Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

by Joanne Barker (Editor)

Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and epistemology. Several essays use a range of literary and legal texts to analyze the production of colonial space, the biopolitics of “Indianness,” and the collisions and collusions between queer theory and colonialism within Indigenous studies. Others address the U.S. government’s criminalization of traditional forms of Diné marriage and sexuality, the Iñupiat people's changing conceptions of masculinity as they embrace the processes of globalization, Hawai‘i’s same-sex marriage bill, and stories of Indigenous women falling in love with non-human beings such as animals, plants, and stars. Following the politics of gender, sexuality, and feminism across these diverse historical and cultural contexts, the contributors question and reframe the thinking about Indigenous knowledge, nationhood, citizenship, history, identity, belonging, and the possibilities for a decolonial future.

Contributors. Jodi A. Byrd, Joanne Barker, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Mishuana Goeman,  J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Melissa K. Nelson, Jessica Bissett Perea, Mark Rifkin

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Indigenous, Queer, Race, LGBT, Gender

288 pages, Hardcover

Published April 28, 2017

Reviews

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A powerful, bracing collection of indigenous criticism which unsettles some of the foundational paradigms of gender studies and feminism writ large. Each essay is so distinct and exceptional, but the overarching theme is a commitment to challenging how Eurocentric/patriarchal ideologies of gender, sexuality, kinship, and society come to be imposed and how this renders alternative indigenous cosmologies impossible and/or descriptive, never analytical.

[Kelsey Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book! Read this book!

Review coming soon.

[Why-why · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book is AWESOME

This ideas put forth in this book are so complex, & as each chapter has a different author the book as a whole does not have one singular voice, I have not been able to figure out how to explain this book adequately. Re-reading the cover page description for the book again now, I don't think it was able to do the book justice either. Much more than & in addition to what it says, this book is important to every one of us who is not quite perfectly "normal," i.e. every single one of us. Ugh, & so much more!!! A very significant read for anyone who likes to think :)

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll start by saying you can’t read this book if you’re a beginner in the topics. I felt like a few of the essays, especially the editors intro (completely skip that) was saying a lot without really saying anything. It was like they tried to use every big word they knew, and I didn’t really get what the purpose of some of what they were trying to say was.

If you don’t know what DOMA is, what the 2S stands for in LGBTQ+2S, what ICWA is or what Loving v. Virginia means (which unless you have a law degree I think 95% doesn’t know who Loving is) then this isn’t the book for you - you will need a baseline knowledge. I wish the authors did a better job at trying to explain these concepts so that everyone could read this as these topics are important.

Despite this, I absolutely loved the last essay by Melissa Nelson “getting dirty – the eco-eroticism of women in indigenous oral literatures.” I of course also loved reading about indigenous Hawaiian sexuality in the first essay and I also really enjoyed learning about Inupiaq men & masculinity within the context of films & especially the audio component in the 4th essay.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and eye opening collection of essays.

[P C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall an anthology that made me feel super seen & theorized sovereignty in fluid, expansive ways. The essays on solar storms & eco-erotics literally stunned me speechless.

[Olivia]

Power Based Violence and Indigenous Americans

[Werns · Rating 1 out of 5]

There were two chapters in this entire book that aren't a series of run-on sentences, overly academic jargon to the point of incomprehensibility, and pure fluff-filled nonsense. As a student, reading this was incredibly frustrating and lent absolutely nothing to the learning process.

[Mills College Library]

970.004 C9348 2017