Many of the world’s greatest thinkers are worried that we humans are having wrenching effects on our environment, that ecosystems and social systems in turn are collapsing around us. In popular culture–in films, novels, and video games–we seek painful pleasure in popular post-apocalyptic visions of devastating plagues and vicious zombies. But such visions usually retain existing, often oppressive, frameworks of race, gender, and sexuality. Yet, we forget that there are those who have been surviving apocalypse for centuries: Indigenous peoples, Black people, people of colour, queer, trans, and two-spirit peoples.
On October 17, 2018, Tipi Confessions partnered with QPOC (Queer People of Colour) in Winnipeg, MB (Treaty 1 and Métis homeland) to center Indigenous, Black, feminist, queer sex and sexualities. The show was generously supported by the University of Manitoba’s Institute for the Humanities, Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, and Women’s and Gender Studies Program; the Winnipeg Public Library; and the University of Winnipeg Library.
Our performers Hazim Ismail, Laticia M. Dyer, Rowan EB, and Nîcimos and Wahkôhtowin helped us imagine the end of the world, not as an end, but as resistance, resilience, and radical futurity through spoken word, movement, and interactive audience performances. Their perspectives of how to be in relation with our bodies, our identities, all creatures, beings & non-beings, with the natures and landscapes of a past or coming apocalypse generated possibilities of survival.
