Weyodi OldBear’s novel As Many Ships As Stars is a sweeping work of Indigenous science fiction, reimagining the Quahadi band’s first encounter with horses, not on the Southern Plains, but across the cosmos. Rather than simply placing Indigenous people in futuristic settings, OldBear asserts that we have always belonged there: in every story, on every star.
A citizen of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, OldBear was born on the shores of Long Island Sound among her father’s people and raised in her mother’s homeland. Her work spans multiple genres and mediums, including contributions to the Nebula-nominated tabletop role-playing game Coyote & Crow. She is the winner of the 2017 Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Award for her short story “Red Lessons,” and her writing also appears in the anthologies A Howl and the Water Protectors Legal Collective Anthology Guide.
In this interview, OldBear speaks about the cultural and linguistic roots of her storytelling, the difference between Indigenous Futurism and mainstream sci-fi, the importance of community and collaboration, and her hopes for a more inclusive and expansive future for Native representation in media.
Q. Your novel, As Many Ships As Stars, reimagines Comanche traditions in a futuristic space setting. What inspired you to blend ancestral narratives with speculative fiction?
Right now, space is mighty white. I mean that in the sense that a very Eurocentric worldview has been projected onto the future and space in general. All the space-related tropes in popular culture are based on a European understanding of the universe and human behavior. So in part, I was inspired by the desire to project Comanche culture onto the future of humanity, rather than follow the status quo, which erases us.
The other part was that I had just finished writing a series that was very consciously inclusive of non-Natives, where I very intentionally explained the experiences of a culturally disconnected Native woman. It was exhausting in the sense of always requiring a kind of double consciousness.
After that, I needed a break. I wanted to write something where I simply told the story without explaining every single Oklahoma Native idiom, so I chose to do a science fiction retelling of the oral history I had grown up with of how the Quahadi band first acquired horses. Of course, the best part is that As Many Ships As Stars was picked up by a non-Native publisher, and my very carefully and intentionally inclusive series was picked up by a Native Press. I can’t predict nothin’.
Q. How does your identity as a Comanche woman influence your storytelling, particularly in the realms of science fiction and Indigenous futurism?
I think, for one thing, it strongly influences the way I write, because it shapes the way I think.
I was talking to a linguist just last week, and we were discussing the fact that not only is AAVE a dialect, but there are also many variations of what is called AIVE, American Indian Vernacular English (despite none of us coming from India). There’s a different version of AIVE for every tribe, because the way you speak English is informed by your tribal language, even for people who don’t speak their tribal language, because you learned English from people who did know that language, and their English use is shaped by that language. And when you are in a community, it’s reinforced because everyone talks that way.
Also, as opposed to English, which is noun-based, Comanche is much more of a verb-based language. We also tend to meander, Nothing is ever a direct conversational line from point A to point B. I learned early on, listening to my Elders, that you have to explore all the tangents before you get to B, or else you’re missing half the story.
Also, having spent a lot of time with older people growing up, I heard a lot of really wild, I suppose, non-Natives might refer to them as “fantastical,” stories. It gave me a taste for the weird stuff. All that shaped the stories I choose to tell and how I tell them.
Q. In your view, what distinguishes Indigenous futurism from mainstream science fiction, and why is this distinction important?
It’s pretty clear to me that the main differences are the core, unspoken assumptions. Mainstream science fiction begins with the broad cultural assumptions of mainstream, which is to say, European culture. Indigenous Futurism is based on an Indigenous worldview.
Q. You’ve contributed to the tabletop role-playing game Coyote & Crow. How does game design allow you to explore Indigenous narratives differently than in prose or poetry?
Gameplay is, by definition, immersive, so it gives you a chance to erase that barrier between yourself and your audience. I always think back to the levels of learning. The first, most basic level is rote memorization, but the final level of learning is synthesis, where you put what you’ve learned into practice. When you write a game, players are putting what might otherwise be theoretical into practice.
Now I did not work on this game, because I was writing As Many Ships As Stars, but Coyote & Crow games have a board game called Wolves, centering around how gift economies work. A big part of the game is the press-your-luck mechanics of gathering/hunting, in that you want to bring back plenty of game to feed your community and share with your neighbors but…if you over reach because you’re trying to be a big shot you’re liable to wind up causing your entire community to starve.
Last October, I was at the Climate Summit teaching the game to Climate Scientists and Indigenous folk doing Climate work. It took the Climate Scientists a little while to catch on that this was a principle they talked about all the time in their work. Suddenly, the game made it much more immediate and tangible.
