Imperialism and
colonialism require Indigenous people to fit within the heteronormative
archetypes of an Indigeneity that was authentic in the past but is culturally
and legally vacated in the present. Joanne Barker (Chapter: Introduction: Critically Sovereign)
There is a
fundamental divide between Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination and
the mainstream women's or feminist movement's concerns for civil rights….
Feminism does not merely counter Indigenous women's concerns and is not only
ignorant of Indigenous teachings about gender and sexuality, but it undermines
Indigenous claims to the collective rights of their nations. Joanne Barker
(Chapter: Introduction: Critically
Sovereign)
Decolonizing
Indigenous nations and communities requires scrutinizing the intersections of
settler colonialism, tribal nations, and gender because every facet of Navajo
life came under the purview of federal policy makers, including the domestic
sphere. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Chapter: Return to "The Uprising at
Beautiful Mountain in 1913": Marriage and Sexuality in the Making of the
Modern Navajo Nation)
Although Indigenous
resistance or challenge to colonial authority is most often represented as
moments in isolation, in fact Indigenous peoples continued to challenge
authorities. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Chapter: Return to "The Uprising at
Beautiful Mountain in 1913": Marriage and Sexuality in the Making of the
Modern Navajo Nation)
The bodies of Native
women are dangerous because they produce knowledge and demand accountability,
whether at the scale of their individual bodily integrity, of their
communities' ability to remain or their bodies of land and water, or as
citizens of their nations. Mishuana R
Goeman (Chapter: Ongoing Storms and Struggles: Gendered Violence and Resource
Exploitation)
Decolonizing the
"self" includes decolonizing our whole beings: body, mind, heart,
spirit, and more. Decolonizing requires
a fierce reexamination of our colonial, and often sexist and homophobic,
conditioning and an honest inventory of our pansexual natures and visceral
connections to the more-than-human world. Melissa K Nelson (Chapter: Getting
Dirty: The Eco-Eroticism of Women in Indigenous Oral Literature)
