Modernity is the primary object of analysis within political theory. In this paper, I analyse Modernity as a problematic temporal framework which limits the possible responses to the polycrisis. The temporal framework of Modernity shapes the problems investigated within political theory, the methods used to enquire into these problems, and the theories proposed to describe and resolve them. I argue, however, that political theory’s focus on Modernity limits the field of possibilities. Modernity describes a White settler experience of the present historically produced through the violent exclusion of Indigenous peoples. As a result, political theory typically elides the presence and future of Indigenous resistance, refusal, and resurgence. Political theory thereby sustains and reproduces what I term White settler futurism, a White settler claim to sovereignty over the future. White settler futurism limits the possibilities for the future to the reproduction of race and settler colonialism, foundational causes of the polycrisis. This paper therefore turns to theories of Indigenous futurism to reread the field of possibilities as a place of Indigenous agency and sovereignty. Indigenous futurism takes an Indigenous experience of the present as its starting point, thereby opening political theory up to the possibilities of decolonisation. I conclude that political theory must reorient towards the failures of race and settler colonialism and the generative presence of Indigenous sovereignty to resolve the polycrisis of Modernity.
