AndyHolmes – Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Colour Vancouver

Land Acknowledgement

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our website!

If you are reading this in the United States or Canada, whose lands are you on, dear reader? What are the specific names of the Native nations(s) who have historical claim to the territory on which you currently read this article? What are their histories before European invasion? What are their historical and present acts of resistance to colonial occupation? If you are like most people in the United States and Canada, you cannot answer these questions. And this disturbs me

-Qwo-Li Driskill in “Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques” (pg. 71).

Before proceeding further, we would like to acknowledge that the following blog posts are situated and in some way, articulated on the unceded Coast Salish territories of specifically xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), mi ce:p kwətxwiləm (Tsleil-Wauthuthand,) and Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) First Nations.

Indigenous Lands to what is now Western British Columbia and the Northwest Coast of the United States

As students working within a colonial institution, the University of British Columbia, we reap the benefits of occupation and citizenship within the settler nation of so-called Canada daily, on and off of campus. We recognize that in discussing queer politics, it is of vital importance to recognize the colonial impositions of gender and sexuality forced onto Indigenous nations, which are foundational to the national project of Canada as a country. Heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity are key elements of the production of citizen-subjects. Neoliberal homonormativity changes the terrain by offering citizenship to certain queer subjects, as the content of this blog will illustrate. Queer settler subjects can and do enact colonial violence through their investment in the nation, with or without intention.

With this in mind, we explore on this website how queerness intersects with race, gender, socioeconomic class, diaspora and migration, religion, nationalism, and of course, decolonization. Discussions around queer politics must be grounded in the recognition that our knowledge is inherently mediated by colonial methods of knowledge production in the form of universities, and other institutions.

Going forward, we wish to consider questions such as: Is it even possible to study queer theory while not studying colonialism too? How might we make sense of the fact that the “LGBT” acronym so commonly-used in Canada was not used by Indigenous peoples? Is it even possible for there to be a transnational “LGBT” movement if the acronym is conceptualized from the experiences of colonial countries, such as the United States and Canada? How might a two-spirit or Māhū person resonate with the “LGBT” acronym? These inquiries bridge together the importance of decolonial practices that intersect and co-construct queer and trans of colour theorizing.

In Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies Qwo-Li Driskill writes, “Native studies positions itself as activist scholarship that centralizes the relationship between theory and practice.” (Driskill, 2010) This struck us as a particularly valuable sentiment, and one to bear in mind as you engage with the collection of insights on this website. While these scholarly considerations are valuable, they become so only when paired with and incorporated into our everyday political practices and endeavors. It can be illuminating and affirming to research and think through these concerns, but merely considering and disseminating them is not enough. We must act in accordance with these beliefs as well. With that in mind, we hope you enjoy these entries.

Works Cited:

Driskill, Q. (2010). Doubleweaving Two-Spirit critiques: building alliances between Native and queer studies. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1), 69-92. doi:10.1215/10642684-2009-013

Indigenous Lands. Adapted from Salishan Languages Map in Barbara Brotherton (ed), S’abadeb: The Gifts, Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum and University of Washington Press; 2008: xix. Retrieved from: http://www.burkemuseum.org/blog/curated/coast-salish-art

Justice, D. H. (2010). Notes towards a theory of anomaly. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1-2): 207-242.

Vancouver’s Our City of Colours Poster Campaign

For 3 weeks between October 26 to November 15, 2015, the City of Vancouver was graced with the presence of 15 faces of actual queer Vancouverite people of colour featured in mock movie posters. Organized by Our City of Colours, a non-profit organization in Vancouver that at its core seeks to raise visibility and awareness of issues in racially diverse LGBTQ2+ communities, each movie poster was displayed in one of 15 different bus-shelters throughout the city. Posters were also deliberately multilingual in languages including Chinese, Arabic, Swedish, Hindi, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese, Ojibwe, Tagalog, and ASL.

Locations of Posters at Bus Shelters

The purpose of this campaign was to show people that there are queer people of colour who exist and live happy lives. Although this might seem to be a rather explicitly obvious statement, the reality is that mainstream LGBT films tend to rarely showcase the stories of queer people of colour. For instance, statistics on the demographics of characters in films from a quantitative study in 2014 by Vanity Fair found that among 4610 speaking characters in the top 100 films of 2014, only 19 were lesbian, gay or bisexual. There were no trans characters. Now, these statistics don’t even account for race yet. Among those same 4610 speaking characters, 73.1% were white, 12.5% black, 5.3% Asian, 4.9% Latinx, 2.9% Middle Easter, less than 1% Native American or Pacific Islander, and 1.2% from ‘other’ racial/ethnic groups. Finally, according to Vanity Fair’s study, from the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014, only 30% of the 30,835 speaking characters were female.

