisherman attacked by the ‘bear’ become Alien Skins — and the girls must fight them off alone (their parents are at a Social Dance). Using her knowledge of hunting, one girl, Maika, kills a Skin, causing light to shoot from the Artifact into the sky, where a spacecraft departs. When interviewed by a reporter after life returns to normal, she simply replies, “I am a hunter!”
Prey — COMANCHE — (2022)
The Comanche are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains who belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. They speak a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.
Prey is an American SCI-FI horror film in the Predator franchise, a prequel to the first four films, set in the Northern Great Plains in 1719. The story revolves around a young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), who is striving to prove herself as a hunter. She finds herself having to protect her people from a vicious, humanoid Alien that hunts humans for sport, as well as from French fur traders who are destroying the buffalo they rely on for survival. (Filmed in English, with some sequences shot in Comanche, a full Comanche dub was also created, the first feature film to do so.)
THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY
A Gleam of Light — HOPI — Book 1 (2016)
The Hopi are Native Americans who live primarily in northeastern Arizona on a reservation near the Black Mesa. They belong to the Pueblo people of the southwestern US, known for their terrace farms and deep spirituality. Their name means “people of peace” in the Hopi language. They have lived in the same region for over 1,000 years and claim to be the most rooted of all peoples in North America. Hopi spirituality weaves together stories, songs, dances and festivals. They worship their gods in shrines and ceremonies and draw insights from the movements of the stars.
A Gleam of Light begins in 1995, when 8-year-old half-Hopi Una Waters survives a terrifying UFO encounter at 30,000 feet on Flight 564 from Dallas to Las Vegas. 21 years later, now a D.C. bureaucrat, Una is summoned back to Hopiland by a desperate plea from an old friend. The U.S. Army’s sudden invasion of the Sacred Peaks threatens their peaceful way of life. Somehow, she must confront her painful past and find proof to protect an ancient discovery. Her connection to the white man’s world makes Una uniquely qualified to help solve the mystery, as she tries to reconnect with her cultural identity.
Inspired by Hopi mythology, each volume of THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY (Book 2 The Dragon’s Glare and Book 3 Beyond the World) explores native beliefs pertaining to Alien Life from a unique cultural point of view — book one: Native American, book two: Asian American, and book three: African American. All are connected … through Hopi prophecy.
First Peoples SCI-FI — from tribes like the NAVAJO, CREE, INUIT, COMANCHE and HOPI –offers us storytelling traditions from Native American cultures spanning thousands of years … about Visitors from Outer Space, Alternate Realities and so much more.
Exploring them could open up a new world of discovery … for YOU.
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