Native myth, Sci-Fi form happy marriage
Drew Hayden Taylor admits that “First Nations and science fiction don’t usually go together.” In the popular imagination, they tend to occupy different mythic poles, making Native science fiction a “literary oxymoron.”
Taylor, however, is a fan of hybrids and so took up the challenge of wedding the two in his book “Take Us To Your Chief.” As with most mash-ups, the tone is mostly comic, playing off of incongruities. The idea that dream catchers might be part of a mind-control conspiracy is just one example. Because let’s face it, there has to be some sinister explanation for their popularity, doesn’t there?
The dream catcher story has serious undertones, reflecting Native distrust of government agencies. The best science fiction always hooks into contemporary issues in this way, its vision of the future a commentary on the present. And so Taylor is able to weave familiar SF tropes together with traditional Native narratives throughout, as with the experience of “first contact.” This is a story Natives heard before, so they’re immediately on their guard when the alien Zxsdcf arrive. Do these visitors want to make treaties with Earth, or just go for genocide?
There may also be a deeper philosophical message involved in Taylor’s hybrids. In several stories, the idea of animism is introduced, the belief that everything is alive or has a soul. One young man’s suicide is even derailed by the various objects in his bedroom coming to life, led by an old toy robot named Mr. Gizmo.
Such a world view is very different from that of SF, which is more driven by technology than a spiritual kinship with nature. The story “Lost in Space” plays with this contrast, portraying a Native astronaut named Mitchell who feels out of touch with Native traditions in an environment where everything, even the gravity, is manufactured and artificial.
Like all of us, Mitchell is lost in modernity, drifting alone through space, unattached to anything real. And yet it’s his shipboard Artificial Intelligence that comes to Mitchell’s rescue by providing Aboriginal drum music and old videos of his discussions with his grandfather in order to overcome his sense of rootlessness and isolation. Finding links to our past in the future will be an important task. And for good or ill, technology will have to be our guide.