Sexing the Indian: Scholarships Role in the Consolidation of Colonial Structures of Gender and Sexuality

Sexing the Indian examines the potential role scholarship can play in the consolidation of colonial structures of gender and sexuality. Using the Smithsonian Institutes volumes of the Handbook of North American Indians that discuss First Nations communities in Canada as a frame of observation, examination into the academic discourse surrounding articulations of gender and sexuality and the history of this production are analyzed. To illustrate the cultural relativity of constructions of the natural generally, and gender more specifically, examination of the differing cosmologies of various First Nations and their gender roles are examined. The intent is to illustrate the relativity in cultural productions and how, inadvertently, scholarship/culture can write about itself while recording the observations of the other. When scholarship cannot see its own cultural boundaries, it can become an observation about the observer and not a reflection upon the observed.