In the introduction to this empowering and engaging collection, Chelsea Vowel explains that the adage “education is the new buffalo” has been widely used among Indigenous peoples of Canada as a metaphor for what might provide for their societal support and survival as post-Contact colonized peoples. It evokes a generalized maxim of “we live in a different world now,” contending that past traditions and expectations are not just gone, but irretrievable; that a culture’s assumptions about one’s place in reality have shifted; and that it would prove foolish to resist or dare try to reverse that process.
With her title for this volume of eight stories, Vowel thus boldly declares that Buffalo is the New Buffalo, presenting tales in which the presumed-eradicated foundations of an Indigenous ecology (what Vowel terms as kinshapes) can be not just envisioned, but defiantly restored. Labelling this project “Indigenous Futurism” seems incomplete, for Vowel does not merely want her audience to imagine or experience a particular hopeful, positive future. As paired fiction and academic analysis, this collection also seeks ways to actively make restored Indigenous kinshapes a reality, in the here and the to-come. Buffalo is the New Buffalo meditates upon the question of how we might get there.
Before diving into a review of the stories, I should follow Vowel’s example, and invitation, which she sets out in a section placed between her introduction and preface. In “Locating Myself,” Vowel identifies herself and her relationships by stating that she is a “white-looking, cis, queer, neurodivergent, intermittently able-bodied otipêyimisow-iyiniw (Métis person) from the historic Métis community of manitow-sâkihikan (Lac Sainte Anne).” This exists as a form of the frequently shared practice among Indigenous peoples of establishing individual identities and experiences among communicating parties. For this review, it’s important that I briefly do the same.
I am a white, cis, straight, able-bodied person, with parents both of German descent, one of whom (my father) immigrated to the Philadelphia area in his late teens (as did my maternal grandmother). Despite this, I speak very little German (and technically my parents spoke Schwäbisch), choosing French between the option of that or Spanish while in school. I am a first-generation college graduate who went on to get a PhD in molecular cell biology, who now teaches and does research in bacteriology. I’ve adored reading from a young age. I’m grateful for how my opportunities to read a wide variety of books and to write reviews have led to discoveries of shared humanity among people both like me, and very different.
Such a lengthy and purposeful preface to this review aptly compares to Buffalo is the New Buffalo itself. Vowel presents her eight stories wrapped in layers of history, contextualization, precision of intent, and academic exploration. Some readers may wish to read the collection from cover to cover as presented, while others might prefer reading all the fiction before going into the details of background, interpretations, or explanations. Either way, multiple readings of the stories prove beneficial, particularly for those unfamiliar with many of their cultural allusions.
The academic dimension extending through Vowel’s fiction becomes evident with the first story in the collection, “Buffalo Bird.” It’s a historical murder mystery with rougarou shapeshifters and a reimagined (alternate history) outcome of Iron Confederacy activity that halts colonial expansion. Vowel uses frequent footnotes to clarify vocabulary, to explain aspects of Indigenous culture that may be unknown to an outsider, to expand on historical contexts she has researched, or to clarify authorial intents. Though this practice continues throughout the collection, it seems most concentrated in “Buffalo Bird,” with its firm foundations of historical event and cultural practice. Many readers may be familiar with such an academic style, also commonly employed in translations of older genre works. More disruptive, though, are occasions in this first story where Vowel places clarifications or explanatory translations directly into the narrative text. Though that style may momentarily take the reader out of “Buffalo Bird,” the story is built from such a rich tapestry of culture and history, and features such compelling characters and plot tension, that it is able to bring readers back in. By its close, “Buffalo Bird” has succeeded in entertaining, educating, and starting the reader down the pathway of restored ecologies (kinshapes) that the stories following continue to lay out.
Indeed, “Unsettled”—the closing story of Buffalo is the New Buffalo—bookends the collection with an emphasis on the academic dimension that runs throughout it, in a story that couples speculation about hibernation technology with questions regarding the colonizer/colonized divide. Written partly in the form of an academic discussion, “Unsettled” pairs the mythological memory surrounding a historical Métis figure with passages from the perspective of the actual person.
