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Streaming Media

Abstract

The Queer Indigenous body is a site of contention between worlds. When Queer embodiment and Indigenous identity collide the constituent ideological frameworks of each signifier are called into question. This axis has yet to be named and critically engaged beyond being characteristically ‘queer’ and ‘indigenous’. Queer Aboriginal identities are yet to be, in detail, extrapolated for their conforming or irreconcilable qualities. I will discuss the ways in which the Australian Queer Indigenous absence in critical paradigms are due to abject marginalisation- as a product of unmarked performances of identity rendered invisible, powerless, contradictory, and meaningless on the social realms in which they exist. If you cannot see it, you cannot observe it. I ask: Do Queer Aboriginal people exist? Who is accountable for their existence? How are they concealed and diminished? And, how can we make these figures legible? To answer these complex questions I will compare and contrast frames of knowing with established roots in Aboriginal Studies and Queer Theory and utilise them to delineate, test, confront, and make sense of what can be said of Indigenous Queer identities in Australia. My inquiry is ultimately intersectional. Whatever frames I call into action I am reminded, to paraphrase Flavia Dzodan that my understanding of Queer Indigenous people will be intersectional or it will be bullshit!

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