(Indigenous) Place and Time as Formal Strategy

Indigenous dystopian fiction presents not only the crisis of the future but the ongoing crisis of the present time, and that which is still resonant from the past. Accordingly, the potential healing of moments or processes of crisis in Indigenous dystopias is never possible without a strategic engagement with narrative itself, and even the formal aspects of the text. Storytelling, and a focus on space, place, and time in both the content and formal aspects of a story are factors in reconciling characters with that which inflicts them: in this sense, the dystopian Indigenous narrative is an engagement with environmental crisis, with the crisis of place and space, and must heal relationships with nature through a process of return to the cultural values inherent in a previous time and place.