INDIGST 4C03 - Contemporary Indigenous Societies and Issues: Queer, Two-Spirit, and Trans World-Making

This course focuses on queer, two-spirit, and trans Indigenous communities and rights in its study of “contemporary Indigenous societies and issues.” Such a focus area crosses national/tribal affiliation and spans of time by following the narrative threads of Indigenous scholars, storytellers, and artists who represent experiences of being two-spirit/queer/trans (and the precolonial, traditional versions of gender/sexual fluidity). This course will pay particular attention to the ways in which genderqueer, genderfluid, and nonbinary Indigenous individuals and political movements have always been at the center of anticolonial and decolonizing work. Logics to explore will include how “gender as a category of analysis stabilizes and universalizes binary oppositions at other levels, including sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and nationalism” (Barker, Critically Sovereign 13); how a reclamation of “sovereign erotics” is a political and spiritual act that “relates our bodies to our nations, traditions, and histories” and whose suppression derives from settler colonisation (Qwo-Li Driskill et. al. Sovereign Erotics 3); and how the heteronormativity of patriarchal gender systems “undermines struggles for decolonization and sovereignty, and buoys the powers of colonial governance” (Driskill, Queer Indigenous Studies 19). To follow these lines of inquiry, we will consider intersections and divergence between Indigenous Studies, Queer, and Transgender Studies. Trans Studies, specifically, will provide the context for asking whether “bodies simply are certain genders/sexes unquestionably” in ways that “map neatly onto the operations of power” (Pyle 7). Course materials will include theory, memoire, fiction, film, creative non-fiction, and practical writings (i.e., handbooks, reports, etc.).