10.13125/2039-6597/5158
Interweaving ecocriticism, settler-colonial studies, and Indigenous studies, this essay interrogates the concepts of climate change and the apocalypse, repositioning them alongside Indigenous experiences of broken kinship relationships. Focusing on the Canadian Indigenous context, first, I discuss the settler-colonial implications of environmental apocalypse, arguing that Indigenous peoples are already living in a post-apocalyptic condition. Secondly, I explore the Indian Residential School policy as an example of how settler-colonialism contributed to creating the post-apocalyptic situation with which Indigenous peoples live today. Thirdly, through analysis of Lee Maracle’s “The Void” and Daniel H. Justice’s “The Boys Who Became the Hummingbirds”, I discuss how both stories employ imagination to place environmental disasters in conversation with settler-colonial practices, thus re-shaping understandings of the past, present, and future. Ultimately, both stories, as I argue, promote Indigenous traditional knowledge systems and kinship values as a way to maintain respectful and reciprocal kinship relationships among humans and between humans and the land.
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Francesca Mussi
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Between
Imagination
North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse and a Renewal of Kinship Relationships through the Imagination
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2022-12-03
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Francesca Mussi
2022/12/03
10.13125/2039-6597/5158
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Imagination
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North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse and a Renewal of Kinship Relationships through the Imagination
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12
            North American Indigenous
           Perceptions of the Apocalypse
             and a Renewal of Kinship
             Relationships through the
                    Imagination

                               Francesca Mussi

Abstract

      Interweaving Ecocriticism, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous
Studies, this essay interrogates the concepts of climate change and the
apocalypse, repositioning them alongside Indigenous experiences of broken
kinship relationships. Focusing on the Canadian Indigenous context, I first
discuss the settler colonial implications of environmental apocalypse, arguing
that Indigenous peoples are already living in a post-apocalyptic condition.
Secondly, I explore the Indian Residential School policy as an example of
how settler colonialism contributed to creating the post-apocalyptic situation
in which Indigenous peoples live today. Thirdly, through the analysis of Lee
Maracle’s “The Void” and Daniel H. Justice’s “The Boys Who Became the
Hummingbirds”, I discuss how both stories employ imagination to place
environmental disasters in conversation with settler colonial practices, thus
re-shaping understandings of the past, present, and future. Ultimately,
both stories, as I argue, promote Indigenous traditional knowledge systems
and kinship values as a way to maintain respectful and reciprocal kinship
relationships among humans and between humans and the land.

Keywords

     Apocalypse; Climate change; Settler colonialism; Canada; Indian
residential schools; Indigenous kinship; Imagination

Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5158
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse




         North American Indigenous
      Perceptions of the Apocalypse and
      a Renewal of Kinship Relationships
           through the Imagination1

                                  Francesca Mussi



                                     Introduction
      Originating from the Greek apocalypsis (i.e. ‘uncovering’, ‘revelation’),
the word ‘apocalypse’ is associated biblically with the end of the world
(or the end of time) and secularly with a very serious event resulting in
destruction or damage on a catastrophic scale, such as war or environ-
mental disaster. This essay engages with the secular dimension of the con-
cept of the apocalypse and with the ways in which it is often employed
as an ecocritical trope. Lawrence Buell has argued that «[a]pocalypse is
the single most powerful master metaphor that the contemporary environ-
mental imagination has at its disposal» (Buell 1995: 285). Drawing on this
perspective, Greg Garrard highlights how apocalyptic rhetoric may play a
crucial role in environmental discourses, as it is capable of galvanising ac-
tivists, of «converting the undecided and ultimately, perhaps, of influenc-
ing government and commercial policy» (Garrard 2011: 113). It should not
be surprising, then, that today discourses concerning climate change and
environmental crises often acquire apocalyptic tones, becoming central
topics within international political and cultural landscapes. The United
Nations Climate Action group warns that the climate crisis is worsening
every day, impacting on people’s lives everywhere, and it calls for urgent
actions to address this emergency (WMO 2021). Many international poli-
ticians, artists, film stars, academics, activists, and ordinary citizens have



      The research for this essay has been supported by a Leverhulme Early
      1

Career Research Fellowship held at the University of Northumbria.


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                                       Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



come to question what the future might hold and they are working to de-
velop strategies to prevent future disaster scenarios.
      The question about the future, though, acquires a different connota-
tion from Indigenous2 perspectives. As this essay intends to demonstrate,
there is consensus among Indigenous scholars that Indigenous peoples
understand their vulnerability to the current anthropogenic climate cri-
sis as an intensification of colonially-induced changes. Focusing on North
America, especially the Canadian Indigenous context, this essay thus aims
to contribute to environmental criticism and Indigenous Studies by expos-
ing the racialised and settler colonial implications of climate change and
throwing light on the concept of the apocalypse, as well as bringing to the
fore Indigenous kinship values and traditional knowledge systems. To this
end, I have divided this essay into three main sections. Firstly, I discuss
how current anthropogenic climate and environmental changes must be
placed in dialogue with settler colonialism, thus outlining the present as
a post-apocalyptic condition for Indigenous peoples. The second section
discusses the Indian Residential School policy as an example of how settler
colonialism contributed to creating the post-apocalyptic situation in which
Indigenous peoples live today. In particular, I explore how residential
schools impacted and continue to impact on Indigenous values, lifeways,
and relations to the land3. Thirdly, I analyse two speculative short stories,
“The Void” by Lee Maracle (Salish/Métis) and “The Boys Who Became



