Trudeau scholar demonstrates social and political importance of Indigenous Futurism
April 30, 2025
How do stories help us understand our pasts, act for change in our present, and build more reconciled futures? Stephanie Erickson, a UVic PhD student in English with a concentration in Cultural, Social and Political Thought, will explore this question in a podcast featuring Indigenous authors, as part of a three-year scholarship announced this month by the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation. She is one of just 16 Canadian doctoral students receiving the award of up to $210,000.
Erickson is of mixed Red River Métis and German Mennonite ancestry, born on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba and raised on Syilx Okanagan territory.
After beginning post-secondary education in the Okanagan College system, Erickson found a passion for talking about storytelling—especially the ways that storytelling can mobilize larger social justice issues. The discovery led her to earn a BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Gender Studies at UBC-Okanagan, before focusing on reproductive justice in McMaster University’s Gender and Social Justice MA program.
“All of my research has always been about where storytelling meets social justice issues,” says Erickson of her academic journey. “They’re ways to talk about complicated conversations through a narrative that makes it more accessible and engaging. During my Master’s, I realized, ‘I have so much more research I want to do. I’m not done.’”
Erickson’s doctoral research takes the same approach—using stories to understand crucial real-world problems—to Indigenous justice. An existing interest in science fiction led her to Indigenous Futurism. First coined by Grace Dillon in 2003, the term describes a movement of media which express Indigenous perspectives on the future, present, and past.
“I want to understand the ways that we think about temporality,” says Erickson. “If we’re thinking about our future, how is that informed by our present and our past?”
In researching her own family history and Métis ancestry, Erickson has seen just how strongly the past informs her present and her future as an Indigenous person. “When I talk about Indigenous Futurism, there is a throughline from past, present, and future of our experiences, about where we are leading ourselves as communities and individuals to a less colonial future. Especially as a person of mixed ancestry, my research is really all about what the future of ‘Canada’ is going to look like.”
Specifically, she’s focusing on the ten principles of reconciliation laid out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and how stories can exemplify pathways to reconciliation in their imaginings of our collective futures.
In addition to funding for tuition and living expenses, Scholars receive $20,000 per year for research, networking and travel expenses related to doctoral research. The funding will allow Erickson to develop her podcast, where authors will discuss how they see their work speaking to reconciliation.
Reflecting on the importance of this funding to her research, Erickson says, “I want to be able to travel so I can do this work in community. I want to do what is important to my participants, to be with the people that are important to them. I want to develop relationships. I want to do this big, and I want to do this well. Now I can do that.”