By Timotéo Ikoshy Montoya II

The New Mexico Museum of Space History is perched where the steep foothills of the Sacramento Mountains are flattened by gravity and erosion. The building is flared at the base as if a rocket were hidden at its foot, ready to blast into the sky. The museum rises four stories higher than most buildings in Alamogordo. From the windows of the third story, where the Sci Fi & Sci Fact: Two Worlds Collide exhibition is tucked in the corner, you can see a large swath of the Tularosa Basin—the infamous White Sands and the San Andres Mountains filling the horizon. 

As I turned from the windows and wove my way down the carpeted ramps of the museum, a familiar sense of awe fell over me. I felt this same awe as an eight-year-old, curled up next to my father as we watched the camera pan from a sea of stars toward an Imperial Cruiser. I felt it again the following summer at Space Camp, where I launched a vinegar and baking soda rocket to rousing cheers. It is the same awe I felt as a young college student when I learned how precise the Sun Dagger was at Chaco Canyon. And I feel it today when I read stories of Indigenous Futurisms.

I departed Del Rio, Texas, at dawn, ensuring I could get to the exhibition before the museum closed. On the long drive, I watched the landscape outside my window shift from limestone deserts of ocotillo and sotol to grasslands pinned by yucca and piñon, and finally to mountain canyons of cottonwood, ponderosa, and aspen before dropping down into the creosote heat of the Tularosa Basin. These are the lands my people, the Lipan Apache, traversed countless times. Human hands, feet, and imaginations have shaped these lands since time immemorial. From these lands humanity has continuously sought the stars, first through archeoastronomy observatories atop the Sacramento Mountains, then through twentieth-century White Sands missile tests that enabled both the unprecedented destruction of the atomic bomb, and the launching of early space exploration satellites.

I made my way down the ramp that led to the Sci Fi & Sci Fact exhibition, where defunct satellites hung from the ceiling above me, their polished aluminum and steel bodies reflecting star-like under the harsh halogens. Movie posters that defined my adolescence plastered the walls—Star Wars, The Planet of The Apes, and Starship Troopers. Adjacent to a stunning display of spacesuits from science fiction movies, I saw a small, glass display case of books. An aged copy of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon presided over novels from other masters of science fiction such as Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The most recent book in the lineup was Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun.

In their careers, these authors have all employed the fundamental exercise of science fiction—speculating upon our reality. These fertile speculations invariably reflect and refract the current socio-cultural experience of each author, allowing them to speak upon the current moment and the potential realities and futures humanity could inhabit. From gender, to space, science, technology, culture, and religion—science fiction stories shape the future and have had a profound impact on Western society.

Herein lies the awe-inducing power of the genre; these novels and movies are not merely trite stories, they convey humanity’s potentials. These potentials are not always positive. The cautionary tale of a dystopian post-apocalypse is as vibrant and important as the struggle of a budding utopia. That is why the lived experience and imagination of the author writing them is as important as the stories themselves. It is, after all, a great responsibility to speculate about what could be, for it could, and does, become.

So, to see an Indigenous author like Roanhorse alongside authors who have undeniably shaped Western culture, science, and technology, I am not ashamed to admit, I teared up. I am sure the mother and two teenagers who rounded the corner at that moment didn’t expect to see a 6’ 3″, 270-pound man wiping his eyes, but there I was. The teenagers didn’t seem to notice, their own awe-filled eyes glued to the wall of spacesuits. This small but important acknowledgment of an Indigenous author in an exhibition about science fiction and its inseparable relationship with the vast world of science and culture felt like the completion of a circle I had been walking for the last eight years.

I first heard the term “Indigenous Futurisms” in 2016 when it was used to describe the electronic music group A Tribe Called Red (now named The Halluci Nation) who fused powwow songs and electro, dubstep, and other musical subgenres. I later learned that Indigenous Futurisms was coined by Professor Grace L. Dillion in her 2012 anthology, Walking the Clouds. The phrase has since been used to define an emerging movement of science fiction books, art, and media that speculate on the past, present, and future from an Indigenous perspective. Authors such as Roanhorse, Stephen Graham Jones, and Louise Erdrich have all been claimed under the Indigenous Futurisms umbrella. In 2019, as I started writing my own stories, I came across Darcie Little Badger’s name in an article about Indigenous Futurisms.

Like me, Little Badger is Lipan Apache (or Ndé as we call ourselves). In the world of genre fiction writers, there are very few Indigenous people, and even fewer write science fiction. In the world in general, there are just a few thousand Lipan Apache people. To have an established Lipan Apache Indigenous Futurisms writer feels like an improbability. An improbability that has continued to inspire me to pursue writing.

Little Badger has published stories in the genres of Indigenous Futurisms, fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism for over a decade. Her last three novels have been featured in countless reading lists and have won awards such as the Locus and Newbery Honor. Before all that, Little Badger earned her PhD in oceanography from Texas A&M University.

