Book launch for Indigenous sci-fi anthology to be held in Regina

There's a lot of post-apocalyptic science fiction being written today, but Indigenous writers tend to have a different take on the genre, says Jesse Archibald-Barber.

The University of Regina English professor is one of the writers who has a short story included in Mitêwâcimowina: Indigenous Science Fiction.

He notes that several writers in the collection (the title is Cree for "extraordinary stories") set their dystopias in the future, but they are actually allegories for colonialism.

"From a western perspective, the apocalypse is something that will happen in the future," he said. "For many Indigenous writers, the apocalypse is something that has already happened."

What's being alluded to is not only the early destruction of Indigenous people through, for example, disease, but also the later, negative impacts brought about such things as the Indian Act and the residential school system, he says.

Archibald-Barber says it's "wonderful, a real honour" to be included in the first anthology of Indigenous science fiction in Canada.

"What's great about science fiction is that it's so liberating," he said. "It doesn't have to be a direct mirror of reality."

The book launch is Thursday at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, starting at 7 p.m. CST, with several of the authors present.