The outer space future of blackness and indigeneity in Midnight Robber and The Moons of Palmares

This thesis explores ways in which Afrofuturist and Indigenous Futurist works complicate and trouble what constitutes Indigeneity in the Americas and specifically how that Indigeneity is posed in relation to Blackness and the Black diaspora. Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber and Zainab Amadahy’s The Moons of Palmares are two texts that represent Blackness and Indigeneity in outer space settings creatively constructed from earthly histories of settler colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. By demonstrating the complex ways in which these violent processes have created the material, social and political reality of the Americas, both texts represent peoples’ attempts to create belonging far from their ancestral lands and/or in tension with other peoples. I pose sovereignty and labour as two of the modalities through which these attempts at belonging are made, noting the limitations of both these discourses and how they have been mobilized. Overall, this thesis contributes to a discussion between and across the disciplines of Black and Indigenous studies in order to better understand global systems of oppression and imagine future space-times free from the constricting categorizations imposed under settler colonialism and slavery.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat