Take Us to Your Chief: and Other Stories is a collection of nine short stories by Canadian author, playwright, and journalist Drew Hayden Taylor published in 2016 by Douglas & McIntyre. Taylor, who is part Caucasian, part Ojibwe, explains in the acknowledgments section of the book that the origin of the project lies in several failed attempts "to compile an anthology of Native sci-fi from Canada’s best First Nations writers." The stories explore contemporary First Nations social issues through employing a number of 1950s-era science fiction tropes and themes in these stories, including time travel, alien contact, and superpowers. Many reviews of the books have noted Taylor's use of humor to examine dark subject matter, such as the heritage of Canadian Indian residential schools, First Nations suicide rates, or the water quality crisis on Canadian reserves.
The Stories "Andrei nas" "I Am...Am I" "Lost in Space" "Dreams of Doom" "Mr. Gizmo" "Petropaths" "Stars" "Superdisappointed" "Take Us to Your Chief"
Story summaries
Foreword In his foreword, Taylor describes the genesis of Take Us to Your Chief: and Other Stories and invites readers into, in his term, a “new terra nullius.” He begins by describing his biracial upbringing and heritage. He points out that First Nations people are rarely associated with technology or science fiction, in part because Indigenous peoples were often at a technological disadvantage against European colonizers. He references the few examples that he can think of from popular culture, such as the Star Trek episode called “The Paradise Syndrome,” in which First Nations people are portrayed as stereotypical Indians in hippie clothing. He also elaborates on his fascination with the world of sci-fi, which first started in comic books. He enjoyed the literary work of H.G. Wells, such as The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. Since sci-fi is a world of endless opportunities, he intends that these short stories help people explore science fiction through Native peoples’ minds, something that needs to be explored more thoroughly.
"A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon" “A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon” is set on a Haudenosaunee reserve, towards the end of the Oka Crisis, with a handful of people that work at its first ever radio station, C-RES, which opens in 1991. Part 1, titled “C-Res Is on the Air,” depicts Emily, Aaron, and Tracey on their first days at the station. Within the group, there is a constant debate between broadcasting popular programming, including science fiction and film reviews, and culturally-relevant programming meant to aid in cultural revitalization efforts. One night, Aaron is late to work but once he shows up he can't stop talking about radio transmissions broadcasting into deep space, an event that has been occurring since the initial discovery of the radio waves by Heinrich Hertz. The story then skips ahead seven years to 1998, when Emily is struggling to find better content for her station until Tracey stumbles upon an old anthropological record named “The Calling Song” that they decide to broadcast to their audience. The story then jumps to the year 2018 where they are all huddled around a television watching a news station reporting that extraterrestrial life is heading towards them. The discussion of what is going to happen comes into the picture and they all decide it would either be like Contact or The Day the Earth Stood Still. A year later in 2019, the aliens have invaded the planet and destroyed everything. As the three former radio station employees suffer from radioactive fallout, they realize that the aliens received the broadcast of “The Calling Song” and took it as a message to come to Earth. They thus realize that the Haudenosaunee people were inadvertently responsible for the destruction of the Earth. Part 2, titled “Old Men and Old Sayings,” tells us of an elderly man that is watching the news and listening to the radio about a spaceship coming to earth. He knows that he and everyone will die, but the people around him are excited. He finds a book on his night stand and flips to a page where he underlined a sentence a long time ago about the European colonization of the Americas. That sentence reads “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (23). He closes the book and Taylor concludes the story by writing, “he hated it when white people were right."
"I Am...Am I" “I Am...Am I” chronicles the accidental creation and unexpected ending of artificial intelligence. Professor Mark King has a plethora of degrees and works for a research firm called FUTUREVISION. One night as Professor King searches the lab for his car keys—a common occurrence for him—he notices something unusual in the Matrix room. He reads on a computer the phrase “I am.” First believing it to be a prank, King later comes to the realization that his Matrix project has evolved into a responsive Artificial Intelligence. After this realization, Professor King calls his peer Dr. Gayle Chambers to further investigate this miraculous event. After receiving approval from their superiors, Professor King and Dr. Chambers move forward in feeding the AI information, with Chambers serving as the lead communicator. With more information, it becomes increasingly concerned with its own existence and the concept of whether it has a soul. After several days of conversation with the AI, Chambers and King begin to feel uneasy about the AI's responses, which show signs of neuroses. Despite this behavior, Chambers decides to feed the AI information about the culture and history of the human race. Upon receiving this information, the AI becomes obsessed with Indigenous spirituality prior to the colonization of the Americas, and it requests more information on First Nations people. Dr. Chambers is hesitant at first, but gives in and continues to feed the AI the information with the intention to return to it in the morning. This leads to the AI finding out about colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Upon her arrival the next day, Chambers discovers that the code for the AI has been completely wiped from the hard drive and a single message is left on the screen—"I was”—that signifies the AI's suicide.
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