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Making Kin Not Population

Edited by Adele E. Clarke and Donna Haraway

PRICKLY PARADIGM PRESS

CHICAGO
 Contents

Introducing Making Kin Not Population ......................1

Adele E. Clarke

1. Black AfterLives Matter:

Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice ..........41
Ruha Benjamin

2. Making Kin in the Chthulucene:

Reproducing Multispecies Justice ................................67
Donna Haraway

3. Against Population, Towards Alterlife ..................101

Michelle Murphy

4. New Feminist Biopolitics for

© 2018 by the authors. Ultra-low-fertility East Asia ......................................125
All rights reserved. Yu-Ling Huang and Chia-Ling Wu

Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC 5. Making Love and Relations

5629 South University Avenue Beyond Settler Sex and Family ..................................145
Chicago, IL 60637 Kim TallBear

www.prickly-paradigm.com References ..................................................................167

ISBN: 9780996635561
LCCN: x

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

144

economy, and environment while making new forms of

kin. Ultra-low fertility can be regarded as a national
security crisis, but it can also be a strong stimulant for
a more en-connected new world.

5
Making Love and Relations
Beyond Settler Sex and Family
Kim TallBear

Sufficiency
At a give-away—we do them often at pow-wows—the
family honors one of our own by thanking the People
who jingle and shimmer in circle. They are with us.
We give gifts in both generous show and as acts of faith
in sufficiency. One does not future-hoard. We may
lament incomplete colonial conversions, our too little
bank savings. The circle, we hope, will sustain. We
sustain it. Not so strange then that I decline to hoard
love and another’s body for myself? I cannot have faith
in scarcity. I have tried. It cut me from the circle.
The Critical Polyamorist

It was not always so that the monogamous couple ideal

reigned. In Public Vows: A History of Marriage and
Nation, Nancy Cott argues that in the US the standard
of lifelong monogamous marriage took hold in the
19th century. It was propped up by Christian moral
arguments coupled with state structural enforcements
146 147

—the linking of marriage to property rights and and communism.” In short, white bodies and white
notions of good citizenship. families in spaces of safety have been propagated in inti-
In Undoing Monogamy, Angela Willey also mate co-constitution with the culling of black, red, and
shows how Christian mores regarding marriage and brown bodies and the wastelanding of their spaces.
monogamy became secularized in late 19th-century Who gets to have babies, and who does not? Whose
scientific discourse. This is evident in the take-up of babies get to live? Whose do not? Whose relatives,
such standards by the US despite its stated commit- including other-than-humans, will thrive and whose
ment to a separation of church and state. Thus, will be laid to waste?
marriage became central to supposedly secular US At the same time that the biologically repro-
nation building that nonetheless assumed a culture of ductive monogamous white marriage and family were
Christianity. In The Importance of Being Monogamous, solidified as ideal and central to both US and Canadian
Sarah Carter also shows how “marriage was part of the nation building, Indigenous peoples who found them-
national agenda in Canada—the marriage ‘fortress’ was selves inside these two countries were being viciously
established to guard the [Canadian] way of life.” restrained both conceptually and physically inside colo-
Growing the white population through biolog- nial borders and institutions that included residential
ically reproductive heterosexual marriage—in addition schools, churches and missions all designed to “save
to encouraging immigration from some places and not the man and kill the Indian.” If Indians could not all
others—was crucial to settler-colonial nation-building. be killed outright—and persistent attempts were made
Anthropologists Paulla Ebron and Anna Tsing argue in to do so—then the savages might also be eliminated by
“Feminism and the Anthropocene” that heteronorma- forced conversions to whiteness. That is the odd nature
tive marriage and family forged through particular of red as a race category in the US. In efforts to reduce
intersections of race, class, and gender worked to numbers of Indigenous peoples and free up land for
increase certain human populations and not others settlement, red people were viewed as capable of being
during rapid post-World War II colonial and capitalist whitened. As part of efforts to eliminate/assimilate
growth of the US This “Great Acceleration” was Indigenous peoples into the national body, both the
extended globally and involved systematic ecological church and the state evangelized marriage, nuclear
and social destruction. Ebron and Tsing write, “White family, and monogamy. These standards were simulta-
nuclear families anchored imagined ‘safety’ while neously lorded over Indigenous peoples as an aspira-
communities of color were made available for sacri- tional model and used to justify curtailing their biolog-
fice.” Enclaves of white middle class spaces of safety ical reproduction and steal their children.
were co-constituted with spaces of waste and ecologi- So marriage was yoked together with private
cal sacrifice, what Ebron and Tsing, after Traci Brynne property in settler coercions of Indigenous peoples. The
Voyles, call “wastelanding.” Indeed, “Well-being was breakup of Indigenous peoples’ collectively held-lands
defined through the safety and security of well-ordered into privately-held allotments controlled by men as
white families surrounded by specters of color, chaos heads-of-household enabled the transfer of “surplus”
148 149

