Kinship Relations and Decolonial Solidarity in Chelsea Vowel’s Métis Futurism

This article explores two short stories by Métis writer Chelsea Vowel, “Buffalo Bird” and “Maggie Sue,” from her collection Buffalo Is the New Buffalo (2022), focusing on principles of kinship relations present in various Indigenous cosmologies. These involve relations with nonhuman animals, the land, and natural forces, and I argue that such notion of kinship can be crucial for decolonial manifestations of solidarity. Where Euro-Western conceptualizations of solidarity seldom extend beyond human relations, decolonial solidarity guided by kinship principles will most effectively uncover histories, past and present, of colonial oppression and violence against Indigenous peoples and land. This will also contribute to the creation of worlds otherwise, like those (re)imagined in Vowel’s stories, where Indigenous lives may thrive.