Indigenous American two -spirit women and urban citizenship in the twentieth century

Megan L MacDonald, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to investigate perspectives of two-spirit women on how their sexuality related to their citizenship, both tribal and national. The project addresses ways indigenous lesbian women feel their lives are built into both the story of queer rights and national citizenship rights in the United States and, more briefly, in Canada. Within academics, race and sexuality are often analyzed in discrete ways, with significant investigations into Indianness or LGBTQI identities, cultures, norms or communities, but rarely creating cross-analytical studies. By utilizing oral histories from indigenous American lesbians, this dissertation seeks to locate queer Indian bodies in the context of both tribal and American national citizenships based on the women's perspectives of their worlds, as well as their respective tribal nations. Indigenous people are often omitted from the conversations about national citizenship and queer rights, lesbian women are often left out of the conversations about tribal citizenship, and, as a result, we do not have a clear conceptualization of how Indigenous lesbians view their experiences in the stories of American citizenship, tribal citizenship and queer rights in the United States.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Curtis, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|Womens studies|Native American studies

COinS