lands to the state and to mostly European or Euro- cies,” “unmarried mothers,” and other failed attempts
American settlers. Cree-Métis feminist, Kim Anderson to paint a white, nationalist, middle class veneer over
writes that “one of the biggest targets of colonialism our lives. I used to think it was the failures to live up to
was the Indigenous family,” in which women had occu- that ideal that turned me off emphasizing domesticity,
pied positions of authority and controlled property. The and that’s why I ran for coastal cities and higher educa-
colonial state targeted women’s power, tying land tion, why I asserted from a very early age that I would
tenure rights to heterosexual, one-on-one, lifelong never marry, nor birth children. Now I see that it was
marriages, thus tying women’s economic well being to not my family’s so-called failures, but rather I was
men who legally controlled the property. Indeed, suffocating under the weight of the aspirational ideal of
women themselves became property. a normative middle-class nuclear family, including
heteronormative coupledom, period.
I was a happy child in those moments when I
Indigenous Relationality: e.g., Tiospaye, Oyate sat at my great-grandmother’s dining room table with
four generations, and later in her life with five genera-
tions. We gathered in her small dining room with its
One hundred and fifty-six years after the Dakota-US
burnt orange linoleum and ruffled curtains, at the table
War of 1862, when my Dakota ancestors were brought
beside the antique china cabinet, people overflowing
under colonial control, the clearly unsustainable
into the equally small living room—all the generations
nuclear family is the most commonly idealized alterna-
eating, laughing, playing cards, drinking coffee, talking
tive to the tribal and extended family context in which
tribal politics, and eating again. The children would
I was raised. Prior to colonization, the fundamental
run in and out. I would sit quietly next to my grand-
social unit of my people was the extended kin group,
mothers hoping no one would notice me. I could then
including plural marriage. The Dakota word for
avoid playing children’s games and listen instead to the
extended family is tiospaye. The word for “tribe” or
adults’ funny stories and wild tribal politics.
“people” (sometimes translated as “nation”) is oyate,
Couples and marriages and nuclear families got
and governance happens in ways that demonstrate the
little play there. The matriarch of our family, my great-
connections between the two.
grandmother, was always laughing. She would cheat at
With hindsight, I can see that my road to
cards and tell funny, poignant stories about our family,
exploring open non-monogamy began early in my
about families and individuals—both Natives and
observations in tribal communities of mostly failed
whites—in our small town throughout the 20th
monogamy, extreme serial monogamy, and disruptions
century. Aunts and uncles would contribute their child-
to nuclear family. Throughout my growing up I was
hood memories to build on her stories. My mother
subjected by both whites and Natives ourselves to
would bring the conversation back to tribal or national
narratives of shortcoming and failure—descriptions of
politics. A great-grandchild might be recognized for a
Native American “broken families,” “teenage pregnan-
creative, academic, or athletic accomplishment. The
150 151

