Self-proclaimed 'Indigenerds' claim space in streaming, sci-fi and table top role-playing games

Three Indigenous artists and content creators are Indigenizing nerdy popular culture while battling stereotypes, building communities and collaborating with one another.

Alina Pete, an artist from Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan, has edited a collection of stories into a graphic novel called Indigenerds, which is set to publish next year.

She said popular culture spheres have been mainly white-centric and through her artistic journey she has worked toward creating space for Indigenous creators. 

"I really like seeing these stories celebrated because so often we can get pigeon-holed and stereotyped especially with Native people," she told CBC Indigenous from her home in Surrey, B.C.

"There's this idea that we're really still focused in the past and a lot of people's perception of us is teepees and buckskin and not, like, playing Nintendo on the reserve like I used to with my cousins [when] I was a kid."

Indigenerds includes 11 stories from Indigenous people from all backgrounds.

Pete said much of her own work is within the science fiction genre, including the story she wrote for Indigenerds. Pete based her story off of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode which features a common trope in sci-fi.

A group of Indigenous people have occupied land and are looked at as a "primitive" society while the futuristic heroes resemble a "civilized" culture.

"They are being asked to move off of their planet once again; my story is how [the episode] affected me even as a young child," Pete said.

Pete remembers thinking it was cool to see that Indigenous people were represented in this futuristic setting. 

"We're in space. We've got our own sovereignty even if it means having to leave Earth," she said.

"But how depressing it was to know that even in the far future where everything is supposed to be utopian, we've fixed all of our problems now in space, [and] colonization is still happening and we are still being forcibly removed from our land."

Her own science fiction writing, she said, is written with a more hopeful and decolonized focus.

"It's sort of idealized, back to living in sync with the land and we [bring] a lot of sustainable practices, traditional practices in fact, with us back to the future," she said.