    2
        The term ‘Indigenous’ encompasses a wide range of culturally, linguisti-
cally, and geographically differentiated peoples. Originating from the Latin root
indigena, which means ‘sprung from the land’, it has been used in internation-
al and United Nations contexts to define peoples in relation to their colonisers.
Indigenous peoples from around the world share common problems related to
how colonial empires have compromised their rights to traditional lands, terri-
tories, and natural resources. Here, I will draw on the works of Indigenous and
non-Indigenous scholars and writers from different parts of the world; however,
focus will be placed on North America, especially Canada. Please note that there
are other terms to refer to Indigenous peoples in the Canadian and North Amer-
ican contexts, such as ‘Aboriginal’, ‘Native’, or ‘Native American’. Unless other-
wise indicated by the scholars quoted in the present essay, I will use ‘Indigenous’
to refer to Indigenous peoples as a collective group. When referring to a specific
author, I will opt for their tribal affiliation.
     3
        In this essay I use ‘land’ to refer to non-human elements of creation such
as plants, rocks, trees, waterways, and animals with which Indigenous peoples
have physical, emotional, and spiritual relations.


                                                                                   403
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



the Hummingbirds” by Daniel H. Justice (Cherokee), to show how both
authors advocate the renewal of Indigenous knowledge systems, kinship
values, and cosmovisions through storytelling and imagination. Through
the portrayals of apocalyptic scenarios of an ecologically damaged Earth,
both stories, as I argue, expose the colonial implications of environmental
change as a way of re-shaping understandings of the past, present, and fu-
ture. A way of reconfiguring the apocalypse as an experiential, rather than
a speculative, future scenario.

 Repositioning environmental apocalypse between past,
                  present, and future
      The concept of the Anthropocene has appeared widely in Western
debates about climate change, eco-apocalyptic scenarios, environmental
sustainability, and environmental justice. It was first coined in 2000 by
atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen and limnologist Eugene F. Stoermer
(2000) to designate a new geological epoch marked by human-induced
changes on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to,
anthropogenic climate change4. Helmuth Trischler (2016) notices how, less
than two decades after the term was coined, the Anthropocene debate has
expanded beyond the realm of the biological and geological sciences to
become a cultural concept, capturing the interest of scholars from the so-
cial sciences and humanities, and, perhaps most importantly, acquiring the
potential to redefine the relationships between humans and nature. Sociol-
ogist and anthropologist Bruno Latour (2014, 2015), for instance, engages
with the concept of the Anthropocene to challenge the boundaries between
nature and culture, and to call into question the anthropocentrism that has
resulted from this dichotomy, thus attributing agency to both human and
non-human factors5. Building on Latour, Trischler (2016) argues that, de-
spite many controversies surrounding the term, the Anthropocene allows
us to transcend the Western modern dichotomy of nature-culture and to
endorse a vision of humans and the environment as intrinsically and inex-
tricably intertwined.
      In contrast, there is much scholarship, Indigenous but also non-Indig-
enous, which has been overtly sceptical of ecological concepts emerging as
critical strains within the Western (or Euro-American) academy such as the


      4
          See also Crutzen 2002.
      5
          See Chakrabarty 2009; Chakrabarty 2016.


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                                         Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



Anthropocene. Métis scholar Zoe Todd warns against the use of a univer-
salising species paradigm such as the Anthropocene, as it tends to obfuscate
the distinctions between the people, nations, and collectives who drive the
fossil-fuel economy and those who do not (Todd 2015: 244). Similarly, Au-
dra Mitchell points out, «the Anthropocene is not the product of “humani-
ty”, but rather particular segments of it» (Mitchell 2015: n.p.)6. Potawatomi
scholar and activist Kyle Whyte also argues that «anthropogenic climate
change makes Indigenous territories more accessible and Indigenous peo-
ples more vulnerable to harm, just as did laws, policies, boarding schools,
and the like in previous episodes of colonization», establishing a direct
connection between current Indigenous vulnerability to climate change
and the history and present practices of settler colonialism and capitalism
(2017: 157). In particular, Indigenous peoples and allies, Whyte highlights,
«examine climate change less as a future trend, and more as the experience
of going back to the future» (ibid: 156), as colonially-induced changes have
harmed Indigenous peoples and their ecosystems since the early days of
colonial contact. Significantly, Whyte emphasises that «Indigenous peo-
ples live in worlds so changed by colonialism, capitalism, and industrial-
ization», to the point that it is possible to define the present condition as
already post-apocalyptic (ibid.: 160).
      The connection between anthropogenic climate change and settler co-
lonialism can be attributed to different understandings and relations to the
land. According to Māori philosopher Christine Winter (2018, 2019), West-
ern societies tend to understand nature as property with monetary and
instrumental value to humans due to its potential to contribute to human
material and physical well-being. On the other hand, Indigenous peoples
are profoundly connected to their land and its natural elements: land is kin;
Indigenous peoples learn from and with the land. In As We Have Always
Done, Mississauga Nishnaabeg storyteller, scholar, and activist Leanne B.
Simpson explains how Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg knowledge system, the
education system, the economic system, and their political system «were
designed to promote more life. Our way of living was designed to generate
life—not just human life but the life of all living things» (Simpson 2017: 3).
This passage suggests that Indigenous peoples do not relate to the land
by possessing it or having control over it, but through connection. And
it is that intimate connection between Indigenous bodies, minds, spirits
and the land that settler colonialism has tried to break through a series


    6
        See also Bauer and Ellis 2018.


                                                                                     405
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



of policies in order to warrant their claim over Indigenous homelands, to
take control of those territories, and, ultimately, to exploit its natural re-
sources. Colonial dispossession of Indigenous homelands, the assimilation
into Christian Western values, the exploitation and extraction of natural
resources and capitalism have produced environmental changes affecting
and destroying the ecosystems on which Indigenous people relied:

         Extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism and capitalism
      are based on extracting and assimilating. My land is seen as a resource.
      My relatives in the plant and animal worlds are seen as resources.
      My culture and knowledge is a resource. […] The act of extraction
      removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted
      meaning. Extracting is taking. Actually, extracting is stealing—it is
      taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge
      of the impacts that extraction has on the other living things in that
      environment. That’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest.
      (Simpson 2017: 75)

     Settler colonial practices and current anthropogenic climate change
are profoundly related. In a recent interview with Grist, Whyte encourages
peoples to think of climate change through kinship time:

         Climate change itself is not caused solely by the increased
      concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It’s also caused by
      historic breakdowns in kinship relationships. Industries are responsible
      for the major physical drivers of climate change – extractive industries,
      fossil fuel industries […] In a context like the Americas, these industries
      took root because they dispossessed Native people of their land, which
      was a profound disrespect for kinship. (Whyte 2021: n.p.)

     Whyte thus suggests that the current climate crisis is not only envi-
ronmental, but it is «built off of generations of inequity» (ibid.). If people do
not recognise the connection between past practices and present legacies,
then it is not possible for society as a whole to find meaningful solutions
and act upon them to create an ecologically safe and respectful future.

 The apocalypse of the Indian Residential School System
    Certainly, of all the policies that the settler colonial regime initiated
in Canada, the design and the implementation of the Indian Residential
School (IRS) system had, and continues to have, the most destructive effects


406
                                      Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



on Indigenous communities, their lifeways and ecosystems. Such effects
could be described as apocalyptic. Christian missionary-based schools had
been run since the early days of colonial contact in order to spread ‘civilisa-
tion’ and to educate Indigenous peoples according to Western values, but
it was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the IRS system
was implemented. Until then, British colonial officials had approached In-
digenous peoples as military allies and business partners in the fur trade.
However, by the mid-nineteenth century they started to be perceived as
obstacles to colonial progress and expansion towards the Northwestern
territories, still primarily occupied by Indigenous peoples7. It is within this
political-historical context that Indigenous peoples were addressed as the
‘Indian Problem’. As a consequence, assimilation and civilisation through
the residential school policy became fundamental tools to remove Indige-
nous peoples as ‘obstacles’ to settlement and nation-building. Operating
for more than a century since their establishment in the mid-nineteenth
century, Indian residential schools began to be phased out only in the 1960s
and 1970s, in conjunction with a heightening of pan-Indigenous activism,
primarily led by former residential school attendees, who arose in defence
of Indigenous rights. The last federally-run residential school, Gordon In-
dian Residential School, located in Saskatchewan, officially closed its doors
in 1996 (Stout and Kipling 2003). The harms caused by residential schools
include, but are not limited to, widespread sexual, physical, emotional, and
spiritual abuse; bullying (student-on-student abuse); the aggressive assim-
ilation of Indigenous children into Western-Christian culture; substandard
living conditions; and neglect resulting in death and disease (Aboriginal
Healing Foundation 2002)8. For the purpose of this essay, I will be focusing
on the cultural, emotional, and spiritual losses that Indigenous children


    7
        For a comprehensive history of the implementation of Indian residential
schools (or boarding schools) in Canada and the U.S., see Miller 1996; Milloy
1999; Woolford 2015.
     8
        Since breaking the silence about the devastating impacts of the IRS system
on Indigenous peoples in the early 1990s, Canada has been committed to restor-
ing relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples through a series of
reconciliatory and redress polices, including governmental apologies, reparation
schemes, commemoration projects, and the establishment of a Truth and Recon-
ciliation Commission (2008-2015). It is beyond the scope of this essay to explore
the ways in which the Canadian federal government addressed the impacts and
legacies of the IRS policy. For more details about Canada’s redress strategy, see
Regan 2010; Niezen 2013; the TRC Reports 2015; Capitaine and Vanthuyne 2017.