newest baby would be doted on as a newly arrived

human who chose our family. The Mom who might be
Compulsory Settler Sex, Family, and Nation
18 and unmarried would have help. As Kim Anderson
I did eventually marry—both legally and in a Dakota
explains in “Affirmations of an Indigenous Feminist”:
neo-traditional ceremony—when I was nearly 30.
Our traditional societies had been sustained by Despite my youthful disavowals, even I didn’t have the
strong kin relations in which women had significant oppositional momentum to jump the tracks of the
authority. There was no such thing as a single marriage railroad. Today, I am nearly 50 and I see that
mother, because Native women and their children it was not my family’s so-called failures that dampened
lived and worked in extended kin networks. my enthusiasm for coupled domesticity. Rather, I was
suffocating all my life under the weight of the aspira-
Despite colonial violence against our kin systems, we are tional ideal of middle-class nuclear family, including
in everyday practice still quite adept at extended family. (hetero)normative coupledom with its compulsory
Beyond biological family, we also have ceremonies to biological reproduction, even while I had, it turns out,
adopt kin. And in my extended family we also engage in contentedly lived a counter narrative to that settler
legal adoption. This is aided by the Indian Child ideal for some years.
Welfare Act (ICWA) that prioritizes the adoption of Unsurprisingly, the feeling of suffocation inten-
Native children by tribal families so children have a sified after marriage and the pressure I felt to constitute
better chance of remaining inside tribal cultures. And it a normative middle-class family. My co-parent is an
was Indigenous peoples ourselves who lobbied heavily anti-racist, feminist, Indigenous-rights-supporting,
for that legislation as one response to the colonial cisgendered white male who has mostly been the
kidnapping of children of previous generations from primary caretaker of our now teenager. I do not blame
Indigenous families who were impoverished by colo- him as an individual for my misery in the marriage and
nialism, and deemed unfit for not attaining the middle- nuclear family system. He did the best he could to help
class, nuclear family structures of white colonialists. make a livable space for me. While I had no trouble
bonding with my child as an individual human being, I
could not shake my feeling of unease with the settler
family structure, including its oppressive pronatalism.
Of course, there were babies born into my
extended Dakota family. People have sex. Bodies beget
life. But I did not see in my community a kind of
pronatalism co-constituted with nation (state) build-
ing—an overture necessarily aimed at dispossessing
Indigenous peoples of our human and other-than-
human relatives. Instead, and I have only just now put
152 153

words to this, I grew up with an implicit mandate that to serve the patriarchal heteronormative and increas-
our tiospaye must caretake kin across the generations as ingly also homonormative imperial state and its unsus-
part of caretaking the oyate, i.e. the “tribal nation” in tainable private property interests and institutions.
20th-century parlance. Some of our kin are born to us Present-past-future: I resist a lineal, progressive
and some of them come to us in other ways. The roles representation of movement forward to something
of grandparents and aunties and uncles are revered as better, or movement back to something purer. I bring
much as are mothers and fathers. I grew in a very pro- voices and practices into conversation from across what
kinship world, but settler-state oppressions simultane- is called, in English, time. There are many lively
ously sparked in me an explicit nonnatalism that is conversationalists at my table—both embodied and no
central to my rejection of the US nationalist project. If longer embodied. I lean in to hear them all in order to
pronatalism involves reproducing the middle-class try and grasp ways of relating that Dakota people and
settler family structure, no matter the race or sexual other Indigenous peoples practiced historically. From
orientation of the middle-class family, I lament it. what it is possible to know after colonial disruption to
our ancestors’ practices and our memories of how they
related, marriage was different from relatively recent
Kin-Making and Critical Nonmonogamy settler formations. Before settler-imposed monogamy,
marriages helped to forge important Dakota kinship
alliances but “divorce” for both men and women was
Decolonization is not an individual choice. We must
possible. In addition, more than two genders were
collectively oppose a system of compulsory settler sexu-
recognized, and there was an element of flexibility in
ality and family that continues building a nation upon
gender identification. People we might call
Indigenous genocide and that marks Indigenous and
“genderqueer” today also entered into “traditional”
other marginalized relations as deviant. This includes
Dakota marriages with partners who might be what we
opposing norms and policies that reward normative
today consider “cisgendered.” As I try to write this, I
kinship ties (e.g., monogamous legal marriage, nuclear
engage in essentially nonsensical conceptual time travel
biological family) over other forms of kinship obliga-
with categories that will lose their integrity if I try to
tion. It includes living or supporting others in living
teleport them back or forward in time. So much has
within nonmonogamous and more-than-coupled
gone dormant—will go dormant. So much has been
bonds. It includes advocating policies that support a
imposed onto Indigenous peoples, both heteronorma-
more expansive definition of family, and not rewarding
tive settler sexuality categories and now also “queer”
normative family structures with social and financial
categories.
benefits. Multiple scholars including Scott M.
The record is also clear that there was plural
Morgensen and Katherine Franke show us how the
marriage for men. What were/are the spaces for plural
present settler sexuality system attempts to railroad all
relations for and between women? An Indigenous
of us into rigid relational forms established historically
feminist scholar from a people related to mine has
154 155

