Liberated from the dictates of realism, speculative fiction, which includes genres such as science fiction (SF), fantasy, and alternative history, creates fantastical worlds that allow for reevaluations of old narratives of history, culture, and identity and open possibilities for new narratives. However, as with any kind of discourse, practices of inclusion and exclusion and the power structures that they produce must be examined to foster this subversive potential. Marginalized peoples have often been excluded from genre fiction, including speculative fiction, and especially SF, which has historically centered cisgender, white, male, and colonizer perspectives. However, there has been an active movement to decolonize these genres. Indigiqueer SF storytellers, for example, are integrating traditional storytelling techniques, playing with existing genre expectations, and working in the footsteps of literary movements such as Afrofuturism to forge their own intervention in SF. This essay examines two such stories, “How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls” by Two-Spirit Métis/Baawiting Nishnaane writer Kai Minosh Pyle (they/them) and “Andwànikàdjigan” by nij-manidowag (Two-Spirit) Mi’kmaq/Algonquin writer Gabriel Castilloux Calderon (they/them), to show how Indigiqueer storytellers both utilize and challenge the SF genre to reflect the past and present experiences of Indigiqueer people and, maybe more importantly, to imagine futures in which Indigiqueer people can thrive.

Keywords: Indigiqueer; Two-Spirit; science fiction; decolonization; Indigenous studies