What is Indigenous Comic con? Well it’s a con like GeekGirlCon or Blerd con, that is organized around particular community within comics rather than around a location like San Diego. In this case, it is centered on Indigenous creators and communities.
Although I am not Indigenous, the con is one of the most welcoming I've attended. I get to blend in as "an ambiguous brown person" (a quote from "Why can't you-" by Julie Fiveash one of the zines I bought) and listen to voices in comics/the greater nerd community that rarely get asked to speak. And if they do get asked to speak, it’s about diversity in the medium. It’s also a chance to put my money where my mouth is regarding diversity in comics, seeing and buying work by Indigenous people. Their work regularly blends nerd and Indigenous identities but also, like the zine I quoted, just uses of the medium to explore personal stories.
Seeing the amazing work that Indigenous creators produce is one of my favorite parts of the con and this year I bought a bunch of fun things. You check out the whole vendor and artist list here on their website but here's a list of some of the people I got a chance to buy stuff from:
Jeffrey Veregge: A great artist and writer who had shirts, comics, and prints available. I picked up his most recent Star Trek design on a black shirt
Weshoyot Alvitre: Another amazing comics artist whose work I had initially seen on Twitter. The first piece of hers that I saw was an amazing version of Dani Moonstar, which I bought the print of at ICC.
Lalo Alcaraz: Though primarily the cartoonist behind La Cucaracha, he recently consulted with Disney on Coco and had some awesome nerdy magnets, I grabbed a Star Wars one.
Kandi Quam: Is from Natachu INK and had some great small prints and art cards. I grabbed the cards but am torn between sending them to people and keeping them for myself.
Kurly Tlapoyawa: A former archaeology student of mine, who is now a full-fledged archaeologist and just started his own podcast, had book on Nawatl language influence in New Mexico and Southern Colorado that I picked up.
And last but not least were the artists I grabbed short zines from. These were: Tatum Bowie, Damon Begay, Julie Fiveash, and Willow Tomeo. They all had such cool stories to tell and it was great to hear all of their stories about getting to be at ICC.
You can support these artists (and the others from the vendors/artists lists) through their websites, patreons, or other ways to check out and buy their work to support them to do even more down the road.
After my extensive shopping adventures, I got to listen to a panel that on its own would have been worth the admission price. Entitled “Native Sci Fi and Indigenous Futurisms” the panel made me seriously consider a bunch of themes that I hope to credit them with inspiring and discuss at other panels or to see the panelists discuss in the future in other venues. The panelists were Daniel H. Wilson, PhD and sci-fi writer, Elizabeth LaPensee, PhD, artist and video game designer, and Johnnie Jae a writer and the founder of A Tribe Called Geek. The panel talked about everything from kinship to the apocalypse and demonstrated how many amazing things are happening in the Indigenous communities. I had a short live-tweet of the panel you can see here and if you ever get a chance to hear any of them speak I would recommend it. I was blown away by how much I didn't know and went to read more about Indigenous Futurisms, started listening to Wilson's Robopocalypse (finished this week and would 100% recommend), and went to check out the media being produced on a Tribe Called Geek. If you can't hear them speak I highly recommend looking into and supporting their content.
Even if you can't attend cons like ICC or Blerd con it's valuable to think of the other ways you can support such conventions. ICC has a program to sponsor the ticket of an Indigenous child and other cons use the Con or Bust service to reach out to underrepresented groups. These are important (as cons and as ways to support them) because often nerd communities are coded as white spaces and these cons demonstrate that the white nerd narrative is false and that there are many ways to be a nerd. My hope is that mainstream conventions start to take notice and invite more diverse creators to their own conventions. Specifically, I hope that they bring in more Indigenous voices because I was awe-inspired at this convention. In the meantime, talk up ICC, hope for ICC 3, and if there is and you are near New Mexico attend and support some IndigeNerds!
