Heroes in Body Bags: Renegotiating Heroism in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning

Abstract

This paper discusses how Maggie Hoskie, the Indigenous “hero”of Rebecca Roanhorse’s The Sixth World “series,renegotiates what it means to be a hero in the “post-Native Apocalypse”(Dillon 10). Trail of Lightning“,as a work that exploresIndigenous futurismsand ecofeminisms, demandsa renegotiation of Western hero ideals, highlighting how Maggie’s most heroic qualities arise from her challenge of stereotypical Western heroism in the wake of ecological disaster.

Keywords

• Anthropocene
• Ecocriticism
• Heroism
• Indigenous Futurism
• Ecological Other
• Community