SaFe’s sub-project Indigeneity explores how Indigenous communities reinvent traditions to shape future visions. The regional focus is the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. Through ethnographic and participatory research, it aims at understanding how future-oriented practices build upon the re-constructions of tradition and thus contribute to the temporal dimension of future imaginaries and its interrelatedness with communitization. By highlighting the role of community formation and everyday practices such as agricultural production and weaving, the sub-project explores how these practices function as strategies to challenge dominant models of future planning.

Indigenous communities develop their own visions of development, often grounded in past practices, in response to multiple crises, such as land dispossession, political marginalization, climate change, and neoliberal exploitation. The project situates these efforts within the broader concept of retrotopia, where communities draw upon pre-colonial and pre-capitalist ways of life to construct alternative social orders. It seeks to understand how Indigenous groups translate historical narratives into concrete future-oriented practices and how these contribute to structural transformation.

Methodologically, this sub-project employs an ethnographic approach, and integrates interviews, participant observation, and action-oriented research methods that align with Indigenous and decolonial methodologies. Given the political sensitivities in the CHT, the project will be conducted in close collaboration with local researchers, NGOs, and community members to ensure ethical engagement and avoid epistemic inequalities.

The research design includes extensive fieldwork in the CHT, with data collection focusing on everyday interactions and collective practices. The study aims to provide empirical insights into the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples in the CHT. Data will be analyzed using interpretative methods, ensuring a nuanced understanding of Indigenous perspectives on future-building.

By extending the scope of research beyond the Eurocentric focus of existing studies, Indigeneity brings forward perspectives that remain largely absent in dominant discourses on future-making. It contributes to broader debates on Indigenous knowledge systems, community resilience, and alternative development models, ultimately challenging the hegemony of capitalist and colonial paradigms in shaping the future.