Queer Indigenous Studies

“Indigenous Fantasies and Sovereign Erotics: Outland Cherokees Write Two-Spirit Nations” by Lisa Tatonetti

I was immediately attracted to this chapter because the fantasy books have long been my leisurely reading genre of choice, whether it be epic fantasy like George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Ice series, or the urban paranormal type that has exploded among today’s youth, like Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. Of course, I’ve been looking forward to Dillon’s Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, so this chapter is a welcome find. I was very interested in what Tatonetti would have to say about literary criticism in the indigenous GLBTQ field, as she points out that most critical work either focuses on the indigenous nature or queerness, but never the two put together. In Finley’s section earlier on page 41, Prince is quoted as saying “Sexy never left,” and Tatonetti illustrates that queer tales, too, have existed all this time, “but it wasn’t until the late 1980s that we saw the rise of anything like a body of queer Native literature.” (156)

It is in the late 90s where Tatonetti points to the rise in the Two-Spirit ideology, that understandings of sexuality and gender have nuances and diversity that are not specifically aligned with colonized depictions of sexual preference. This is seen in the fact that just by examining the categorical title, GLBTQ, demonstrates that some people identify with parts of a sexuality but not all, or some argue that being “Bi” is not possible, you must be either/or. Tatonetti takes a look at two texts which illustrate the nuances of sexuality, and proposes that maybe the discussion shouldn’t be centered around whether you fit into one category or another, but about how sexuality overlaps to constitute the concept of indigenous nationhood as a whole. To what extent do we need categories to identify a person’s sexuality? Either way, Two-Spirited literature is moving the conversation away from a sex/gender binary.  

SOVEREIGN EROTIC  

The first piece of literature Tatonetti examines is Qwo-Li Driskill’s 2005 poetry collection Walking with Ghosts, featuring an ungendered narrator. Recognizing that “traditional” gender roles serve to perpetuate colonialism’s interests, much in the way Andrea Smith described in her “Three Pillars” article, Driskill’s narrator is cast in a “diversely gendered body…an integral part of Indigenous nationhood,” who ultimately becomes a healer to (Here’s where English pronouns get tricky. Its?) Native people. (162) The poem excerpts shared with us from the narrator’s journey through its people’s history are savage and sharp like a knife, in the sense that they almost physically cut right through you with their honesty. However, Driskill notes that for “First Nations people to go back to their bodies, it is necessarily to engage in historical trauma.” (162) This quote really resounded with me. It’s like to go back and rebuild who the First Nations is, the people must go back and rebuild their history, themselves; with all of the ugly betrayals and ignored parts, like people who had alternative gender identities. In this way, we come to Driskill’s concept of the Sovereign Erotic, a “ ‘return to/and or continuance of the complex realities of gender and sexuality that are ever-present in both the human and more-than-human world, but erased or hidden by colonial cultures.’ ” (168) I’d like to discuss what steps are being taken in today’s society to examine these complex realities.

ZHE-KYN

While in Driskill’s work, the narrator was ungendered, Daniel Heath Justice’s fantasy trilogy, The Way of Thorn and Thunder, features a heroine who lives with the rest of the Kyn people in a great woodland. The Kyn people have three genders: she-Kyn, he-Kyn, and zhe-Kyn. While the first two have characteristics of “femininity” and “masculinity,” the third, zhe-Kyn, is best described by Justice himself:

“[The zhe-Kyn] straddled the male and female worlds in all things, garbed in blouse and skirt, head tattooed and shaven but for a braided topknot, moving between the blood of war and the blood of the moon without fear.” (166)

Justice creates his fantasy trilogy with such a unique voice, one that will hit close to home for many Natives, but at the same time, pull at the heart strings of mainstream readers, who will recognize some of the typical archetypes in high fantasy series, which will put them at ease. However, Tatonetti points out that:

“Justice sets up a secondary world that relies on key concepts in existing conversations about American Indian nationalisms. But he does so using classic tropes of high fantasy: the wounded hero, the epic journey… If Tolkein’s ‘moral and hierarchical extremes’ are ‘light and dark, ugly and fair, [or] black and white,’ then Justice’s hierarchies are built on levels of affiliation to land, clan, and nation.” (165)

As the storyline continues…With colonists looming on the horizon, and the fate of the land in trouble after one of the tribe agrees to turn it over to the foreigners, Justice’s heroine assumes the mantle of the zhe-Kyn, through which her eyes are open to the old ways and she is able to save her people, the land—their legacy. It is a gentle reminder from Justice that “traditional knowledge is the means to survival,” and it is through the bridging of gender roles that our heroine is at her strongest. (167)

Both authors have stumbled upon something valuable: by penning stories that focus on the Two-Spirited nature and the indigenous identity together, they demonstrate to the reader that a person can not only be both, but are also more, much more; they are mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, they are nuanced, they can’t be cookie-cutter pieces that can be defined by a category. Literature is an effective way to do this, in the way it transports the reader into the narrator’s shoes and moves them with the power of words. How has literary criticism for such works expanded in today’s society?