Q. Representation of Native peoples in media has evolved. What progress have you observed, and where do you feel representation still falls short?
Well, I would say a scant handful of Native writers and filmmakers have broken through and brought authentic storytelling to mass media in the last seven or eight years, but that’s not enough. We need more.
Sterlin Harjo, Stephen Graham Jones, and Rebecca Roanhorse are great, but they can’t be the only voices who are allowed to reach mainstream audiences. The 1491s are brilliant, but we need even more writers, comedians, and filmmakers.
Sierra Ornelas is also absolutely freaking brilliant and needs to be given more kudos. Everything about Rutherford Falls was mindblowing, particularly the character of Terry, played by Michael Greyeyes, his intelligence, but also his foibles, his pettiness, and blind spots. I feel like he’s based on like 6 different people I know in real life, some of them relatives. The way Terry turned the tables on Nathan and pushed him into playing a sort of parody of his ancestors, basically putting him into the same position Indigenous people are forced into, made me laugh and cry in recognition.
On the other hand, you have Yellowstone and the same old stereotypes still running wild through popular mainstream media. It’s an uphill battle.
Q. Inclusivity is a recurring theme in your work, featuring 2SLGBTQIA+ characters and diverse family structures. How do you approach creating such inclusive narratives?
It isn’t much of an effort on my part. LGBTQIA+ people have always been part of my life, so I include them as a matter of course. I guess I take their right to exist for granted because they have always been part of our communities. It would be weird to leave them out.
As for different family structures, I based the families in As Many Ships As Stars on our traditional family structure, where someone married a person and their same-gendered siblings/cousins and children had multiple parents. It’s a terrible disservice academics have done when they depict Comanches as polygamous when the truth is women also took more than one husband. It paints a skewed picture.
Q. Can you share how your personal experiences, including your disabilities, shape your creative process and the stories you choose to tell?
My dyslexia is a pain in the butt, I can tell you that much. Because of that, I tend to write first in longhand, I say everything aloud as I write it the first time, then type everything in before I get down to serious editing. At every point, the words are written to be said aloud.
Having seizures and no peripheral vision on one side keeps me from driving, which probably influences me in ways I don’t even realize. Both probably add a sense of frustration to my work. I walk around the city pretty often, so it may influence my attention to detail. I don’t think about my disabilities, or myself as a disabled person, as often as I should.
Q. What role do community and collaboration play in your creative projects, and how do they influence the outcomes?
One of the best things about writing comics, which I do pretty regularly, is the chance to work with amazing artists. Artists don’t just inspire me; one of the most important things they do is say, “This might work better if we do it this way,” and then they proceed to blow my mind by taking a page in a direction I never imagined. It makes the entire process dynamic. The amount of collaboration varies by the kind of writing I’m doing, but I love that give-and-take. Community is always a theme in my work. The joy and the work and the annoyance of being part of a community.
Q. Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the future of Indigenous representation in literature and media?
In my dreams, there are dozens of Indigenous Futurists being published by major publishers, dozens of Indigenous Romance writers, dozens of Indigenous Horror writers, dozens in every genre. Native actors and comedians at every point in their careers. I dream of an embarrassment of riches as far as Native representation goes. In that future, non-Natives will see the hokey stereotypes and be shocked that anyone ever bought into them.
Q. What advice would you offer aspiring Indigenous writers and artists to help them navigate and contribute to the evolving landscape of Native storytelling?
I would say tell the stories that come to you. Write them. Paint the visions you’re given. Then the next and the one after that. Don’t stop. Eventually, they will get you somewhere. Show your toughest and most critical friends and relatives, then take it with a grain of salt and revise. The most important thing is always to take your work seriously and never take yourself seriously, and above all, keep working.
Weyodi OldBear’s work reminds us that Indigenous futures are not speculative; they are inevitable, rooted in memory, language, and the enduring presence of Native peoples in every possible timeline. Through As Many Ships As Stars and her broader body of work, she doesn’t just imagine new worlds, she invites us to reconsider the ones we already inhabit.
As our conversation came to a close, one thing was clear: OldBear’s stories are not simply about survival in distant galaxies or dystopian landscapes. They are declarations of presence, sovereignty, and continuity. They are reminders that Indigenous knowledge systems, languages, and kinship structures will continue to shape the futures we build, both on this Earth and beyond it.