confessed to me her suspicion that among our ances- locked up, raped, grew ashamed, suicidal, forgot. We
tors the multiple wives of one husband, if they were not have inherited all of that. And we have inherited
sisters as they sometimes were, may have had what we Christian sexual mores, and settler state biopolitics that
today call “sexual” relations between them. She whis- monitor, measure, and pathologize our bodies and our
pered this to me. As if we were blaspheming. But in a peoples, including forcibly sterilizing Indigenous
world before settler colonialism—outside of the partic- women. Yet they’ve also promoted heteronormative
ular biosocial assemblages that now structure settler biological reproduction (for some, not all) as the only
notions of “gender,” “sex,” and “sexuality,” persons way to make babies and kin.
and the intimacies among them were no doubt worked With that history as the cliff looming above us,
out quite differently. it is no small thing to ask Indigenous thinkers to turn
Nathan Rambukkana, in his 2015 book their decolonial lenses towards a critique of normative
Fraught Intimacies: Non/Monogamies in the Public marriage and family formations that many of us now
Sphere, notes the potential of “queer or queered sexual aspire to. It is no small request to ask Indigenous people
or intimate relationships between sister- or co-wives.” to consider the advantages of open nonmonogamy,
He cites a 2008 ethnography of a British Columbia with a community’s knowledge and partners’ consent as
Mormon community, Bountiful, in which two polyga- an important decolonial option. For now, few will have
mist wives “married each other using Canada’s same- that choice. I suspect there are especially younger
sex marriage legislation.” The two women “consider Indigenous people who might join me in thinking hard
themselves life partners, although they have never on the nonmonogamous arrangements of our ances-
explicitly discussed whether their relationship has a tors. We are so keen to embrace other decolonizing
sexual component.” projects—to consider the wisdom of our ancestors’ ways
Recognizing possibilities of other kinds of inti- of thinking. Why should we not also consider
macies—not focused on biological reproduction and nonmonogamous family forms in our communities?
making population, but caretaking precious kin that I have had especially white feminists bristle at
come to us in diverse ways—is an important step to my refusal to condemn Dakota historical practices of
unsettling settler sex and family. So is looking for plural marriage. How can I support “polygamy”—with
answers to questions about what intimacies were and that word for them meaning one man with several
are possible beyond the settler impositions we now live wives? It can also refer to one woman with multiple
with. These are formidable tasks that will be met with men. These women’s views on nonmonogamy are
resistance by many Indigenous people. Our shaming conditioned by their impressions of nonconsensual or
and victimization, including in “sexual” ways, has been not rigorously consensual forms of nonmonogamy in
extreme. The imposition of Christianity has ensured which men alone have multiple wives. They often cite
that speaking of and engaging in so-called sexual rela- Mormon or Muslim polygamies. I can’t speak with
tions in the ways of our ancestors was severely much expertise to the variety of nonmonogamous
curtailed. Our ancestors lied, omitted, were beaten, practices among those peoples, although I know that
156 157