                                                                                  407
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



experienced while attending Indian residential schools.
      Aiming to impose Christian and Western values, residential schools
taught Indigenous children that their cultures and traditions were «the
way of the devil» (Monchalin 2016: 126). Upon arrival at school, Indige-
nous children were assigned a number and their names were replaced by
French or English names. Traditional long hair or braids were either cut
short or shaved off. Traditional clothing was also replaced by standard
school uniforms. In addition to ‘civilising’ the Indigenous children’s ap-
pearance, the coloniser’s language (either English or French) was forced
upon them, while the use of Indigenous languages was prohibited. The
majority of children, however, had little or no knowledge of English (or
French), and they were often punished for this reason or for being caught
speaking their Indigenous languages. Kinship was specifically targeted by
the residential school policy, as Daniel Justice underlines (Justice 2018: 58).
      A fundamental value in Indigenous cultures, kinship is understood
as the «profound power of our relationships to one another and to our
other-than-human relations» (ibid.: 78). Introducing the Anishinaabe con-
cept of Mino-bimaatisiwin, which means ‘living well’ or ‘good life’, envi-
ronmentalist and scholar Deborah McGregor (Anishinaabe) explains the
critical importance for Indigenous cultures to engage in (and maintaining)
respectful, reciprocal, and balanced kinship relationships with one anoth-
er as humans, but also with non-human entities, i.e. with the land. Signifi-
cantly, McGregor goes on to argue, «constant application of knowledge,
learning and practice enables the dynamic transformation that is required
to ensure that ‘living well’ occurs over time» (2018: 225). Forcing away
Indigenous children from their communities and their homelands, the IRS
policy set out to disrupt family and community bonds, as well as land-
based relationships. In “Land Speaking”, Okanagan author Jeanette Arm-
strong observes how the land holds all knowledge and constantly speaks
to Indigenous peoples: «[Indigenous peoples] survived and thrived by
listening intently to its teachings — to its language — and then inventing
human words to retell its stories to our succeeding generations» ([1998]
2017: 142). Indigenous knowledge systems are informed and shaped by
their relationships to the land. The banning of Indigenous languages on
the one hand, and the separation from their homelands on the other, were
clearly used by residential schools as a powerful strategy to further sever
Indigenous children’s connections with their traditions and with the an-
cestral teachings inherent in the land.
      In addition to undermining family/community ties and land rela-
tions, Indian residential schooling also had crucial impacts on Indigenous


408
                                     Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



views on gender and sexuality, thus affecting other kinds of kinship re-
lationships9. Kinship, in fact, also encompasses relationships with «the
marginalized within our own human societies» (Justice 2018: 79), such as
non-heteronormative individuals and women. Prior to colonisation, In-
digenous categorisation of gender identities and sexual practices were as
diverse as Indigenous cultures themselves. Whilst «it is important not to
romanticise Indigenous peoples as being uniformly accepting of gender
and sexual fluidity», Kwagiulth scholar Sarah Hunt emphasises, it is safe to
assert, broadly speaking, that Indigenous views on gender and sexuality,
and therefore on the roles in the communities, were not rooted in Western
heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity (Hunt 2016: 7). Indigenous na-
tions, for example, acknowledged (and still acknowledge) the existence of
alternative notions of gender to the Western male/female binary, such as
two-spirit peoples, namely those peoples who embody both male and fe-
male spirits. As Cree playwright and novelist Tomson Highway observes,
Indigenous worldviews had «room for the idea of men with the souls of
women and women with the souls of men» (Highway 2014: n.p.). Two-spir-
it individuals were accepted and integrated members of Indigenous com-
munities, endowed with social prestige, and their roles contributed vitally
to their communities’ survival and well-being, including roles as teachers,
knowledge keepers, healers, spiritual leaders, mediators, artists, and war-
riors (Hunt 2016: 7).
      The term ‘two-spirit’ was chosen as an intertribal lexeme to be used in
English in the early 1990s as a way to encompass a broad range of sexual
and gender identities of Indigenous peoples outside dominant Western bi-
naries10. Whilst some employ this coinage to refer specifically to the cultur-
al roles of individuals possessing both male and female spirits, ‘two-spirit’
is also used today as an umbrella term to describe Indigenous peoples who
identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and with further cate-



    9
        There are certainly other polices that expose the gendered dimension of
settler colonialism, such as the Indian Act and the reserve system. See the Na-
tional Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report,
Volume A (2019).
     10
        The term ‘two-spirit’ was chosen as a collective lexeme to challenge the
use of the colonial ‘berdache’, a word that was coined by Western anthropolo-
gists and scholars in the nineteenth century to describe Indigenous alternative
gender identities and roles. See Jacobs, Thomas, and Lang 1997; Roscoe 1998;
Morgensen 2011.


