Shell, deer, and the postapocalyptic village: Transmotion and Indigenous futurity at Puhú

At Puhú (CA-ORA-132/317), a village in the Santa Ana Mountains of southern California, shell and other more-than-human relations organized village life. This article interprets these relations through local forms of transmotion, Gerald Vizenor’s concept of transcendent Indigenous movement rooted in ancestral relations, story, and place. Based on 10 years of collaborative research with Tongva, Acjachemen, and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Indians) communities through the Black Star Canyon Archaeological Project (2013–2020), this article explores how shell, transported inland from the coast and embedded in the mountain fossilized deposits, supported conditions of Indigenous futurity in communal prosperity, governance, ceremony, and autonomy. A vignette presents these relations as speculative storytelling to further explore the senses of transmotion offered by the archaeological record. The article then examines how archaeologies of Indigenous futurity risk imposing a discovery logic. Instead, long-term, community-driven collaboration acknowledges futurity as already present, requiring no analytical naming or genre tropes.