Powerful stories of “Métis futurism” that envision a world without violence, capitalism, or colonization.
“Education is the new buffalo” is a metaphor widely used among Indigenous peoples in Canada to signify the importance of education to their survival and ability to support themselves, as once Plains nations supported themselves as buffalo peoples. The premise is that many of the pre-Contact ways of living are forever gone, so adaptation is necessary. But Chelsea Vowel asks, “Instead of accepting that the buffalo, and our ancestral ways, will never come back, what if we simply ensure that they do?”
Inspired by classic and contemporary speculative fiction, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo explores science fiction tropes through a Métis lens: a Two-Spirit rougarou (shapeshifter) in the nineteenth century tries to solve a murder in her community and joins the nehiyaw-pwat (Iron Confederacy) in order to successfully stop Canadian colonial expansion into the West. A Métis man is gored by a radioactive bison, gaining super strength, but losing the ability to be remembered by anyone not related to him by blood. Nanites babble to babies in Cree, virtual reality teaches transformation, foxes take human form and wreak havoc on hearts, buffalo roam free, and beings grapple with the thorny problem of healing from colonialism.
Indigenous futurisms seek to discover the impact of colonization, remove its psychological baggage, and recover ancestral traditions. These eight short stories of “Métis futurism” explore Indigenous existence and resistance through the specific lens of being Métis. Expansive and eye-opening, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo rewrites our shared history in provocative and exciting ways.
The debut collection of short stories from Métis writer Chelsea Vowel is a gut renovation of the science-fiction genre that liberates dystopian and post-apocalyptic ideas from tired tropes to explore radical possibilities for Indigenous resilience…
While the stories grapple with loss, trauma, and violence, the collection is profoundly hopeful, offering expansive visions of Métis existence that encompass the complexity of the past and the potential of a technologically limitless future.
As paired fiction and academic analysis, this collection…seeks ways to actively make restored Indigenous [kinscapes] a reality, in the here and the to-come. Buffalo is the New Buffalo meditates upon the question of how we might get there.
These are stories that can be told around the campfire late at night when the aunties howl back at the wolves. These are stories that can be taught in a graduate level seminar on Indigenous literatures…
I hope future generations of Métis youth pick up this book and find home within its pages just as I have.
