Indigenous American sexual minorities and alternatively gendered voices went underground due to Eurowestern sexual colonization from the time of the conquistador invasions of the early 16th century to the political campaigns of cultural homogenization of the mid-20th century. A cultural distortion still exists in the postcolonial era. In the past many North American indigenous nations had culturally specific sexualities and genders that reflected the cultural heterogeneity of the Americas. Today cultural assimilation negatively affects queer Native Americans, and culturally imported attitudes of homophobia are reflected in Native American literature. An interdisciplinary approach must be used to study the cultural distortion that affects all levels of Native American societies including sexuality and gender, by combining anthropology, social studies, forms of oral and textual literature, and history, a discourse between competing Native American voices is revealed.
The results indicate that some Native American authors exhibit traditional and/or neo-traditional views versus assimilated views about Native American queer and two-spirit people, traditional means the specific cultural constructs of the nation that produced them, and assimilated means cultural absorption by another and does not mean acculturation. Assimilated views of homosexuality such as James Welchs The Heartsong of Charging Elk and Leslie Marmon Silkos Almanac of the Dead, readily canonized by the literary establishment, are still influenced by the patriarchy. Queer voices that attempt to rediscover Native Americans past acceptance of multiple genders and sexual diversity, neo-traditionalists like Michael Red Earth and Anne Waters, have remained largely unknown by mainstream America, reflecting the invisibility of Native American sexual minorities and two-spirit voices in contemporary American life.
The principal conclusion is that a culture clash exists between assimilated and traditional and/or neo-traditional views about the re-acceptance of alternative genders, and the acceptance of culturally imported queer identities. Even so, Native American sexual minorities and two-spirit people are telling their stories as an act of decolonization and reasserting their cultural power.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-04252013-022913 |
| Date | 23 May 2013 |
| Creators | DeCelles, Theodore Cecil |
| Contributors | Kathleen Kane, David Moore, Kathryn Shanley |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-04252013-022913/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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