Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2012
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 32:1 (Winter 2012).
Abstract
A colleague and I were asked recently to speak at the Midwest regional conference for LGBTQ and ally-identified college students. We teach an Indigenous language (Anishinaabemowin), one of us has lived in a same-sex relationship, both of us are allies, but the politics and theory of the community are daunting. As we looked across a sea of young faces, empowered by proximity, we saw hope and we said, "gego bigidnike aanji'igwa." This phrase, "don't let them change you," has long served us teaching about identity, freedom, and survival in Native communities and was perfect for the gathering of young LGBTQ students and supporters. It is also part of the underlying theme of the essays in Queer Indigenous Studies as they explore the way scholars, activists, and artists remember and build postcolonial, unsettled, LGBTQ2 {lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit) communities of theory and practice. The book asks LGBTQ2 readers, Native and non-Native, and their allies to acknowledge the multiple realities of the community, to consider the ways in which identities have changed, and to make note of the important ways in which they have stayed the same.
Comments
Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.