SpaceS between US SpaceS between US Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization Scott Lauria Morgensen Print Version POS/BOX NEG/BLOCK University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London publication of this book was made possible, in part, with a grant from the andrew w. Mellon Foundation. portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “Settler Homonationalism: theorizing Settler colonialism within Queer Modernities,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no. 1–2 (2010): 105–31; reprinted by permission of the publisher. portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “arrival at Home: Radical Faerie configurations of Sexuality and place,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15, no. 1 (2009): 67–96; reprinted by permission of the publisher. portions of chapter 5 were previously published as “Rooting for Queers: a politics of primitivity,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no. 1 (2005): 251–89; and as “back and Forth to the Land: negotiating Rural and Urban Sexuality among the Radical Faeries,” in Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World, ed. ellen Lewin and william Leap (Malden, Mass.: blackwell publishers, 2009), 143–63. portions of chapter 6 were previously published as “activist Media in native aIDS Organizing: theorizing the colonial conditions of aIDS,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 32, no. 1 (2008): 35–56; reprinted by permission of the american Indian Studies center, UcLa; copyright 2008 Regents of the University of california. copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. published by the University of Minnesota press 111 third avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, Mn 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of congress cataloging-in-publication Data Morgensen, Scott Lauria. Spaces between us : queer settler colonialism and indigenous decolonization / Scott Lauria Morgensen. p. cm. — (First peoples : new directions in indigenous studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISbn 978-0-8166-5632-5 (hc : alk. paper) — ISbn 978-0-8166-5633-2 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Indian gays—History. 2. Indian gays—colonization. 3. Frontier and pio- neer life—United States—History. 4. colonists—United States—Sexual behav- ior. 5. two-spirit people—United States—History. 6. Radical Faeries (new age movement). 7. Decolonization—United States—History. I. title. e98.S48M67 2011 325’.30973—dc23 2011017145 printed in the United States of america on acid-free paper the University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To all those who left us too soon Contents preface ix abbreviations xv introduction 1 Part I. Genealogies 1. the biopolitics of Settler Sexuality and Queer Modernities 31 2. conversations on berdache: anthropology, counterculturism, two-Spirit Organizing 55 Part II. Movements 3. authentic culture and Sexual Rights: contesting citizenship in the Settler State 91 4. ancient Roots through Settled Land: Imagining Indigeneity and place among Radical Faeries 127 5. Global Desires and transnational Solidarity: negotiating Indigeneity among the worlds of Queer politics 161 6. “together we are Stronger”: Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality in transnational native aIDS Organizing 195 epilogue 225 acknowledgments 231 notes 235 bibliography 253 index 277 Preface In writing close to the other of the other, I can only choose to maintain a self- reflexively critical relationship towards the material, a relationship that defines both the subject written and the writing subject, undoing the I while asking, “what do I want wanting to know you or me?” —trinh t. minh- ha, Woman, Native, Other this book makes three central claims at the intersections of queer, native, and settler colonial studies and related fields. First, in the United States, modern queer cultures and politics have taken form as nor- matively white, multiracial, and non- native projects compatible with a white settler society. although queer hegemonies may be disrupted by chal- lenging whiteness or nationalism, that alone may not fully disturb their conditioning by settler colonialism, which aims to amalgamate subjects in a settler society as “non- native” inheritors, and not challengers of the colonization of native peoples on occupied native lands. Second, within broad transnational alliances (focused here in the United States), native queer and two- Spirit activists directly denaturalize settler colonialism and disrupt its conditioning of queer projects by asserting native queer moder- nities. by repudiating heteropatriarchy as a colonial project, recalling subjugated native knowledges, and forming alliances that trouble settler sovereignty and pursue decolonization, native queer and two- Spirit activ- ists have created critical theories and movements to which all people can respond. third, settler colonialism and its conditioning of modern sexual- ity produce an intimate relationship between non- native and native queer modernities that I interpret as conversations. non- native and native queer politics formed by telling different kinds of stories about the meaning of ix x Preface indigeneity to queer people, which entered them into power- laden conver- sations that nevertheless remained open to creative transformation. native and non- native queer politics formed their relationship in the spaces between them produced by settler colonialism. Settler societies create spaces that are at once material and symbolic, as Sherene Razack argues, an insight I extend by interpreting them as intimately relational.1 Such spaces appear in specific places: Indigenous lands, whether sustained by collective claims of Indigenous sovereignty, stolen and possessed by settlers, or traversed and contested by natives and non- natives within settler soci- ety. In these places, interchanges of native and non- native people locate them in power- laden spaces of relationship, which this book interprets for queer natives and non- natives as conversations. My account takes par- ticular inspiration from Katie King’s account of debates in feminist theory as “conversations in U.S. women’s movements.”2 King explained feminist debates over difference not as interruptions of feminist politics, as some western feminists have claimed, but as formations worthy of study as con- tentious, border- crossing deliberations. asking how “feminist objects of knowledge...are made and materialized over time in political production,” King investigated in regard to any object the histories of its production over time, the contests for meanings within which it is embedded, the political contours that are the circumstances out of which it is fabricated, and the resources and costs of its making, contesting, and stabilizations. (xvi) King contextualized this work as the study of “conversations,” or “units of political agency in action in theoretical discourse,” which she distin- guished from “‘debates’ as political contour from theoretical contents.” examining not only “formal writing or circulating manuscripts” but also “oratory, group production, private oralities, [and] publications,” King asked how historical deliberations as conversations produced the objects and subjects of U.S. women’s movements (56). this response to the racial and national contestation of feminism recognized conflict as productive to femi- nist thought and as deserving of study. King’s account suggests at once a theory of feminist knowledge production and a method for engaging it. the analytic category “conversations” invokes intersubjective social activity, as would be made apparent by ethnography, oral history, or archival or liter- ary study of texts written and circulated for deliberation. but King’s work engages such evidence from within a genealogy of discursive registers that link or split varied claims and contexts. Several implications for theory and