there are varying levels of consent and not all polygamy of family insidiously continue to stigmatize us as they
should be painted with the same broad brush. But I ask represent the normative standard against which we are
us, as Indigenous people, to learn what we can about measured. Perhaps our kinship arrangements are actu-
the role of nonmonogamy in our ancestors’ practices, ally culturally, emotionally, financially, and environ-
which, importantly, were not often attached to prose- mentally more sustainable than that nuclear family,
lytizing religions, and which normatively featured two-parent model we are so good at failing at, and
greater autonomy for women. What I know of my that’s why we are “failing.”
ancestors is that women controlled household prop- If we already often share children, economic
erty. And marriage did not bind them to men econom- sustenance, and housing, why must sex be reserved for
ically in the harsh ways of settler marriage. the monogamous couple, or for making babies? Sexual
What were the values underlying our ancestors’ monogamy can in one interpretation be seen as hoard-
nonmonogamy that might articulate with 21st-century ing another person’s body and desire, which seems at
Indigenous lives? Many Indigenous communities still odds with the broader ethic of sharing that undergirds
exhibit a framework of extended kinship where respon- extended kinship. What if my colleague’s suspicion is
sibilities are more diffusely distributed, where we work correct? Is it so uncomfortable to imagine women, in
as groups of women (or men, or other gendered people partnership also with the same husband (with every-
ideally) to share childcare, housing, and other one’s gender identification more complex than biology
resources. In my experience, our ways of relating often alone)—sharing not only say daily work, but also, when
seem to contradict the monogamous couple and the need or desire arose, sharing touch as a form of
nuclear family. I am interested in seeing us not only care, relating, or connection?
implicitly but also explicitly de-center those family
forms. Perhaps our allegiances and commitments are
more strongly conditioned than we realize by a sense of
community that exceeds rather than fails to meet the
requirements of settler sex and family. The abuse and
neglect in so many Indigenous families born of colonial
kidnapping, incarceration, rape, and killing are all too
real. But perhaps our relentless moves to caretake in
tiospaye more than in normative settler family forms is
not simply the best that we can do. Maybe it is the best
way to heal?
I’ve seen sociological research under the label
of Indigenous Masculinities—pro-Indigenous father-
hood research—that centers the normative two-parent,
nuclear family form without question. Colonial notions
158 159

