Renewing generates life and hope.
This is one of the many relational themes in Carter Meland's short story, Generating Hope, a fictional short story that speaks to the relationships between people, Land and time from an Indigenous perspective.
Meland wrote the short story at the Center of Science and Imagination at Arizona State University, and it will be used in communities considering hosting permanent nuclear storage sights.
"They invited four creative writers to write about nuclear waste," says Meland, "all the background material they gave me was, like, these people and this area... well, does the land get any say?"
One of the main issues raised in this story is human control over nature.
"I kind of have a theme going in the story of things breaking apart through [fission], as opposed to nature wanting to bring things together through fusion," explains Meland, "I'm trying to think about all our relations, they're conscious and they have agency."
Meland envisions a transformative world that escapes colonialist implications relegating native thought and creativity to the past. Instead, he encourages us to think generationally, in the idea that it is active, generating life.
Generating Hope will be published in a book by Arizona State University releasing within the next few months.
