Science fiction remains an enduring touchstone of pop culture, but the genre isn’t limited to spaceships and aliens like in the recent “Project Hail Mary” movie — no offense, Ryan Gosling. Science fiction is also an area researched by scholars for encompassing a perspective on our current culture, collective past and the varying viewpoints of its creators.
Michigan State University Assistant Professor Blaire Morseau has a background in cultural anthropology and is a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. At MSU, Morseau merges science fiction and Indigenous culture in her research and teaching, including in her role as the 1855 Endowed Professor of Great Lakes Anishinaabe Knowledge, Spiritualities and Cultural Practices in the Department of Religious Studies.
Her most recent book, “Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands and Waters,” provides insights on Indigenous speculative fiction to illustrate the profound ways in which Anishinaabe/Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe) communities are reclaiming their sovereignty and crafting vibrant futures.
Additionally, Morseau is part of the team of MSU scholars bringing the international Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference to East Lansing, Michigan, June 17–21. She organized the upcoming screening of the futurist Anishinaabe documentary “Aanikoobijigan” (2026) by Adam and Zack Khalil and a keynote panel featuring scholars and artists talking about their unique ways of engaging in science fiction, Indigenous speculative storytelling and repatriation.
Here, Morseau talks about the ways science fiction reflects our present and past and how Indigenous science fiction offers a unique entry point into the genre.
What is science fiction?
We tend to use science fiction as a catchall. A lot of people think about spaceships and the future and aliens. For a long time, that’s what science fiction has been, especially since it’s a genre that’s most identifiable as something that was invented in Europe or at least emerged in countries that were involved in colonialism like Great Britain and then, later, the United States.
For me, science fiction is interchangeable with speculative storytelling. When I think about science fiction from an Indigenous perspective, I think about what we would consider any sort of story, and story is used broadly. Anything that’s a narrative that imagines an ‘otherwise.’ That could be in the future, that could be in the past, that could be in just a different parallel way of existing. In the simplest terms, science fiction is any speculative storytelling.
When we broaden the term science fiction to speculative storytelling, it can, of course, look like H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds,’ but it can also look like a traditional Indigenous story about star people from my culture. Even activists are speculative storytellers because they’re trying to imagine and actualize a world that is better, ideally, than this one.
How do you combine your Indigenous cultural work and research with science fiction?
I’m trained as a cultural anthropologist, so I spent a lot of time being in my community and being with environmental activists, including Indigenous environmental activists in Michigan, for my book ‘Mapping Neshnabé Futurity.’
In the first half of the book, I break down what people assume knowledge is — or traditional knowledge versus science — and expand on some of the very specific environmental issues in Michigan that Indigenous peoples have been fighting against for a while. Then I get more theoretical into the nature of what speculative storytelling is and why Indigenous versions of this are different.
I also look at science fiction media, which might seem unconnected, but that’s the central thread when we think about Indigenous futurisms. For example, it’s two arms. One is the creative arm — which is what we usually think about when we say science fiction or speculative fiction — the stories, movies, video games, all of that. Then there’s the activist arm, which is another form of imagining an otherwise, according to Indigenous scholar Danika Fawn Medak-Saltzman.
What sets Indigenous science fiction apart from the broader genre?
Science fiction first emerges in places like Europe, Great Britain and the United States in the 19th century as a way for people to reckon with their recent past. This could be the anxieties that medical sciences were starting to bring about, electricity, the Industrial Revolution and, maybe most importantly, the violence of colonialism.
In Indigenous science fiction, Native peoples are on the other end of that history, so they’re not dealing with the same sort of existential anxieties that a lot of European or Euro-American creators are trying to grapple with. For example, in ‘The Indians Won’ by Martin Cruz Smith, the author is clearly imagining an alternative path and what might things look like had X, Y, Z not happened.
There is also what we would call new Indigenous science fiction with a lot of new authors writing about contemporary things, apocalypse themes, all of that. It can also be said that a lot of our traditional stories, things that are thousands of years old, have elements of science fiction in them. In my tribal stories, there are visitors from star people or things that sound a lot like parallel universes.
In Indigenous speculative storytelling, we’re both drawing from our traditional ways but also using the science fiction genre to talk about similar things, like spaceships and robots.
What does science fiction illuminate about the world we live in?
All science fiction is a projection of our current reality, especially creators’ class, their race, or their political affiliation. Every single speculative story is deeply political. They’re all allegories for what’s going on in that moment, whether you’re talking about ‘Star Wars’ and the Vietnam War, or H.G. Wells and ‘The War of the Worlds,’ which compares violent Martian invaders to Great Britain’s own recent past having annihilated the Tasmanians.
Science fiction is a way for us to process what’s going on. Even for my students, they often think we’re just going to use science fiction as escapism or something that’s not rooted in reality, when it’s some of the most reality-based media there is.
Not everybody likes science fiction, but if science fiction is something that resonates with you, it’s a really powerful tool to understand other folks’ experiences, especially in these times where we don’t do enough to understand each other.