Disaggregating Sexuality and Spirituality: sexualities. Shorter explains that in many Indigenous
contexts, there is an “interconnectedness in all aspects
Reaggregating Relations of life.” So following the connections between sex and
spirit among the Yoeme was akin to “following a strand
Sexuality is not “like” power…sexuality is a form of of a spider’s web.” In English we are accustomed to
power: and, of the forms of power, sexuality in thinking of “spirituality” or “spirit,” “sexuality” or
particular might prove uniquely efficacious in both “sex” as things, and as assuredly separate things. With
individual and collective healing. Further, I will that ontological lens moreakamem become an object, a
suggest that sexuality’s power might be forceful
class of person defined along either sexual and/or
enough to soothe the pains of colonization and the
scars of internal colonization. “spiritual” lines. However, within their context, sexu-
David Delgado Shorter ality and spirituality can both be seen as actually consti-
tuted of “human relational activities.” They are sets of
In an essay entitled simply, “Sexuality,” Indigenous relations—through which power is acquired and
Studies scholar David Shorter focuses on moreakamem exchanged in reciprocal fashion among persons, not all
—healers, seers, powerful people among the Yoeme, an of them human. In describing how relations or the
Indigenous people living on both sides of the relational sharing of power become things in a non-
Mexico/US border. He originally set out to under- Indigenous framework, Shorter uses the term “objecti-
stand the “spiritual” aspects of what they do—to exam- vating the intersubjective.” In another simply titled
ine moreakamem as powerful healers—but his research essay, “Spirituality,” he explains that “’Intersubjective,’
revealed entanglements of both “sexuality” and “spiri- like ‘related,’ emphasizes mutual connectivity, shared
tuality.” During his fieldwork with southern Yoeme in responsibility, and interdependent well-being.” So we
Sonora, Mexico, an elder told Shorter that individuals might think of sexuality, spirituality, and nature too as
who engage in nonmonogamous and/or non-hetero- not things at all, but as sets of relations in which power
sexual relationships are commonly also moreakamem. [and sometimes material sustenance?] circulates. We
This is not always the case, but it is often the case. In might resist objectivating the intersubjective. We might
fact, in northern Yoeme communities in Arizona, more- resist hardening relations into objects, which might
akame has come to be conflated with terms such as make us more attuned to relating justly in practice.
“gay,” “lesbian,” or “two-spirit,” and other less posi- To return to moreakamem and resisting a clas-
tive terms. The healer or seer aspect of the word has by sification of them as gay, or nonmonogamous, we can
now been lost among Yoeme living in the US, who see them instead as relating. They have reciprocity
have much ethnic overlap with “Catholic Mexican with and receive power in their encounters with spir-
American” communities. its, ancestors, dreams, animals. And also in the human
Shorter found that he could not understand the realm when they use their power to see for and heal
powerful “spiritual” roles in community of more- other humans suffering from love or money problems,
akamem without also understanding their so-called addictions, and other afflictions of mind and body.
160 161

Emphasizing relations and exchange, Shorter explains what might “indigenizing sexuality” mean? I hope it is
that the “social role of ‘moreakamem’” is not “a clear by now that the question is actually oxymoronic.
means for individual self-empowerment.” A more- Rather, we might consider that the goal is to disaggre-
akame does not identify themself as such. Although gate so-called sexuality not back to tradition, not
we do so identify them in order to refer to them. forward into progress, but into and back out into that
Moreakamem do not accentuate their pertinent spider’s web of relations. (Or any net visual that works
personal characteristics and capacities, i.e., their “sexu- for you.) That is a web or net in which relations
ality” or their power to heal. Shorter explains that exchange power, and power is in tension, thus holding
moreakamem focus rather on their work in commu- the web or community together.
nity, that they “work tirelessly and selflessly to main- So this is my thought experiment: As part of
tain right relations.” They resist having their relational decolonial efforts can we work ourselves into a web of
activities and power objectified. relations (I am thinking in terms of space and not a time
Understanding moreakamem relationality in concept now). In small moments of possibility, can we
community helps us to understand their so-called sexu- resist naming “sex” between persons and “sexuality” as
ality (and ours too) as a form of reciprocity and power nameable objects? Can such disaggregation help us
exchange. We can begin to unthread it from being an decolonize the ways in which we engage other bodies
object like “gay” or “straight” that is “constituted once intimately—whether those are human bodies, bodies of
and unchanging.” So-called sexuality is one form of water or land, the bodies of other living beings, and the
relating and sharing of power that is “reconstituted vitality of our ancestors and other beings no longer or
over and over based on the intersubjective dynamism not yet embodied? By focusing on actual states of rela-
of two or more persons.” Shorter encourages us to see tion—on being in good relation-with, making kin—and
that for moreakamem—and for all of us—“sexuality” with less monitoring and regulation of categories, might
can be understood “as a way of being that…directly that spur more just interactions?
and intentionally mediates social relations across the We could do the same thought experiment
family, clan, pueblo, tribe, and other forms of relations with “spirituality” too for it is also about relationality
including other-than-human persons.” With this and engaging other bodies, maybe just not always
understanding, sexuality beings to look “more like a material ones. We won’t escape the moments when
type of power, particularly one capable of healing.” “sex” or “sexuality,” “spirit” or “spirituality” are the
David Shorter does not reveal the details of best we can do with this limited English language. But
moreakamem sexual relations beyond noting their often can we lean toward disaggregating objects and instead
non-normative sexualities. But his theoretical treatment focus on promiscuously reaggregating relations? Can
of sexuality as relational power exchange is instructive we see ourselves as relating and exchanging power and
for pondering how Indigenous people (and others) reciprocity in support of a stronger tiospaye or
might find ways in collectivity to oppose settler sexual- extended kin network with both living relations and
ity and marriage. Given the goal of thinking relationally, those whose bodies we come from, and whose bodies
162 163

