When Did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

When Did Indians Become Straight? explores the complex relationship between sexual mores and shifting forms of Native American self-representation. It offers a cultural and literary history that stretches from the early-nineteenth century to the early-twenty-first century, demonstrating how Euramerican and Native writers have drawn on discourses of sexuality in portraying Native peoples and their sovereignty.

Mark Rifkin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space (OUP 2009).

Introduction

Chapter 1: Reproducing the Indian: Racial Birth and Native Geopolitics in Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison and Last of the Mohicans

Chapter 2: Adoption Nation: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hendrick Aupaumut, and the Boundaries of Familial Feeling

Chapter 3: Romancing Kinship: Indian Education, the Allotment Program, and Zitkala-

Chapter 4: Allotment Subjectivities and the Administration of "Culture": Ella Deloria, Pine Ridge, and the Indian Reorganization Act

Chapter 5: Finding "Our" History: Gender, Sexuality, and the Space of Peoplehood in Stone Butch Blues and Mohawk Trail

Chapter 6: Tradition and the Contemporary Queer: Sexuality, Nationality, and History in Drowning in Fire


Works Cited