The six stories between these two limit their academic focus more to the reflections from Vowel that follow each one, rather than making them an integral element of the fiction. For the casual reader, these inner stories are thus some of the most easily digested, and they will likely appeal to speculative fiction readers of all varieties. Foremost among these are a pair of stories that are perhaps those most accessible to an outsider reader such as me: “Michif Man” and “âniskôhôcikan.”
The first follows a general plot trope familiar to anyone who has grown up in the popular SF genre: a man gains super strength after being attacked by a radioactive buffalo. These powers come with being invisible to anyone else outside of his family. The story reflects on the paradoxical alienation and power/freedom inherent in this scenario, in which an indigenous personhood is ignored by those outside kinship: the colonizers. “Michif Man” is a brilliant story where the absurdities of the superhero genre couple perfectly with equally absurd realities. More than in any other story, Vowel seems to be having fun here, and the reader can enjoy the light-hearted tone while still reflecting on the serious implications of the paradoxical associations between freedom/oppression, power/impotence, or loneliness/belonging—and their transcendence.
Vowel presents “âniskôhôcikan,” on the other hand, in three successive versions of the same tale: as hint fiction, micro fiction, and short fiction. While such a gimmick may not be strictly necessary, each version proves quite successful in conveying the themes of the story, in which nanobots are being used to restore the Cree language to babies as their native tongue. “âniskôhôcikan” most directly reflects Vowel’s purpose in Buffalo is the New Buffalo: to imagine ways in which we might make restoration of kinshapes a reality.
Another pair of stories, “A Lodge Within Her Mind” and “I, Bison,” also focus on technological speculative fiction tied to Indigenous culture, but with instances in which individual consciousness becomes transferred to the virtual. In the first, a woman clicks on an email spam link that enters her into a brain emulation trial. In the second, a woman becomes uploaded as a buffalo into a virtual reality. These two stories effectively pair dreamlike metaphysical experiences full of import and Indigenous symbolism with a speculative realm familiar to a broad swath of readers. It is also in these stories where Vowel’s most evocative writing shines, contrasting nicely with academic style elsewhere, similarly precise and direct, yet building a tableau of images and possibilities.
In “Maggie Sue,” a woman encounters a Cree woman who is a fox in disguise. It’s a touching and beautiful story that addresses themes of living amid ongoing colonization. It also directly features concepts of restored kinshapes beyond the human alone. Together with the two stories discussed above that feature virtual worlds, these stories highlight the possibilities of restoring connection between humans and other living creatures, and with the abiotic environment itself. “Maggie Sue” is also one story of several in the collection to feature various elements of queerness, a long-accepted reality of Indigenous kinshapes that here finds focus as celebration.
The final story to mention, “Dirty Wings,” is surely the most enigmatic and hardest to penetrate (at least for the outsider). Yet, I’d also argue that this story of only a few pages in length is the strongest and most meaningful of the entire volume. Vowel describes “Dirty Wings” as “asserting Métis worldviews in a present time when they are supposed to be fading.” The text is dreamlike, filled with metaphysical realities meant to overcome colonial ones. Vowel explains that “Dirty Wings” is deeply personal, with meanings only comprehended by herself, and filled with Métis cultural understandings of which outsiders are ignorant. In contrast to elsewhere in the collection, Vowel chooses not to explain those for readers here. It’s thus very easy for readers to gloss over or dismiss the story. However, appreciation and truths can be found here even for the outsider. “Dirty Wings” is apocalyptic, in the literal sense of content and style. It’s a revelatory text for the insider and initiated who have been oppressed, not meant (or ever even able) to be really understood by the colonizing power. The entire purpose of apocalyptic literature is to supply hope to a people, to illustrate that as bad as things are—or as far as their culture and traditions have been suppressed or supplanted—the future is one of overcoming, of restoration. And true to this entire collection, it provides a roadmap for how this might happen.