                                                                                 409
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



gories that fall outside Western heteronormativity (Driskill 2010: 72)11.
      The arrival of Europeans in North America, with their agenda of co-
lonial conquest, deeply impacted on Indigenous communities. As a matter
of fact, colonial structures went beyond the physical and included assaults
on ways of knowing and understanding gender and sexuality. In this con-
nection, Leanne Simpson highlights how

          the bodies of [two-spirit] people, children, and women represented
       the lived alternative to heteronormative constructions of gender […]
       They are the embodied representation in the eyes of the colonizers
       of land, reproduction, Indigenous governance, and political systems.
       They reproduce and amplify Indigeneity, and so it is these bodies that
       must be eradicated. (2017: 41)

     Indian residential schooling was certainly a powerful weapon to car-
ry out this attack on Indigenous bodies, especially the bodies of children,
women, and two-spirit people. The banning of Indigenous languages in
residential schools prevented children from learning knowledge about
two-spirit identities and their roles within communities. In school spaces,
female and male students were also divided into clearly separated spheres
of activity, with even brothers and sisters being kept separate. Boys would
perform agricultural and manual labour and girls would undertake do-
mestic chores, thereby complying with the same gendered division of la-
bour that privileged the masculine, as was the norm with the colonisers’
culture. Yet, scholar Will Roscoe observes that, although work roles in
Indigenous nations were organised on the basis of gender, women were
allowed to make important contributions to their families’ subsistence and
«opportunities for women to acquire prestige and take leadership roles
existed in every group […] from matrilineal groups like the Hopis, Zunis,
and Iroquois to the warrior-dominated Plains tribes» (1998: 6-7).
     Be that as it may, the imposition of European heteropatriarchal con-
ventions was very damaging to Indigenous students and future genera-
tions, as they impinged on how young Indigenous peoples understood their
identities and roles in their communities, especially in relation to women
and two-spirit peoples. Furthermore, gender was also enlisted for punitive
purposes at some schools. For example, a former student of Fort Alexander



       Some Indigenous peoples prefer ‘two-spirit’, while others opt for ‘queer’
      11

or the acronym 2SLGBTQA+.


410
                                     Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



Resident School in Manitoba recalled being forced to wear a female dress
because he kept trying to spend time with his sisters and thereby violated
the school’s rules of gender segregation (Wolford 2015: 168). At residential
schools, male students were taught that to be feminine was to be weak and
that masculinity consisted in a specific set of performances, that is to say,
being tough, fearless, and unemotional. Punishments particularly shamed
those who subverted mainstream gender and sexual performances.
      Today, Indigenous communities are still affected by the imposition
of settler colonial gender and sexual norms, as well as by discrimina-
tion against gender diversity and fluidity. Both Indigenous women and
two-spirit people face targeted violence and discrimination within Indig-
enous communities and non-Indigenous contexts (Hunt 2016). According
to the Report of the Eagle Human Rights Trust (2016) «the notion that
such gender and sexual non-conforming behaviour was sinful, criminal, or
symptomatic of disease was entirely unknown among Aboriginal People
prior to Contact». Thereby, one gathers that the fuelling of homophobic
and hostile sentiments against those who do not conform to heteronorma-
tivity within Indigenous communities can be traced back to settler colonial
policies, which aimed to dismantle Indigenous traditions, belief systems,
and kinship relationships with one another and with the land (quoted in
Sinclair 2016: 16). The IRS system certainly played a crucial role in the colo-
nial attempts at dismantling Indigenous cultures, causing what can be de-
scribed as a proper apocalypse. This prevented Indigenous children from
learning about their knowledge systems, traditions, kinship values linked
to their parents, their communities, and their land, and from passing on
this knowledge to future generations.
      The question is: how can Indigenous peoples survive this kind of apoc-
alypse? Or, rather: how can Indigenous peoples learn to live in a post-apoc-
alyptic situation where kinship relations with one another and with the
land have been damaged, where traditions and knowledge systems have
been marginalised and replaced by settler colonial dominant narratives?
As the next section shows, Indigenous storytelling and imagination mas-
sively contribute to healing broken kinship relations and to paving the way
for a renewal of their traditions, kinship values, and ecosystems.

 Experiential imagination: Indigenous speculative fiction
   as a site of healing and renewal of kinship relations
     Now I turn my attention to two speculative short stories, which use



                                                                                 411
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



imagination to re-shape understandings of the apocalypse and to renew
Indigenous traditions, kinship values, and ecological knowledge. Borrow-
ing Cherokee author Daniel H. Justice’s words:

          imagination is essential to the empathy required for healthy,
       respectful, and sustainable relationships with a whole host of beings
       and peoples, from cedar trees and magpies to thunderstorms and
       moss-blanketed boulders. Simply put, there can be no true kinship
       without imagination. (2018: 77)

