7. Indigenous futurity

‘Indigenous futurity’ considers how indigenous revivals might be viewed as expressions of “futurity,” operating in resistance to those assumptions that consign Native American peoples and lifeways to the past. It discusses a range of Native American poetry and theatre, including the work of Simon Ortiz, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, John Rollin Ridge, E. Pauline Johnson, Laura Tohe, and Joy Harjo. Whatever the form, contemporary Native poets look to oral literature and its long-held understanding of language as a source of change. Such poetry not only frees Native American voices, but confirms a spiritual awareness of ancestral land and community. Native American writers in all genres express an Indigenous world in all its complexity.