Sadekaronhes Esquivel (any pronouns) is a Kanien’kehà:ka and Mexican Indigenous artist and writer. Esquivel utilizes illustration and gaming to create worlds and stories that promote imaginative futures and possibilities, enhancing Native representation in pop culture.
Part four of a five-part series in collaboration with the Museum of Pop Culture, with grant funding from 4culture.
In collaboration with MoPop for their “WA Untold Pop Culture Stories” series, MoPop wanted to focus on the stories of King County pop culture creators in order to ensure that a more accurate representation of culture artists in America are preserved for future generations.
RIZE’s founder, Luna Reyna, Little Shell Ojibwe descendant, came to this project hoping to bring varying Indigenous stories, identities and perspectives to the forefront. Oral histories are traditionally how many Indigenous people have passed down culture, customs, and tradition. Through this series, we explore pop culture voices of Indigenous creators in what is now considered Washington state.
Indigenous Futurism
Sadekaronhes Esquivel (any pronouns) is a Kanien’kehà:ka and Mexican Indigenous artist and writer whose maternal family resides on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Reserve in Ontario, California and paternal family migrated from Casa Grandes, Mexico. He comes from a family of artists, writers, beaders, painters, and regalia crafters.
Esquivel utilizes illustration and gaming to create worlds and stories that promote imaginative futures and possibilities, enhancing Native representation in pop culture.
“If you can’t imagine a future for your people, do you have one?,” Esquivel shared.
Esquivel looks at Indigenous futurism through the lens of what could change but also what is culturally relevant because Native people will continue to be connected to their communities and that will keep people grounded into the future.
“I think with indigenous futurism, the thing about it is it’s a chance to tell stories through our own lenses without relying on the shared culture that we have right now through colonization,” Esquivel said. “It’s a chance to imagine something different”
Esquivel’s vision of Indigenous futurism doesn’t necessarily have to be set in the future. It can be non-linear storytelling. Anything that defies the typical narratives we see.
“One of the things that really bums me out the most is when we see the trauma bombing in so much Native literature and media,” Esquivel said. “Those projects don’t feel like they’re made for a Native audience because we’ve already been through it. It feels more like it’s informing a non-Native crowd. Killers of The Flower Moon is a perfect example. That movie’s incredibly hard to watch as a Native person because we know that history, we’ve experienced that history and it might not be as overtly violent that we can see, but it’s still there and it’s still happening and these murders and deaths still happen. We are facing these things now, [like] MMIWP. We live in that world and I think indigenous futurism gives us a chance to sort of escape from that and not in a bad way, but in a way that’s healing. In a way that gives us an outlet to imagine what should be, and not being restrained.”
In Esquivel’s experience, if the story isn’t about Native trauma, people have perceived Native futurism to be utopian. As an illustrator, he contributed to the Kickstarter hit Indigenous Science Fantasy tabletop role-playing game; Coyote & Crow. Because Coyote & Crow is Native futurism a lot of people assumed it was utopian which is a major misconception. Esquivel stressed that Native people had conflicts before settlers arrived.
Growing up, he read the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, also known as Kaianere’kó:wa in Kanien’kehá:ka or Mohawk, which is a set of governing principles that established the Haudenosaunee Confederacy which helped shape the emerging United States’ governance and democratic principles.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy united a confederation of Native nations governed by their Great Law of Peace. The document is all about consensus building among nations and influenced the development of American democracy after Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had direct interactions with the Haudenosaunee.
There were conflicts that the people were working towards a unified solution to. For Esquivel this document reads like Indigenous futurism.
In Esquivel’s work as lead concept artist on the Indigenous CyberNoir Detective video game, Hill Agency: PURITYdecay, which asks the question, “What would our world look like on the brink of freedom from colonial oppression?” he was able to reimagine Indigenous futures.
In this world the lead character is a two-spirit detective who Esquivel calls “a grumpy little old man.” This future is post ecological disaster, and wars. In the wake of all that destruction a lot of the population left the planet to go find a new planet to colonize.
“In the world of Hill Agency, the Indigenous people have stayed because this is our home, we’re not going to abandon it,” Esquivel said.
The storyline of the game is a re-imagining of how to take an abandoned city and rebuild civilization through Native values, cultures, and creative vision? In the Hill Agency envisioning, it’s an Indigenous, more sustainable, and handcrafted world.
“Looking through my own family photos with some family members, there’s tons of photos of family members just suited up in nice outfits, big lapels, hair slicked back, pencil line dresses, blouses, they’re really nice, all handmade handcrafted outfits,” Esquivel said. “That [fashion] lends itself to this idea that the society is rebuilding itself. There’s no fast fashion in this world. You’re hand making everything. So in this world it makes sense that these kind of old style retro futurism, 1940s noir things are coming back.”
The three tiered city in the game is also based heavily on northeastern Native peoples like the Cree, Iroquois, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee.
“All of the signage in the games is Cree,” Esquivel said. “And it was sort of like this chance to say, how would we take this place that existed and remake it to fit this cultural resurgence? And we’re really trying to show that we’re not a wasteful people. We’re going to rebuild, reuse all of the buildings in the world. The approach is that it’s a matrilineal home for your extended family. So every building is essentially a long house and you have a house mother. So in the game you see your little auntie and she’s the typical Native auntie. She’s little, she’s a little mean, and she’s very sassy, but she loves you, just that tough love that we’re all used to. The game starts with her kicking your character in the butt, metaphorically, telling you to get outside and go look for some stuff.”
Esquivel is also a comic artist and writer with work in MOONSHOT: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Vol. 3, and the story “Quiet Nights” in A Howl: An Indigenous Anthology of Wolves, Werewolves, and Rougarou.
As a writer, he created character bios for the Water Tribe Legends characters and helped develop a new canon Water Tribe character in the Avatar Legends tabletop role-playing game. He was also the concept artist for the video games Blacklight: Retribution, Blacklight: Tango Down, SAW, and SAW II: Flesh & Blood.
Esquivel currently lives in the Duwamish homelands of the Greater Seattle area and runs a small business, Rising Sons Media LLC, with their brother, Teiorhathe. Rising Sons Media art and apparel has everything from futuristic Native designed leggings, to iPhone cases with Esquivel’s take on a Native Wednesday Addams. Everything in the shop inspires excitement and ignites the imagination about, and for, Native futures.
The full length interview can be found here. The interviews were video and audio recorded and saved in the MoPop Online Collections Vault with over 1,000 others.
