Abstract
Although defined differently by various scholars and schools of thought, indigenous feminist critique is, at its base, a praxis that filters modern identity and cultural politics through a multiply located matrix of gendered, geopolitical, and colonial violence.  Such a praxis categorically implies a centering of indigenous subjects who are uniquely marked by the libidinal economies that underwrite settler violence.  Indeed, because indigenous populations bear the compound burdens of territorial dispossession, deracination and annihilation specific to settler desires for power, their negotiations with such practices beg understanding in any scholarly project formulated at the intersections of queer theory, feminisms, indigenous studies, postcolonial theories and cultural studies. This presentation offers a cursory examination of the value of indigenous feminist critique to these interdisciplinary interests.

Bio
Melanie K. Yazzie is a PhD Student in American Studies at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Her main areas of concentration are Navajo studies, feminist & queer theories, American Indian studies, postcolonial theories.
 
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