“A Real Feminine Journey”: Locating Indigenous Feminisms in the Arts

Despite the prevailing acceptance of homogenized global sensibilities in media productions, many American Indian and other indigenous artists continue to articulate a sovereign, bounded, and discrete identity based on land, family, and memory. Both material (embodied knowledge) and ideological (the interconnectedness of people, the earth, and culture) constructs enable communal paradigms rather than individualistic or gendered identities to rise to the fore. Given these parameters, how can the testimonies of native women’s lives as artists inform debates of indigenous feminisms? Drawing from Native women artists’ narratives, transnational feminist scholarship, and ethnographic and historical texts, the author demonstrates how indigenous communities become gendered communities as a result of colonialism.