Stepping out of the shadows: Aiswarya Sethumadhavan, Saraswathy Selvarajan, ‘Narrating otherwise: tracing settler colonial shadows and Indigenous futurism in the works of Darcie Little Badger’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Stepping out of the shadows: Aiswarya Sethumadhavan, Saraswathy Selvarajan, ‘Narrating otherwise: tracing settler colonial shadows and Indigenous futurism in the works of Darcie Little Badger’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2026

23Jul26

Abstract: This study examines how Darcie Little Badger portrays the aftermath of settler colonialism on the Lipan Apache people in Elatsoe, A Snake Falls to Earth, and Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe, and how these novels engage in the process of biskaabiiyang. Employing close reading textual analysis using settler colonial studies and Indigenous futurism, the study reveals that Little Badger subtly exposes settler colonial strategies, such as the elimination of food sources, authorised killings of Indigenous people, and the stereotypical attitudes of those in power, by using a nonlinear narrative style that often shifts between the past and speculative futures. The study explores how speculative worldbuilding, storied landscapes and spiral temporalities contribute to Indigenous continuity and biskaabiiyang. As theorised by Wolfe, territoriality has been the ultimate settler-colonial objective for the elimination of Indigenous peoples from their traditional territories, which Little Badger criticises. The study further proposes the concept of ‘narrative biskaabiiyang’ to describe how Indigenous futurism storytelling reconnects Indigenous cultures, land relations and storytelling with futures through storied landscapes and spiral temporality, thereby sustaining Indigenous survivance and continuity.

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