Surviva: A Future Ancestral Field Guide

An ambitious, world-envisioning work of Indigenous futurism.

Since 2015--through a proliferation of forms including sculpture, regalia, film, photography, poetry, painting, and installation--acclaimed multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger has been weaving together strands of a new myth. Collectively referred to as Future Ancestral Technologies, this sprawling series of interrelated works seeks to reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth's population.

Part graphic novel, part art book, SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide offers readers a view beneath, beyond, and between the lines of Luger's ever-expanding artistic universe. In this ecstatically hybrid work, Luger transforms a 1970s military survival guide through poetic redaction, speculative fiction, and iterative line drawing--deftly surfacing and disrupting the colonial subconscious that haunts this vexed source text. An epic and timely meditation on planetary life in the midst of transformation, SURVIVA boldly presents an earth-based, demilitarized futuredream that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge as critical to humanity's survival.

SURVIVA is the first title from Aora Books, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring transformational thought and culture that transcends borders, disciplines, and traditions. Rooted in an ethos of polyvocality and planetary consciousness, Aora publishes works that forge bold connections across time, place, ideas, and beings often seen as separate.

Author: Cannupa Hanska Luger
Publisher: Aora
Published: 09/02/2025
Pages: 162
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.60w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781961814264


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/15/2025

About the Author
Luger, Cannupa Hanska: -

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental installations, sculpture, and performance to communicate urgent stories of twenty-first-century Indigeneity. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota. Luger's bold visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our collective humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview. His work is in numerous permanent museum collections and has been exhibited around the world, including at the Sharjah Biennial 16, United Arab Emirates; the 81st Whitney Biennial, New York; the 14th Shanghai Biennale; and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Gardiner Museum in Toronto; and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Georgia. Luger has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, United States Artists, Creative Capital, the Smithsonian Institution, the Open Society Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation, among others. Luger currently lives and works in Glorieta, NM.

Pearlstein, Eden: -

Eden Pearlstein is an author, artist, and cofounder of Ayin Press. He is the author of Nothing is for Everyone: Poems, and coauthor/editor of the chapbooks In/Flux: On Influence, Inspiration, Transmission, and Transformation; Taste and See: A Psychedelic Pesach Companion; and Indwelling: An Earth-Based Sukkot Companion. Eden holds two master's degrees from JTS in Experiential Education and Jewish Philosophy. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

Eskinazi, Cem: -

Cem Eskinazi is a Turkish graphic designer, type designer, and educator whose work spans publications, typefaces, exhibitions and systems. Since 2022, he has run his independent studio practice, following his role as a full-time in-house type designer at Occupant Fonts and Morisawa, where he worked with Cyrus Highsmith. His projects have been recognized by institutions such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Typographic Arts and the Type Directors Club, where he has also served as a jury member. Cem teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering in Barcelona, Spain. He holds a BS in Marketing Communications and Photography from Emerson College and an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Barcelona.