Spotlight Series: Creative Disruption
Making noise, redefining language, wielding raucous imagery—these things serve an important role in our collective quest to decolonize relationships to our oppressors, our lovers, ourselves. Sometimes, you have to destroy and rebuild from the essentials.
indige•zine caught up with three Indigenous creatives who use their art to disrupt the boxes that dictate the way Natives love.
Tatiana Benally
Age: 24
What she does: Hailing from the Diné Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico, Tatiana lives in New York City as a working-class student of anti-colonialist practice, resiliency, and movement. When she’s not freelancing as a media artist or barista-ing in Flatbush, she’s helping to organize events like the Indigenous Creatives Festival with Manhattan’s American Indian Community House, making interdisciplinary art and music, curating the meme page Asdzaaproletariat, frequenting a Diné communist reading group, and much more.
How do you define love?
Love is an organic and necessary connection between human beings. Love is also complex, powerful and is certainly not perfect. There are many notions of love, but the most important love is one that is conscious and respectful of the conditions we are living in.
A noteworthy quote by [political theorist and philosopher] Hannah Arendt addresses the power of an anti-colonial love as:
“Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others … Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.”
I find this quote so beautiful in recognizing the power of love in building solidarity and its nature to be anti-colonial. The only thing I would argue is that love is absolutely political in our time. Destroying the “in-between” that [Arendt] writes about, things like individualism and social constructs, could be read as bi-products of capitalism and colonialism. Love is anti-colonial strength in our times.
In which ways do your concepts of love and creativity meet in your life?
For me, this is mostly observed in the healing process of expression. I often turn to creativity as a way to grapple with feelings of ennui or as a tool to explore the roots of my feelings in times of confusion. Other times, I am just plain happy and the art that I make is then a document of a time that I felt full and warm. The healing power of creation is medicine for the maker and hopefully for people who connect with the art. That’s love.
What’s one toxic thing about romance and relationship you’ve had to unlearn?
The idea that it is cute or normal to be owned by someone (i.e. “She’s mine,” “You belong to me,” etc.) Language and behavior with possessive logic are only another vehicle to integrate colonial notions of property and other outward rippling capitalist-centric lifestyles into practice. From the many recognized and unrecognized Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) cases, to everyday practices of consensual intimacy being breached in relationships.
Love should be founded on mutual respect and compromise, and exist without power dynamics. The purpose of love is not to be used to cushion one’s oppression, nor as a tool of coercion into capitalism. We need to do better.
What is your most potent practice of self love as an indigenous woman?
Existing unapologetically. There is so much joy in embracing who I am and what I do without fear. It is wholesome and pure and everyone needs to do so much more of it.
Dio Ganhdih
Age: 31
What they do: Dio is an Akwesane hip-hop artist with brash, bold flows packed with humor and wit. Born and raised on Haudenosaunee Territory in Upstate New York, they’re also an educator and speaker whose work centers their experience as a queer, gender non-conforming Indigenous artist seeking community amongst their intersections. They’ve made music with Anishinaabe electronic artist Ziibiwan, Peguis First Nation producer Exquisite Ghost, mestiza hip-hop artist Chhoti Maa, and many others.
How do you decolonize your love?
With reflection and accountability of my own toxic behaviors. I take my own internal spiritual temperature and sit with self to process past traumas and explore new paths of healing. The impacts of colonization are thick and dense. Without question, colonization confuses the love that I want and contradicts my intrinsic ability to love. I work to unpack and unfold the whitewashing and heteronormative culture I was surrounded with and inevitably influenced by growing up in a small town and Native community.
As a queer indigenous musician, how do you protect your spirit?
I protect my spirit by trusting my intuition and using my powers for good. I use smoke, sweetgrass, tobacco and prayer. I attend ceremonies and carry with me traditional medicines from my people. I work with teas, herbs and plants which offer external protection and vitality as well.
If you could tell your teenage self one thing about self-love, what would it be?
Teenage me: Believe it or not, you have everything within you to provide yourself with the love, attention, and the validation you are seeking. You will never actually fill that void until you learn how to embrace yourself fully. Dig deeper and push past that binary—you got this! Konarronkwa!
Gwen Benaway
What she does: Gwen Benaway is a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published three collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead, Passage, and Holy Wild. Her fourth collection of poetry, Aperture, is forthcoming from Book*hug in Spring 2020. Her writing has been published in many national publications, including CBC Arts, Maclean’s Magazine, and the Globe and Mail. She’s currently editing an anthology of fantasy short stories by trans girl writers and working on a book of creative non-fiction. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is a Ph.D student at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
How have you used language and poetry to decolonize the institution of love?
I don’t know that language or poetry really can decolonize love. For me, poetry and language are an embodied reflection of a living, not an artifact nor a tool as commonly used by Western mentalities. Language and poetry arises from the love and the living, but can’t liberate us in and of itself. I use poetry and language to explore and narrate my embodiment and intimacies, but decolonization happens through what you do, not what you say. I think people get tripped up on that point, thinking that their language will be their liberation, when it’s their relationally and doing/living that is the revolution.
What is one misconception about desire and relationships you wish you’d known when you were younger?
I wish I had known that it was possible to live inside multiple intimacies and not focus so much on monogamous intimacy as the ultimate relational bond. What I’ve learned is that non-sexual intimacies are very powerful and important, as are polyamorous intimacies. I have several intimacies that I’m present in which are love affairs, but none of them supersede each other. That feels really comforting to me.
I also have several deep intimacies which are non-sexual and fill a lot of spaces for me in terms of kinship and care. I think when I grew up, I just saw abusive monogamous relationships and internalized that as normal. Now, I look at extended networks of kinship, care, and multiple intimacies as my safe normal. I also wish I had embraced my bisexuality sooner but I guess some things take time to grow.
What advice do you have for fellow Indigenous trans people trying to tell their story?
My advice to other trans Indigenous folks is to stand in your language, traditions, and kinships, but also embrace your own sense of selfness.
Transness is complex. It doesn’t have to be one thing. It can look and feel like many different paths or ways of being in the world. I think it’s important to see your ancestors in your transness, but to know that you can innovate around yourself as well.
There is still a lot of transphobia around us, but we are going to find a way through it towards a different future. Never be afraid to be traditional, but never be afraid to not be traditional (or adapt traditions).
Sometimes, I think Indigenous trans people get pressured to take up a certain space in the world. But like all Indigenous peoples, we’re diverse and not all of us need to be activists, writers, healers, leaders, etc. Some of us can just chill and support other folks who want to take on those roles. I want to see more trans NDN voices and bodies in the world doing a bunch of things, from every nation, and in their own ways. That’s my dream for us: a future where we are vibrant, visible, and varied.