“I have to say, I don’t regret one moment of being an oceanographer,” Little Badger tells me, her voice tin-like over my phone speaker.

She explains that her work as a scientist has undeniably impacted her writing. Her second novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, takes place in a near-future Texas threatened by hurricanes resulting from rising ocean temperatures—a process Little Badger knows well. Before her stunning 2020 debut Elatsoe, which garnered multiple awards and was on seemingly every reading list posted on Instagram in 2021, Little Badger worked as an editor of academic scientific papers.

“When I was actively doing research and scientific editing, I’d be reading this cutting-edge research and it would just be very inspiring […] It made my imagination run and think, well, if this is possible, what if we just kind of push the boundaries of what we can currently do a little bit?” Little Badger says. “By entering the field of science, I’m just getting a more comprehensive understanding of the world around me and its potential.”

While it may be a little passé (at least in my circles) to say science fiction influences science—with clear examples like cell phones, virtual reality headsets, credit cards being dreamed up in science fiction before being brought to reality decades later—the ways in which science influences science fiction is less considered.This is one of the reasons the former New Mexico Museum of Space History Director, Chris Orwoll, created the Sci Fi & Sci Fact exhibition.

“We also have to understand that there’s a lot of science fiction stuff that was written about that never came to be because it was just too crazy,” Orwoll said with an enthusiasm I know well. It’s the enthusiasm of a nerd who finally gets to discuss his interests. Behind him, a massive bookshelf lined the wall, packed with science fiction and fantasy novels, toys, collectibles, and academic texts. “What scientists and engineers nowadays think about [like] how would we spend long periods of time in space? You’ll see that brought into movies. It’s a fictional thing that is written about, [but] it’s actually based in reality.”

The “comprehensive understanding of the world around me and its potentials” that Little Badger describes as a facet of being a scientist is precisely what makes for excellent science fiction and, more generally, all speculative fiction. A science fiction writer should be learning from scientists, as Orwoll alludes to, and they should be asking some of the same questions a scientist would, like, What would happen if ocean levels rose a hundred meters?, What would happen to people who live in a different atmosphere? How would they be impacted?, What if we could listen to our distant ancestors? What would they say? (there are many possible ways to listen), and a fundamental question to all scientists and science fiction writers, With what we know, how could we change the world for good or ill?

A comprehensive understanding of the world is not limited to science, nor does science fiction have to prove anything—there is no peer review process for a story. It is precisely this freedom that allows science fiction authors to include, advance, and transcend science, pushing at the seams of what is possible, enriching the world with stories full of solutions, questions, and quandaries that we are
incapable of enacting, or sometimes, even imagining. This sandbox quality is only limited by the author’s imagination and their “comprehensive understanding of the world around them,” which, in turn, is influenced by their lived experiences.

Indigenous Futurisms then reflect the lived experience of contemporary Indigenous peoples. As part of the science fiction and speculative fiction genre, Indigenous writers are often in conversation with Western culture, sciences, and technology through critique, synthesis, and comparison with their own Indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous Futurisms frequently step beyond tragedy toward a post-colonial reflection on modernity that enables Indigenous people to defy stereotypes, define themselves, and define their own relationships with their people, lands, languages, history, and culture—in addition to colonization, climate change, Western sciences, and technology.

In A Snake Falls to Earth, we meet Nina, a Lipan Apache girl from a small town in near-future Texas, and Oli, a fifteen-year-old cottonmouth snake from the “Reflecting World,” a realm of animal beings, spirits, and monsters. Oli is tasked with helping his friend Ami, a toad being who is sick due to climate change endangering his people. Together, Nina and Oli work to reconnect the two worlds, saving Ami and the toad populations from extinction, and Nina’s grandmother from an encroaching hurricane. It is Nina’s continued connection to land, language, lineage, and the “Reflecting World” that emboldens her to fight against the impacts of climate change on her community and hope for a better world.

“My books will always have an element of hope to them regardless of what the subject is or what genre they’re in,” Little Badger says. “I feel like we owe it to the generations that come after us to fight for the best possible version of the future that we can for them. Not to give up. Because when you lose hope, you lose that passion to act. And it’s those actions that are going to make change. For the people who survived those waves of colonization, they had to act. If you give up, then how do we survive? I want younger generations to survive and then I want them to have a place where they’re able to be happy and thrive. And so that’s what I try to really fight for in my work. But also, I do acknowledge that things will be difficult.”

It is this sense of hope I admire so deeply about Little Badger’s writing. Her stories, while largely written for young adults, don’t shy away from difficult experiences like loss, grief, tragedy, and the long chain of impacts that colonization has had on Indigenous communities. It is how these themes are continuously juxtaposed with reconnection and repair that makes them hopeful. It is the gentle, consistent encouragement from community, family, ancestors, and spirit helpers that allows tragedy to be approached safely. This safety is founded in active Indigeneity: the connection to land, people, and the more-than-human worlds that move these stories beyond survival, beyond overcoming the ravages of colonization, and into stories of survivance. Survivance is defined by Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor as “renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” And it is stories that renounce dominance, tragedy, and victimry, that are undeniably alive with possibility and hope.

As Little Badger states, “Things will be difficult.” It’s a sentiment I have heard many times from Indigenous writers and activists who end similarly stirring proclamations of fighting for future generations with an acknowledgment of the inherent difficulty of doing so. In my experience, this turn toward pragmatic idealism is natural for Indigenous peoples who know just how much has been lost, how much our ancestral territories have changed, and how much forward-thinking hope and fortitude, tempered by sobering acknowledgments of tragedy and grief, were required by our ancestors so we could be here today. We know it is possible to overcome tragedy because we are here. We know it is possible to hope for a better future where our rights as Indigenous peoples are acknowledged because it is actively happening.

Little Badger, as a Lipan Apache person, not only writes about but lives this reality every day. It is a reality that balances acknowledgment of difficult pasts and hopeful reclamations of the future to create abundant stories of reconnection and repair. Recently, mRNA data connected the bones of a seven-hundred-year-old elder found in the Chinati Mountains in West Texas to Darcie Little Badger’s mother, and on May 18, 2024, the elder’s remains were reburied at El Cementerio del Barrio de los Lipanes, in Presidio, Texas. This same graveyard was transferred back to the Lipan Apache in 2021—the first land ever transferred back to the Lipan Apache by the state of Texas. As a non-federally recognized tribe, the remains of our ancestors are not protected under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and it was by the grace of small West Texas families and communities that the lands and ancestor were returned to us.

“I also know that it’s just probably the first of many, many small victories that we’ll have in terms of protecting what’s sacred. It was heartening […] This reburial is significant for all Lipan people,” Little Badger says when I asked her about the experience. The return of land, the reburial, the mRNA evidence, all these events will forever impact the fight for the rights of not only the Lipan Apache, but the dozens of non-federally recognized Indigenous tribes of Texas who face similar struggles of reconnection, acknowledgment, and reparation. 

While the ancestral territories of the Lipan Apache originally followed the Pecos River and Rio Grande from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, many of our ancestors were forcibly moved from our ancestral territories. Many bands were either pushed past the Rio Grande into what is now called Mexico, marched to the Mescalero Reservation, or simply driven into hiding in the many small rancherias and towns across Texas. This disconnection is a constant lament in our community, with many tribal members knowing very little about who they are and the lands they come from. This is precisely why stories of survivance, stories like Little Badger’s, afford us an opportunity to reclaim, to create what cannot be reclaimed, and to dream an Indigenous future that could never be if tragedy were our only story.

In August 2024, Little Badger wrote of this monumental return in an article published by the Texas Observer stating, “We never lost our home, I realize. Unbroken generations of my family are folded within the sun-warmed Earth. We are in the mountains.” 

It comes as no surprise that the return of her ancestor has inspired Little Badger to set her fourth novel in the Chinati Mountains where her ancestor was buried beside a metate (grinding stone) over seven hundred years ago. It is a story I trust will gather and sow the seeds of possibility for the future for our people.

My spirits were high as I walked out of the New Mexico Museum  of Space History and made my way to my Toyota RAV4 loaded down with camping gear and books. As I drove away, I let gravity pull my car down the road. I was in no hurry to be anywhere. I grabbed some Thai food before heading back up Highway 82 into the Sacramento Mountains. About five miles up the hill I turned off the highway and followed a road until the pavement gave way to dirt. Elk greeted me there, unbothered by my puttering engine. I made camp on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, on the land of Pueblo and Apache peoples, and watched the sun set behind the San Andres Mountains from my tent. As I laid in my sleeping bag, I considered the rolling arroyos below me that once produced enough water to flood White Sands. I gave a small breath of gratitude to the mountain beneath me, and to the countless ancestors folded within the sun-warmed earth. I hope that one day mRNA data may help us reclaim these ancestors, a tether we can keep even as we seek habitable planets among the stars. I hope that one day my children’s children will watch a small group of humans leave Earth from White Sands at a rocket’s behest, knowing their ancestors are buried beneath the land upon which they stand. I hope that those humans leave Earth not in escape, but as an act of pragmatic idealism—an act of unshakable hope. I hope that one day my people will get to say, “We never lost our home. Unbroken generations of our families are folded within sun-warmed earths. We are in the mountains and the skies.” 
—

Timotéo I. Montoya II (Lipan Apache, Scottish, French, Spanish) is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas and a second-year fiction student in the Creative Writing MFA Program at The Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a writer of Indigenous Futurisms and Speculative Fiction and is currently working on his first Indigenous Futurisms epic—The I’xos Trilogy. He received his BFA in Cultural Anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2013, with a focus on Indigenous food systems. He has published a short story in Into the Unknown Together, A New Mexico climate fiction anthology, and a chapter on Indigenous Futurisms in A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework (2023), published by Wiley-Blackwell.