Reframing Timelines: Daniel David Moses and Indigenous Wonderworks in the 1980s

Abstract

Indigenous speculative fiction was conceptualized and produced in the late twentieth century, engaging with themes related to the modern Indigenous political movement that was occurring at the same time including decolonization, education, and resistance to settler-colonialism. In Canada, the late twentieth century experienced a cultural boom of Indigenous art in response to the pan-Indigenous political movement that enveloped the nation in the 1960s-1990s. Daniel David Moses's The Dreaming Beauty is an early example of Indigenous Wonderworks, situated within the broader framework of Indigenous Futurisms. The Dreaming Beauty reveals three things. The depth and complexity of Indigenous Futurist art; the presence of Wonderworks in the twentieth century; and the connections between Indigenous Wonderworks and the wider modern Indigenous political movement of the late twentieth century.