will come in part from us? I am thinking of both the

human and other-than-human bodies with whom we
Conclusion
are co-constituted.
To return to the by now mundane topic of
Many other scholars of “Native American”
nonmonogamy, in relating with more than one partner
history or Indigenous Studies have written key texts
in my life, I have come to regularly ponder how this
that inform my evolving thinking on the issues
serves kinship across my life. How do these relations
discussed in this chapter. Influential historians include
serve others? What about our respective children?
Philip Deloria, Theda Perdue, and Brian Dippie. Also
Multiple “romantic” relations can help raise and
influential are race scholars who do the rarer work of
mentor children in community. How do our relations
accounting for the intersections of race and
serve our other partners? I have found affectionate and
Indigeneity. These include scholars such as Circe
supportive friendship with partners of my partners.
Sturm, Cheryl Harris, Aileen Moreton-Robinson,
This is a key benefit for me of open nonmonogamy.
Jenny Reardon, Eve Tuck, and Yael Ben-zvi. Their
How does the different sustenance I gain from multi-
work is listed in the References and the online
ple lovers collectively fortify me and make me more
Sourcenotes.
available to contribute in the world? If I am richly fed,
what and who am I able to feed? What is possible with
a model in which love and relations are not considered
scarce objects to be hoarded and protected, but which
proliferate beyond the confines of the socially consti-
tuted couple and nuclear family?
What began as a personal political experiment
in open nonmonogamy is turning to de-emphasizing
monogamy and nonmonogamy as objectified forms of
“sexuality.” I am also indebted to fellow feminist
science studies scholar, Angela Willey, for inspiring my
newly established will to unsettle both concepts. I am
caught up sometimes in objectivating the intersubjec-
tive, that is, when I identify myself as “nonmonoga-
mous”—as a sort of form of sexuality. Let me be clear,
that I view open nonmonogamy as but one step in a
process of decolonizing from compulsory settler sexu-
ality. It is a placeholder until I/we find other ways of
framing and naming more diffuse, sustainable and inti-
mate relations.
164

As an Indigenous thinker, I am constantly

translating. I see Indigenous thinkers across the disci-
plines and outside of the academy doing similar work—
combining our fundamental cultural orientations to
the world with new possibilities and frameworks for
living and relating. Our peoples have been doing this
collectively in the Americas for over five centuries,
translating, pushing back against colonial frameworks,
and adapting them. We’ve done it with respect to
syncretic forms of religion and ceremony, with dress,
music, language, art and performance. Why should we
not also articulate other ways to lust, love, and make
kin? A de-objectified reconstituting of right relations,
and nurturing, healing exchanges of power seem an
important next step. Within the grand scheme of
things, purposeful and open nonmonogamy, and
reconceiving of more just intimacies with other-than-
humans seem like important next steps.
In conclusion, I return to my tiospaye and to
Indigenous peoples, I no longer see our failures at last-
ing monogamy and nuclear family as failure. From
where I stand it looks like most of my extended family
members have more security in our small town tribal
community or in the “urban Indian” community in
which I spent part of my childhood, than they do in
Euro-centric traditions of nuclear family and marriage.
I see us deep inside the shifting walls of this colonial
edifice that took most of the world’s resource to build,
experimenting and working incrementally with tools
and technologies that we did not craft. I see us
combining these with Indigenous cultural templates in
any open space we can find to build lives and commu-
nities of relations that make any sense to us at all. !