Analytical perspectives on indigenous homosexualities: Considerations from a comparative study

Abstract

This research is about Native homosexual activism in a comparative perspective between Brazil and the United States. The idea is to work as starting points with the queer theory, the coloniality of gender and two-spirit critiques in order to understand homosexuality as a Native critique of colonial apparatus (bureaucratic and missionary) normalizer, heterosexual, male, white and European. Several writings of two-spirit in the United States reflect a critique of queer studies in the sense that queer theorists share a Western, white and modern perspective. Thus, they could not fully understand the native sexualities as an attitude of opposition to the colonization process.

Keywords

• queer theory
• colonialism
• native sexuality
• two-spirit
• ethnology
• South American Indians