Racialized performances of blackface, minstrelsy, and playing Indian are inherently dehumanizing to Indigenous and Black queer people.
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For Pierce, “his objectification perpetuates the erasure of Indigenous peoples it undermines our sovereign right to express ourselves as human beings.” It’s just a costume.”Įven worse, other participants in the Pride parade lined up to take selfies with this group. “Oh, we don’t belong to a tribe,” one of the men responded. I shuffled next to one of them and asked, “What tribe are you from?” But no tribe actually dresses like that.they’re playing Indian for Pride. At first, I wondered why they weren’t marching with us. I was dazed by this flash of fuchsia, turquoise, tangerine, and scarlet. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I noticed a group of five men wearing elaborate headdresses and loincloths.
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Pierce observed that even as WorldPride NYC was “the largest gathering of two-spirit people ever to march in the parade,” numerous non-Indigenous queer people showed up to this gathering in “Indian costumes,” perpetuating the centuries-long derogatory practice of “playing Indian.” He writes: Writing for the art blog Hyperallergic on New York City’s hosting of WorldPride in 2019, the international pride parade that takes place in a different country each year, the queer Cherokee scholar Joseph M.
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A symbolic inclusion of queer Indigenous people is only the most basic of changes needed to transform the LGBTQ movement in the United States into being truly intersectional and inclusive of all queer people. 2LGBTQ, it’s still rare to see that usage in the U.S. Whereas queer activists in Canada have more readily taken to amending the “LGBTQ” acronym and appending it with a “2” for Two-Spirit-identified Indigenous people, i.e. I was glad to strain my arms for a few hours holding that poster aloft as we walked down from Bryant Park towards Greenwich Village, alongside giant puppets and a handful of close friends of mine (one, a former organizer with the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association, in immaculate sari drag!) because it centers an issue that has, until very recently, been relegated to the margins of more mainstream iterations of the LGBTQ movement in the United States: Indigenous sovereignty. Walking south on 7th Avenue in Manhattan, holding the ”Stolen Lenape Land” poster at the 2021 Queer Liberation March (Credit: S. That poster is now on display at the Museum. The poster read “This Is Stolen Lenape Land,” with the name of the event, date, and website printed in smaller type at the bottom. We say “NO” to politicians ’grandstanding, trading in the struggles of Queer people for votes and political posturing.Īt the 2021 march, I ended up holding up a poster printed by the organizers of the march. We say “NO” to involving police as the protectors of our spaces, as they show daily that they are not up to the task. The Queer Liberation March says “NO” to corporate sponsorship bribes, and rainbow covered anything.
MARCH GAY PRIDE NYC FREE
The March exists because, as the coalition’s website says,“ the Parade in NYC had gone too far-too far from the spirit of the Stonewall Rebellion.” In contrast, the Queer Liberation March sees its mission as one free of corporate interests, institutional politics, and law enforcement: Last summer, I joined the New York City Reclaim Pride Coalition’s alternative–and more avowedly political–Pride march in the city, the Queer Liberation March. In an amusing turn of events, the Museum requested to borrow an object from me for this new section of Activist New York. One of these collaborations involved working with Sarah Seidman, the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism and the curator of the ongoing exhibition Activist New York: I participated in curatorial meetings about the shape the newly installed section on current events would take, and then wrote a few object descriptions for artifacts we selected for display. While my primary responsibilities are in Education, I’ve felt genuinely fortunate to collaborate with both the Public Programs and Curatorial departments during my time here. The Education department leads field trips, organizes webinars, and hosts school classes working on research projects connected to the Museum’s exhibitions and holdings–and so much more. scholar on a Public Humanities Fellowship.
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During the 2021-2022 academic year, I have been part of MCNY’s vibrant Education team as a Ph.D.