Indigenous Futurisms

Indigenous Futurisms is a movement consisting of art, literature, comics, games, and other forms of media which express Indigenous perspectives of the future, past, and present in the context of science fiction and related sub-genres. Such perspectives may reflect Indigenous ways of knowing, traditional stories, historical or contemporary politics, and cultural realities. 
Like Afrofuturism, encapsulate multiple modes of art making from literature to visual arts, fashion and music. Inspired by Afrofuturism, the term was coined by Dr. Grace Dillon, professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program at Portland State University. In the anthology, "Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction", Dillon outlines how science-fiction can aid processes of decolonization. Using tools like slipstream, worldbuilding, science fiction and anthropological First Contact scenarios, Indigenous communities construct self-determined representations and alternative narratives about their identities and futures. Indigenous Futurists critique the exclusion of Indigenous people from the contemporary world and challenge notions of what constitutes advanced technology. In so doing, the movement questions the digital divide, noting that Indigenous peoples have at once been purposefully excluded from accessing media technologies and constructed as existing outside of modernity. The widespread use of personal computers and the Internet following the Digital Revolution created conditions in which, to some extent, Indigenous peoples may participate in the creation of a network of self-representations.
Prominent artists working within the field of Indigenous Futurisms include Loretta Todd, a Cree/Métis filmmaker who runs IM4, the Indigenous Matriarchs 4 XR Media Lab; Elizabeth LaPensée, an Anishinaabe, Métis, and settler-Irish game designer and digital artist; Skawennati, a Mohawk multi-media artist best known for her project "TimeTraveller™", a nine-episode machinima series that uses science fiction to examine First Nations histories; Stephen Graham Jones, a Blackfeet author; Cree Métis multimedia artist Jason Baerg; and Wendy Red Star, an Apsáalooke artist.
Indigenous scholars have advanced understanding of Indigenous Futurisms. Dr. Grace Dillon, who is editor of "Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction", has encouraged stories through IIF, the Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Science Fiction Contest. Lou Catherine Cornum is a writer, scholar, and Indigenous Futurist known for their work Space NDNs. Chickasaw scholar Jenny L. Davis emphasizes the importance of 'Indigenous language futurisms,' where she shows that Indigenous languages are important to articulating and understanding Indigenous temporalities.
Indigenous Futurisms is connected to Chicanafuturism, "a spectrum of speculative aesthetics produced by U.S. Latin@s, including Chican@s, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, Cuban Americans, and other Latin American immigrant populations. It also includes innovative cultural productions stemming from the hybrid and fluid borderlands spaces, including the U.S.-Mexico border."
Virtual Reality.
Virtual reality (VR) is a medium in which the concept of screen sovereignty can be used to combat misrepresentation of Indigenous people in media. indigenous VR makers are shaping the culture of technology through VR in order to properly represent indigenous people and their culture. Currently, mostly cis white men are the creators within the digital media field and digital technology industries. Indigenous Matriarch 4 is a virtual reality company that provides Indigenous people with the tools they need to participate in and remake the virtual world. Because Indigenous people are often misrepresented in media, VR has become a place to creatively express Native American culture and ideas. Indigenous VR has also provided Indigenous people with the opportunity to be leaders in a new technology field and to be involved in technology fields that previously excluded them and that had very little representation of Native American and Indigenous communities. 
Virtual reality is being used to create space and capacity for Indigenous creatives to tell their stories.VR is used by many Indigenous practitioners who use these new types of media to reimagine traditional storytelling and express themselves and their culture, promote health and wellbeing, and create self- esteem and pride. New virtual platforms have also been created that retell significant moments in indigenous history as well as to connect to the present, like the platform AbTeC Island (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace).
Criticism.
Indigenous Futurisms as a term has received mixed feedback among Indigenous Brazilian musicians, with many indigenous artist not embracing this concept because they think that preserving culture is much more important than thinking about the future. For example, Indigenous rapper Kunumi MC, disagrees, arguing the term is a white man's term unreflective of Indigenous people, saying: “We, native Indigenous people living in tribes, don’t think about the future,” he says. “The white man has a vision of progress, not us. Our progress is to preserve our culture ... to live in the present, I have to remember my past.”