       One could argue that the imagination is a form of speculation or of
escapism possibly inappropriate to address the pathology of colonialism,
its lingering effects and environmental changes, as opposed to more realis-
tic forms of fiction and storytelling. But, as Justice emphasises, when «the
apocalypse or environmental catastrophe appears as [an] overt theme in
Indigenous writing, it’s more than speculation – it’s experiential, even in
its most fantastical, because in a very real way it hasn’t ended» (ibid.: 168).
The imagination challenges a set of assumptions and expectations about
the ‘real’, opening up and expanding a whole range of possibilities. It pro-
vides a way for re-shaping the past, present, and future and for re-central-
ising Indigenous lifeways, intelligence systems, and kinship values.
       Maracle’s short story “The Void” immediately plunges the reader
into an ecologically damaged Earth, where everything is melting. People
are melting from the inside everywhere; the land, the non-human world,
is also dying. The sky is so hot that it even melts the imagination: «[t]he
imagination, once a cool spot, a retreat to comfortable dreaming of a place
in which hope was spawned, became a crazy dancehall squeezing the life
out of hope» (Maracle 2016: 10)12. Within this devastation, only the flies, to
which the dead give birth, seem to thrive. A small group of one hundred
and fifty people is able to get away from this dying Earth and reach safety
in a satellite station. This escape occurs through a shape-shifting process,
which the survivors call ‘flashing’. This process must be internally induced,
and, as the narrative unfolds, those who have managed to flash exist in
a sort of incorporeal form, hearing tribal voices and their consciousness
through a mind channel.
       It is important to notice that this group of survivors consists of six



      Subsequent references are to this edition of “The Void” and will be cited
      12

parenthetically by page number in the text.


412
                                     Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



Black people and three Asians, while the rest, the majority of them, are In-
digenous peoples. There are no white people among the survivors because,
as the narrator, Tony from the Lakota Nation, explains, «we had agreed on
that. We never wanted this to happen again. We were clear. We figure there
was something in their blood, something in their genetic makeup drove
them to effect this meltdown, so no one taught them how to flash» (11-12).
Although Maracle does not provide clear space-time coordinates, readers
can infer that the group of survivors is from North America; Tony makes
reference to Indigenous nations that are from North America, such as the
Lakota, the Salish, the Ojibway, and the Haudenosaunee nations. This in-
formation must be read alongside the aforementioned passage: through
Tony’s narrating voice, Maracle conveys her criticism towards the white-
settler society, or rather towards its approach to the land and its natural
resources. This approach is based on ownership and extraction and has its
roots in settler colonialism and capitalism. In McGregor’s view, white-set-
tler society is being held responsible for bad or inappropriate conduct (for
madjiijwe baziwin, in Anishinaabe language), namely the inability to guar-
antee the preservation of a balance with respect to human communities
and the land (2018: 226). This thoughtless approach has caused the warm-
ing and environmental disaster portrayed in the story, and that is the rea-
son why white people were not taught how to flash.
       As Tony reveals, flashing is an Indigenous cultural practice, a practice
that was illegal until 1952. It seems that, in a similar fashion to other Indig-
enous ceremonies such as the Sun Dance, flashing was forbidden by settler
colonial policies, and, like the Sun Dance ceremony, Indigenous peoples
were allowed to practice it again in mid-twentieth century13. In addition,
it is revealed that, since flashing was legalised, humans have been practic-
ing it for over one hundred years to be prepared for the day when escape
would be necessary (11). This signals that peoples were expecting climate
change to worsen and reach a point where flashing would play a critical
role for their safety, thus suggesting that, as Justice points out, the «apoca-
lypse isn’t a single event, it’s an ongoing and relentless process, not unlike
settler colonialism itself» (2018: 168).
       Significantly, out of one hundred and fifty survivors, one hundred
and forty are women, and it is women who seem to have crucial answers


    13
        For more details about the Sun Dance, see the Canadian Encyclopedia at
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sun-dance (accessed March
10, 2022).


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Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



about the people’s current condition. For example, Ellie, an Indigenous
woman, tells the group that «we are waiting to begin again […] So we are
here, waiting for the damage to be repaired. Our mother will send us a
messenger and we will de-flash and start over» (15). While they are wait-
ing, the survivors’ existence is threatened by the entity of the Void, a sort
of male space predator (21) who, although bodiless, feeds off feelings of
fear which have the power of sucking the life out of human beings. Ma-
racle here establishes a compelling parallel between the Void and settler
colonialism: given the gendered dimension of the latter and the ways it
targeted women (but also non-heteronormative individuals, as seen in the
previous section on the apocalyptic legacies of the IRS policy), it is in turn
the women’s fear «which excited the void and freed him to move» (23).
Notably, as the narrator comes to realise, «[the men] were for the first time
in a long time completely dependent on women» (24).
      Indeed, if the women’s fear can trigger the Void, it is also the women
who discover that, to keep this entity at bay, the group needs to rely on
the imagination: «imagine future, imagine return. Get past return. Imagine be-
yond survival» (21); «Imagining a future where Earth is completely healed,
where «the grass is so green […] Earth is sobbing, huge racking sobs of
relief» (ibid.). The imagination becomes the key to survival and the renewal
of kinship relations; through it, the majority of survivors is able to fight
against the malignant entity of the Void:

