Queer Indigenous Feminism
Queer Indigenous feminism emphasizes kinship and relationality based in reciprocity. Queer Indigenous feminists remind us that Indigenous traditions of kinship do not discriminate against gender and sexual diversity amongst our relatives. Bolded pieces are those that we recommend you start out with.
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Articles
In this statement, The Red Nation proudly declares itself a queer Indigenous feminist organization. We embrace all our relations. We defend and elevate the voices of women, femmes, and LGBTQ2+ within all ranks of our organization and all facets of our work. We take our place in the long tradition of Indigenous feminist struggles for liberation. Long live Indigenous feminism!
The PFC serves as a political caucus within The Red Nation. We operate in accordance with The Red Nation’s Principles of Unity and Pueblo cultural core values. In this manifesto, the PFC declares that it’s purpose is to create a movement that specifically addresses the distinct ways heteropatriarchy, colonialism, individualism, capitalism, racism, ableism, and weaponized religion have manifested in Pueblo communities. We do this through organizing that includes historical research and analysis, community education, and mobilizing direct action and advocacy.
What the ruling classes call chaos is the inevitable cycle of a world able to survive only on violence against the people of the earth and the earth itself. In this statement, The Red Nation (TRN) declares that we stand with and move with the people as we move together with the earth. Where have the masses gone these past months? We are living with a pandemic. Our relatives have died, their proximity to premature death made ever more visible. It is no coincidence that within the United States the workers, the dispossessed, and the Black, Brown and Indigenous masses, have suffered the greatest losses. Our relatives, from these same communities, are on the streets carrying the torch as the revolutionary moment flares. We have seen the domestic imperial forces burn. It is a time of extreme clarification. We are changed. This statement reflects this change.
“Communism is the Horizon, Queer Indigenous Feminism is the Way”
This article covers a study that examines the intersection of the Navajo nation and gender by considering women’s presence in the governmental structure and how Navajo leaders, who are primarily men, reproduce Navajo nationalist ideology to re-inscribe gender roles based on Western concepts even as they claim that they operate under traditional Navajo philosophy.
Dr. D chairman presidents and princesses of the navajo nation, gender, and the politics of tradition
This statement from the Zapatista Women discusses the intersectionalities of feminism within the Zapitista’s, the lived struggle of the women fighting for justice, and a firm stance on their commitment to the revolution.
Letter from the Zapatista Women to Women in Struggle Around the World
Books
Leanne Simpson, Nishnaabeg Anti-Capitalism and Endlessly Creating Our Indigenous Selves, from As We Have Always DoneAcross North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women. In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.
Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler-colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
Women, Race and Class is a 1981 book by the American academic and author Angela Davis. It contains Marxist feminist analysis of gender, race and class. The third book written by Davis, it covers U.S. history from the slave trade and abolitionism movements to the women’s liberation movements which began in the 1960s.
Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy in dialogue. A range of themes-race and gender, sexuality, otherness, sisterhood, and agency-run throughout this collection, and the chapters constitute a collective discourse at the intersection of Black feminist thought and continental philosophy, converging on a similar set of questions and concerns. These convergences are not random or forced, but are in many ways natural and necessary: the same issues of agency, identity, alienation, and power inevitably are addressed by both camps. Never before has a group of scholars worked together to examine the resources these two traditions can offer one another. By bringing the relationship between these two critical fields of thought to the forefront, the book will encourage scholars to engage in new dialogues about how each can inform the other. If contemporary philosophy is troubled by the fact that it can be too limited, too closed, too white, too male, then this groundbreaking book confronts and challenges these problems.
“Black feminism and Continental philosophy” by Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
Presenting a highly original, theoretically grounded view of reproduction and labor as the twin pillars of female exploitation in slavery, Laboring Women is a distinctive contribution to the literature of slavery and the history of women.
I Am Woman represents Maracle’s personal struggle with womanhood, culture, traditional spiritual beliefs and political sovereignty, written during a time when that struggle was not over. Her original intention was to empower Native women to take to heart their own personal struggle for Native feminist being. The changes made in this second edition of the text do not alter her original intention. It remains her attempt to present a Native woman’s sociological perspective on the impacts of colonialism on us, as women, and on herself personally.
This section strictly focuses on gender and sexuality.
Videos & Podcasts
#MMIWG, Land, Bodies, & Consent w/ Cheyenne Antonio, Marissa Naranjo, & Melanie YazzieThe National Day of Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn and Girls is a struggle our communities face continuously and daily. An awareness day could only go so far, as our tribal communities battle for the right to exist prior and after the pandemic. We see our Indigenous Nations advocate on our behalf for access to healthcare, upholding tribal sovereignty, and overall trying their best to keep their doors open to assist their citizens who are experiencing violence. This MMIWG Awareness Day we are looking at what our elders have always stressed in caring for our culture, land, language and health by surviving day to day to exist in a world that is constantly violating Indigenous livelihood. What happens to our lands, connects well with what is happening to our bodies, and we are seeing it clearly as our teaching have always warned us. Join The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women and The Red Nation teamed up for National Day of Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn and Girls
#MMIWG, land, bodies, & consent w/ Cheyenne Antonio, Marissa Naranjo, & Melanie Yazzie
“Under capitalism, gender oppression and violence is permanent condition. State violence, domestic violence, femicide, and economic marginalization are real and urgent issues for women both in the US and internationally, and we must fight for another world! However we know that no Revolution has been possible without the struggle, organization, and leadership of women. For this reason, we must study the legacy of revolutionary women came before us.”
Alexandra Kollontai, writer and revolutionary, was one of the first to clearly articulate a program of working class feminism. Learn from Kollontai what it means to build working class feminism today with this lecture and discussion lead by Professor Jodi Dean.
KOLLONTAI AND REVOLUTION: THERE IS NO SOCIALISM WITHOUT FEMINISM
This film occurs in April of 1994 in the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista women talk about the living conditions of Mexican Indigenous populations and the life of peasant women. They explain the reasons for their struggle and their uprising.