Today’s post is about a short story by mari kurisato. Her story is included in the anthology Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. According to the bio on the publisher website:
mari kurisato is the pen name for a disabled, LGBTQIA, tribally enrolled Cote First Nation Ojibwe woman who lives in Denver, Colorado, with her wife and son.
The challenge of someone having a pen name and writing as an Indigenous author is that Indigeneity is inherently relational. The United Nations definition includes being identified by a community as being part of Indigenous identity. An Indigenous author with a pen name is, to use Joanne Barker's phrase, a kinless Indian.
However, the one thing that she has in her favour is that Joshua Whitehead, by virtue of including her in his collection, implicitly vouches that she is being truthful about her claim to Indigenous identity.
In 2016, a different author had her story published in Love Beyond Body Space and Time: An Indigenous LGBTQ Sci-Fi Anthology. In 2020, a group of Indigenous authors (Alicia Elliot, Terese Mailhot, Nazbah Tom, Joshua Whitehead, and Tyler Pennock) wrote an open letter asking that she clarify her identity claims. So Joshua Whitehead is no stranger to dealing with complex identity issues in publishing, so I am assuming that when mari approached Joshua with a story, Joshua did not just accept her word that she was who she said she was. But... you know... who knows. It's so hard to tell these days what is real and what is not. In situations such as this, Kim Tallbear says that rather than not citing people we should recontextualize them (Cornell, Barnes & Tallbear, 2022). So, I am contextualizing what it means when someone claims Indigenous identity under a pen name.
If someone were to ask me, "does this meet the criteria of a First People's text for English First Peoples?" I would say "I don't know." With that being said, let's talk about the story.
Story Summary
Mari’s story opens with our protagonist being injured. The premise is that due to solar activity and industrial activity, the planet is becoming uninhabitable. People are escaping. Some scientists are staying behind to try to fix the problem. People who can't afford to leave earth stay on earth. And there are synthetic humans who are not allowed to escape earth.
The main character is a synth who disagrees with the policy of synths being prohibited from leaving earth:
"It wasn't just because I was the recreated mind of an Anishinaabe scientist, housed in an artificial body that had no 'human' flesh at all. Nor was it because I was transgender, or niizh manidoowag, a carrier of sacred healing medicines of the Anishinaabe peoples.”
(kurisato, 2020, p.140).
It turns out that she is injured because she is in an armed conflict with people who are attacking her, and she fights back. It turns out that the reason she is fighting so hard is because she is trying to help children get to a ship to escape earth. All members of the group are synths except one human. They get to the ship, escape earth, and find home on a refugee ship for synthfolks.
Reflection
This story opens up a number of interesting questions. First and foremost, if you are a robot who was shaped in the image of an Indigenous person, does that make you Indigenous. I say obviously not. The United Nations definition of Indigenous Peoples is very clear that Indigenous identity applies to people. Robots are not people, thus they cannot be Indigenous people.
Another interesting topic is an exploration of the science fiction theme of sentient robots. I think robots can be designed to act as though they are sentient, but are never actually sentient. Thanks to the rise of large language learning models like ChatGPT, topics like these are important to discuss. The rise of AI induced psychosis highlights the need for all of us, not just the nerds, to discuss the difference between AI acting as though it is human as opposed to AI just doing what it was programmed to do. I think it would be worthwhile to have a class discussion on the science fiction theme of sentience. Not just for entertainment value, but to develop critical thinking skills around AI.
Another fun discussion would be on the laws of robotics. Asimov's three laws of robotics says,
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov later added a zeroth law:
A robot must not harm humanity.
When the main character was fighting humans in order to save a human, was her behaviour consistent with the laws of robotics? If there were only synths in the group and no humans, would the main character's actions be consistent with the laws of robotics? Do you think the author considered the laws of robots when she chose to include a human in the group? Why or why not? Would you have experienced the story differently if a human were not involved?
Works cited but not linked
Cornell, G., Barnes, B., & Tallbear, K. (2022, March 21). Opening remarks [Conference session]. Minnesota State University Department of English, Unsettling Genealogies, Minneapolis, Minnesota. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyY0egN0cd4
kurisato, m. (2020). In J. Whitehead (Ed.), Love after the end: An anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer speculative fiction (pp.135-146). Vancouver, British Columbia: Arsenal Pulp Press.
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This is a sister blog to https://twinkleshappyplace.blogspot.com/
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