Abstract

The apocalyptic genre presents a space to imagine alternatives to the governance of settler-colonialism, providing possibilities for Indigenous reclamations of land and culture. Apocalypse literature allows Indigenous writers to unveil mechanisms of settler-colonialism that dismantle attempts at Indigenous sovereignty. I will be situating Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow, Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God to pre-existing thematics of the Christian apocalyptic tradition which these Indigenous authors simultaneously draw upon and dismantle by applying them to Indigenous contexts. I will be utilizing Bernard McGinn and Richard K. Emmerson’s heuristic of the vertical (divine) and horizontal (historical) poles of apocalyptic modes of representation as a framework to demonstrate how these three novels work as apocalyptic texts and unveil aspects of settler-colonial modernity (Emmerson and McGinn 7). Apocalyptic literature unveils hidden secrets that deal with time and divinity that could unravel the fabric of society. Similarly, the Indigenous apocalyptic novels surveyed here move backwards through time to reveal hidden mechanisms of settler-colonial power that are used and reused to disregard Indigenous bodies, perspectives, and sovereignties. The dismantling of these mechanisms in the apocalyptic space allows for Indigenous characters to reclaim their connection with their cultures and territories.