Month: February 2012

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New Books in Native American Studies - Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview.

For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing visibility of LGBTQ people in North American society, there is another, increasingly popular narrative embodied by Dan Savage’s ubiquitous internet promise: “It gets better.” As barriers to equal treatment under the law are removed and the state incorporates gender and sexual diversity under its protective umbrella — marriage rights extended, prohibitions to military service lifted, etc — queer politics get folded into the progressive march of the West toward equity and tolerance.

But what about for queer people whose land is violently occupied by the very body politic going about all this incorporating? As Scott Lauria Morgensen powerfully articulates in his new book, Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), Indigenous Two-Spirit activists work for both decolonization and sexual freedom within their homelands, resisting state incorporation, cultural appropriation, and narratives of their “disappearance.”Brilliantly extending (and intervening) on the work of earlier theorists, Morgensen traces how modern sexual identities are built upon the replacement of indigenous sexuality and the development of settler colonialism in what is now the United States and Canada. “Native and queer studies must regard settler colonialism as a key condition of modern sexuality on stolen land,” Morgensen argues, “and use this analysis to explain the power of settler colonialism among Native and non-Native People.”

This is not simply an indictment. Morgensen shows how conversations between Natives and non-Natives can open up new frameworks for political activism and scholarly research, so long as they remain accountable to the ongoing colonization of Native lands. As mainstream LGBTQ organizations abandon their social movement pasts, Morgensen work is a clarion call for a new wave of decolonial queer organizing.

 

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Start the Week - Elizabethans: Max Hastings, Mary Beard, John Guy and Lola Young

On Start the Week Andrew Marr considers the 'great man' view of history, and how far an age can be represented by its leaders and innovators. Mary Beard looks back to ancient times when history and biography were considered two distinct genres. While John Guy returns to the reign of Elizabeth I, Max Hastings and Lola Young give an overview of the modern Elizabethan age. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Measuring famine

How do you measure a famine? Following the UN?s recent announcement that famine conditions have ended in Somalia, More or Less explores what the definition of a famine is ? and how definite a definition it is. Tim Harford hears from Grainne Moloney, head of the UN?s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit and Professor Stephen Devereux from the Institute of Development Studies. Also in the programme: Muhammed Ali?s boxing trainer, Angelo Dundee, was arguably one of sport?s greatest behind-the-scenes figures. But did he really deliberately tear Ali?s boxing glove to win the star crucial recovery time in his 1963 fight against Sir Henry Cooper? Tim Harford gets out his stopwatch for a simple exercise in counting. This programme was originally broadcast on the BBC World Service.