Extended kinship as a means of survivance within Indigenous literary futurism in “Legends are made, not born” by Métis author Cherie Dimaline
ALICE SALION
Abstract
This article explores how Métis author Cherie Dimaline elaborates wâhkôhtowin, the Indigenous principle of extended kinship, in her 2016 short story entitled “Legends are made, not born.” The text encapsulates some of the themes and strategies specific to Indigenous futurism, a recent artistic genre which sheds light on survival strategies intended as a restorative coping practice to claim Aboriginal self-determination. Through the vicissitudes of a queer “made-not-born” Native family, the author depicts empowering landscapes – or kinscapes – that bind humans and nonhumans to all of creation, giving rise to familial bonds that are not constrained by implications of descent but rather of communal responsibility beyond anthropocentric, heteronormative, and racial colonial logics.
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Anthropocene, apocalypse, Indigenous futurism, survivance, Wâhkôhtowin
Pages
78-90