Open AccessRefusing (Mis)Recognition: Navigating Multiple Marginalization in the U.S. Two Spirit Movement
Author(s) -
Jennifer L Davis
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
review of international american studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.107
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1991-2773
DOI - 10.31261/rias.7328
Subject(s) - appropriation , identity (music) , indigenous , gender studies , cultural appropriation , sociology , tribe , queer , politics , human sexuality , aesthetics , epistemology , anthropology , political science , law , art , philosophy , ecology , biology
I focus on the discursive strategies within Two Spirit events and groups that center the definition of ‘Two Spirit’ first and foremost as an Indigenous identity by using both unifying/mass terms (Native American, glbtiq) and culturally & community specific terms (specific tribe names, Two Spirit). Rather than selecting a “right” term, such conversations highlight the constant, simultaneous positionings negotiated by Two Spirit people in their daily lives, and the tensions between recognizability and accuracy; communality and specificity; indigeneity and settler culture; and the burden multiply marginalized people carry in negotiating between all of those metaphorical and literal spaces. Drawing on Simpson’s (2014) concept of the politics of refusal, I demonstrate how Two Spirit individuals utilize available categories of identity, not as either/or binaries but rather as overlapping concepts— differentiated along micro- and macro- scales— to refuse attempts to both reduce the Two Spirit identity to one that is based either in gender or sexuality, and the appropriation of the identity and movement by non-Indigenous individuals and groups within broader national and global queer movements.