         Belief took on a physical sensation and hung in the air like it
      was real. […] we danced […] through time, through space and into
      imagined future, far from the dangerous edge, far from losing it, and
      the void quieted. We felt safe. Song, dance and belief – more keys. (23)

      When the time comes, the group is finally allowed to return to Earth,
now a «deep lush green» (25), and, under the women’s guidance, they
settle on a piece of land, ready to begin again (ibid.). By giving women
this guiding role, Maracle writes back to the gendered dimension of settler
colonialism and its underlying heteropatriarchal philosophy, acknowledg-
ing the importance of women and their contributions to the well-being of
Indigenous communities. In addition to renewing Indigenous traditional
knowledges, kinship values, and lifeways, Maracle’s story leaves readers
with a final message advocating the sharing and respectful co-existence of
different traditions and cultures.
      If Maracle places the healing process of Earth in conversation with
the contribution of (Indigenous) women to the leadership and well-being


414
                                      Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



of the community, Daniel Justice’s “The Boys Who Became the Humming-
birds” explores the connection between climate change and the gender and
sexual discrimination hurting those who do not conform to Western het-
eronormativity. Speaking from an indefinite time and place, a third-per-
son narrator describes how Earth has been profoundly affected by climate
change:

        Food no longer nourished the People, who sat listless and grim in
     the shadows, hiding from the parching sun. Unhealthy waters flowed
     sluggish and mute in staining colours of orange, red and brown. Plants
     had long ago withered and blown away, when the People thought the
     drought was at its worst, before it worsened further […] It was a place
     of daily cruelty, where laughter was only mockery, where touch was
     meant to hurt, where beauty went to die. (Justice 2016: 54)14

      From the outset, readers understand that Strange Boy, the protago-
nist, is a two-spirit individual and a knowledge keeper who is committed
to healing his world. Despite being young, the narrator says, Strange Boy
remembers those «whispered tales» and how «once, long ago, beauty had
lived there, too, long before the People had turned against the world, one
another, and themselves» (ibid.). The narrator here draws a crucial parallel
between how the People turned against the world and the land, probably
causing the current drought, and how they turned against one another,
harbouring cruel feelings towards those who are different, as exemplified
by the People’s responses to Strange Boy’s attempts at healing the world.
The pathway to healing, Strange Boy believes, is to renew the beauty that
once characterised the world, and he thereby commits himself to this task:

        When others trudge to their daily labours, Strange Boy danced at
     their side […]. When their voices go mute or grow fierce, he lifted
     his shaky voice in song. He carefully gathered bright pigments from
     hidden places and used them to dye his rough cloth into hues long
     unseen by eyes grown weak from disinterest. (55)

     Every attempt that he makes through dance, song, and colourful
clothes, however, is met with suspicion and hostility, as the People refuse
to accept the beauty that Strange Boy is trying to bring back. Although res-


    Subsequent references are to this edition of “The Boys Who Became the
    14

Hummingbirds” and will be cited parenthetically by page number in the text.


                                                                                  415
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



idential schools are not mentioned, the People’s hostile behaviour calls to
mind the homophobic sentiments existing within Indigenous communities
and which, according to the Report of the Eagle Human Rights Trust afore-
mentioned, can be attributed to settler colonial policies, such as the IRS
system, and the ways in which these have been internalised by Indigenous
communities15.
      Despite this negative response, Strange Boy continues to carry out his
mission until, one day, the People turn to violence to express their disap-
proval of the young boy’s attempts. They strip him naked, beat him, and
drag him to the farthest borders of the town, forbidding him to return.
Hiding in the hills, alone and wounded, Strange Boy is about to lose hope,
when help and comfort come in the form of Shadow Boy. Strange Boy and
Shadow Boy are not strangers, as they shared more than one tender mo-
ment in the past, but their love remained in the shadows because Shadow
Boy was too scared of the People’s judgement and prejudice. Now Shadow
Boy asks for forgiveness for his cowardice and the two boys finally embrace.
While sharing this loving moment, their bodies begin to change until they
are transfigured into hummingbirds: «Scarred skin became bright feather;
brown eyes darkened black; sable hair brightened to iridescent green and
scarlet and turquoise» (56).
      In this feathered form, the Hummingbird Boys return to the place they
once called ‘home’ and, to their amazement and joy, they discover that
they can see the People’s hearts. This newly acquired power allows them to
realise that many of them do have hummingbird hearts, even though those
hearts are held captives by self-loathing, prejudice, and the fear of judge-
ment. The Hummingbird Boys then decide to free those hearts by «calling
to them in soft voices, sharing stories of possibility beyond the grim dust
of what was to a hopeful possibility of what could be» (57). Echoing “The
Void”, imagining «what could be» becomes a regenerating and healing
force, able to restore healthy relations. Indeed, many people are to join the
Hummingbird Boys in their mission, becoming birds themselves. At the
same time, not everybody welcomes this message of love: some look at the
birds in fear, others in disgust, while another group starts tossing sharp
rocks into the sky to hit as many birds as possible. Despite encountering
challenges, the Hummingbird Boys and their message of love, beauty, and
acceptance prevail, and, in parallel with their triumph, the land starts to


      15
        As regards sexual discrimination towards Indigenous bodies as a legacy
of settler colonialism, see also Justice 2018: 105-109.


