Content warning: This article discusses anti-Indigenous racism, systemic violence, and forced pregnancy, and mentions residential schools, murder, and genocide. 

Cyndy Wylde’s short story Pakan (Differently) tells a dystopian account of three generations of Anishinaabe women. Originally published in French, the story goes back and forth between present-day and future Kepek — the word for Québec from Algonquin or Mi’kmaq languages — sharing the experiences of three characters — Kanena, Nibi, and Maïka — as they navigate the transition from daughters to mothers in a society that is hostile toward Indigenous peoples. 

Pakan (Differently) is just one of the French-Indigenous stories featured in Innu journalist and author Michel Jean’s 2021 anthology of Indigenous short stories, Wapke — meaning “tomorrow” in the Atikamekw language — which explores social, political, and environmental themes in a futuristic world.

Kanena (2022)

Kepek is transformed after an unspecified global pandemic. The federal government has become increasingly authoritarian under the guise of maintaining public sanitation and the already vulnerable Indigenous population has been subjected to further discrimination and racism.

Mirroring the Indigenous experience before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Indigenous communities in the story faced heightened vulnerability compared to others in Canada. They are more vulnerable to infectious disease due to long-established socioeconomic inequities, including limited access to health care, poorer access to clean water and housing, and higher rates of preexisting health conditions, according to the Canadian House of Commons. 

These inequities originate from colonialism, which has subjected Indigenous populations to centuries of violence, racism, and discrimination within institutions, including residential schools and hospitals. In September 2024, the Canadian Medical Association, established in 1867 by 167 doctors in Québec City, acknowledged its role in upholding anti-Indigenous racism in Canada with the operation of racially segregated Indigenous hospitals, wherein patients received poor care, experienced abuse, underwent experimental treatments, and were forcibly sterilized by Canadian doctors.

Kanena has become a tireless activist and educator for her community, fighting for confirmation and condemnation of the Canadian federal government’s committed atrocities against her people, and to stop companies from “inserting their gas and oil pipelines into Mother Earth.” 

She characterizes an ongoing solidarity movement of Indigenous people who have long fought for their basic human rights, the protection of their people and identity, and the Earth. However, protesters and land defenders have continuously been subjected to surveillance and criminalization by the government for their outspoken activism, demonstrating the deeply ingrained colonialism that exists in Canadian systems in our current time. 

Nibi (2042–2043) 

Without ever having had sexual relations, Kanena’s daughter Nibi is shocked to learn that she’s pregnant at an Indigenous hospital. A service that Kanena initially supported, these hospitals were intended to return culture and dignity to Indigenous peoples’ healthcare. However, Indigenous people are unable to hold jobs in healthcare because of preexisting social and economic barriers. Thus non-Indigenous individuals filled jobs at the new hospitals.

Left feeling powerless and angry, Nibi doesn’t know what to do, as she cannot ask her mother for guidance. Then, Kanena went missing one day and despite Nibi’s persistence in seeking help, no one was concerned about the disappearance of an Indigenous woman.

Kanena’s disappearance is symbolic of the hundreds of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls from the last 50 years that have remained unsolved, ultimately leading to an outcry from their communities and recognition of the issue as a “deliberate race, identity, and gender-based genocide.” According to Statistics Canada, the number of Indigenous women killed between 2020 and 2023 was 794. The Canadian government’s lack of response to this issue reflects its oppressive colonial system. 

Nibi’s daughter, Maïka, is born a year later, but will not be given Indian status because her father is unknown. Regardless, Nibi lovingly tells her that she will always be Anishinaabe.

Maïka (2063)

Maïka is the first character that we are introduced to, but Wylde provides no context about her character up until this point in the story. She was simply described as choking on water.

History has since repeated itself: Maïka is pregnant without having had sex. This time, however, a mother’s knowledge is present. Nibi knew that Indigenous babies were chipped at birth to ensure that a programmed pregnancy took place between the ages of 18 to 25. 

Without a father of Indigenous heritage, these children are stripped of their Indian status — status for Indigenous women had been removed — freeing the government of their perceived economic burden on Indigenous peoples. Indigeneity could eventually be erased in the story’s ongoing genocide. 

Devastated by this revelation, Maïka runs to “escape this terribly ugly world, a world where the government was again committing horrible acts for the sake of money” and falls into water, where she’s found choking at the beginning of the story. 

Finding herself on the back of a turtle swimming in the ocean, she sees animals from her childhood holding soil, which she knows will soon be attached to the turtle to make a second Turtle Island — another name for North America. She will be the grandmother to a new human race. Despite the government’s refusal to recognize her status, she and her descendants will always be Anishinaabeg.

The first Turtle Island was beyond repair. Indigenous peoples, along with a collective of youth, scientists, and adults from around the world, have fought tirelessly throughout history to save the planet. The evidence is clear: the global temperature is rising, the ocean is warming, the ice is melting, sea levels are rising — the list goes on. 

As Wylde describes, regardless of the signs of distress that the Earth showed, the humans would not listen. The world had to be made pakan, or differently in Atikamekw. If humans continue their extractive activities on the Earth, perhaps the planet will continue living. We just might not be on it.