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                                      Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



heal: «soon the air thundered with the defiant song of a thousand bright
hummingbirds, and the world came alive again in a loving beauty too long
denied […] It was a time of rebalancing, of taking account, of healing» (58).
Most people welcome the world’s renewed splendour and decide to return
to their traditional knowledges, «to their stories of times when they created
beautiful things» (ibid.), committing themselves to caring for one another
and for the world itself in better ways than they have done so far.
      Justice’s story ends with a powerful message regarding the renewal
of kinship relations, inviting people to accept everybody’s beauty as well
as difference, «[f]or it was beauty, and two brave, loving hearts, that had
brought them back together to one another. This is a teaching, and a re-
membrance» (59). By juxtaposing environmental restoration with the over-
coming of the prejudice and discrimination harming those who fall out
of the heteronormativity spectrum, Justice acknowledges the contribution
that two-spirit people can make within communities, as well as the impor-
tance of kinship relationships among humans and between humans and
the land.
      Both “The Void” and “The Boys Who Became the Hummingbirds” re-
sort to imagination at two different levels, i.e. as a key feature for characters
to heal the ecologically damaged world they live in along with their own
interpersonal relations. The power of the imagination is also a narrative
strategy to which Maracle and Justice resort to invite readers to better as-
sess environmental dangers. The enhancement of the imagination should
not be particularly surprising in this context because, as Garrard high-
lights, «apocalypticism is inevitably bound up with imagination, because
it has yet to come into being» (2011: 94). However, my comment on the two
stories has shown that, while the authors portray an imagined dying Earth,
they also poignantly connect this environmental apocalypse with the trau-
matic legacies of settler colonialism, an apocalypse which has already oc-
curred from Indigenous perspectives. Drawing on the lived experiences
of Indigenous peoples – including the banning of cultural traditions and
the gender/sexual discrimination against those who fall outside Western
binary thinking – Maracle and Justice rely on what could be defined as ex-
periential imagination, as they depict the apocalyptic consequences of settler
colonial policies, such as the IRS system, on Indigenous cultures, lifeways,
cosmovisions, and the related views on gender and sexuality.
      «Stories operate in the world and get results. Stories shape our un-
derstandings of the past, tell us who we are, and provide a vision for the
future», scholar Jessica Senehi argues (2000: 110). “The Void” and “The
Boys Who Became the Hummingbirds” do exactly that. Echoing Whyte’s


                                                                                  417
Francesca Mussi, North American Indigenous Perceptions of the Apocalypse



call for looking at the climate change crisis through kinship time (2021),
these stories, as this essay has demonstrated, re-shape the concept of envi-
ronmental apocalypse, situating it alongside historical, colonially-induced
traumas and Indigenous experiences of broken kinship relations. Most im-
portantly, these stories highlight the significance of storytelling and the
imagination as a way towards re-shaping understandings of the past, pres-
ent, and future and renewing Indigenous traditional knowledge systems
and kinship values. Quoting again Daniel Justice, «there can be no true
kinship without imagination» (2018: 77), and without kinship, as we have
seen, there can be no respectful and reciprocal relations between humans
and between humans and the land. In other words, without it, there can be
no Mino-bimaatisiwin.




418
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                                      The Author
      Francesca Mussi is “Cultore della Materia” in English Literature in
the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics at the University
of Pisa. She has recently completed a Leverhulme ERC fellowship in the
Department of Humanities at Northumbria University (2018-2021). Her
Leverhulme ECR fellowship focused on examining the extent to which the
work of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission related to In-
digenous epistemologies and perspectives. Her research interests include
postcolonial theory, Gender Studies, Trauma Studies, Ecocriticism, South
African literature, Indigenous literature within the Canadian context, and
notions of redress and reconciliation. Among her recent publications are
Literary Legacies of the South African TRC: Fictional Journeys into Trauma,
Truth and Reconciliation (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and “Land and Story-
telling: Indigenous Pathways towards Healing, Spiritual Regeneration and
Resurgence” (Journal of Commonwealth Literature 2021: 1-17).

      Email: francesca.mussi@northumbria.ac.uk



                                       The Article
      Date sent: 31/03/2022
      Date accepted: 31/07/2022
      Date published: 30/11/2022



                             How to cite this article
     Mussi, Francesca, “North American Indigenous Perceptions of the
Apocalypse and a Renewal of Kinship Relationships through the Imagina-
tion”, Entering the Simulacra World, Eds. A. Ghezzani - L. Giovannelli - F.
Rossi - C. Savettieri, Between, XII.24 (2022): 401-422, www.betweenjournal.it



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