Scholars who discuss issues of representation and subjectivity are cognizant of the importance of finding avenues to express identities – in this case, queer of colour stories. Cultural, queer and performance studies scholar Jose Esteban Muñoz discuss the notion of (dis)identification with sites of cultural capital as a strategy for queer of colour subjects to disseminate their experiences. In other words, Our City of Colours’ poster campaign decided that building off of the existing resources of bus-shelters and the popularity of movies would be a way for queer of colour stories to survive and persist in Vancouver’s larger community.

Politics of representation mediate how people think and respect one another, and for this reason, the representation of queer people of colour is ever-so important. Notice how one of the posters with the title “Colours in the Wild” features a cowboy who happens to be Black. This representation deliberately attempts to undermine the iconography of the hyper-masculine, white cowboy who symbolically represents freedom, modernity, and conquest in a settler-colonial narrative that is juxtaposed with Indigenous peoples to ‘justify’ their colonization. According to Dr. Beenash Jafri, an American, gender, and sexuality studies scholar, “the racialized cowboy…[throws] settler authority into question” (p. 74).

Jafri further articulates in an article titled “Desire, Settler Colonialism, and the Racialized Cowboy” (2013) that settler colonialism is a “project of desire” (p. 73). In other words, settler colonialism is perpetuated through films by constructing some people as desirable while other people, in this case, Indigenous peoples and some racialized people, as undesirable. While discussing the poster campaign by Our City of Colours, racialized queer people in films are limited in their ability to successfully take on roles of colonial power because of their inability to be seen as white settlers. That is to say, the role of the hero, the savior, or the protagonist are roles limited to white subjects in settler colonial narratives. Because of this inability to be desired, racialized settlers navigate an oxymoronic paradox: being denied desirability produced by the valorization of white settler subjects, while still occupying the role of being settlers on Indigenous lands.

To return back to the larger collective of the 15 mock movie posters and their locations across Vancouver, it is worth mentioning that there is a particular type of political geography at play. Scholars like Paola Bacchetta, Fatima El-Tayeb and Jin Haritaworn discuss how the formation of space is often dichotomized as either exclusively queer or exclusively racialized, without the possible existence of these harmoniously intersecting. After all, highly non-white racialized neighbourhoods are often interpreted to be homophobic or transphobic, while queer neighbourhoods are often racially-exclusive. For this reason, it is important to consider that Our City of Colours had one of their posters placed on Bute and Davie Street in Vancouver, which is known to be Vancouver’s “gaybourhood” – a place that is also known for not being incredibly racially diverse either.

All things considered, why should it then matter that people see themselves, their experiences, stories, and lives represented in film? For many people, to see oneself reflected in popular media humanizes their existence and presents to a larger audience the opportunity to connect on an interpersonal level. Our City of Colours and their mock movie posters campaign starring queer people of colour ultimately acted as a social commentary on the lack of diverse representation in popular films. I can only hope that those who live at the intersections of identities that are under-represented if represented at all, can one day be able to express untold stories, untold hopes, and ultimately, loving desires.

The 15 Movie Posters from Our City of Colours’ Website

Works Cited:

Jafri, B. (2013). Desire, settler colonialism and the racialized cowboy.American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 37(2): 73-86.

Munoz, J. E. (1999). Performing disidentifications. In his Disidentifications, pp. 1-34.

Paola B., Fatima, E., & Jin, H. (2015). Queer of colour formations and translocal spaces in Europe. Environment and Planning D, 33(5): 769-778.

Vanity Fair. (2014). Editorial by Joanna Robinson. August 5^th, 2014. “New Report Uncovers

Staggering Inequality for Anyone Not Young White, Straight, and Male in Hollywood.”Retrieved from: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/ 08/inequality-women-race-sexual-orientation-movies

Our City of Colours Website. Retrieved from: http://www.ourcityofcolours.com/posters/

From West to West: Colonial Roots of Queer Refugees

Rainbow Refugee, a Vancouver-based non-profit charity founded in 2000, is an organization that offers programs to “support and assist LGBTQ+/HIV+ refugee claimants in BC’s Lower Mainland through facilitated peer support, referrals, system navigation, and accompaniment.” Every 2^nd Thursday of each month at 7:30pm Rainbow Refugee hosts drop-in meetings open to the public at Qmunity located in Downtown Vancouver at 1170 Bute Street. At these meetings, important information regarding LGBTQ+/HIV+ refugee claimants is discussed in order to help refugees successfully gain refugee status in Canada. It should be known that Rainbow Refugee also is partnered with the Federal Government’s Immigration, Refugees Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to develop private sponsorships to ensure successful refugee claimants. Such sponsorships also provide financial aid to refugees to help settle in Canada. For refugees who flee their home country because they are persecuted on the basis of their sexuality, gender identity, or HIV+ status, finding a community in Vancouver that provides support for people who cannot divorce their simultaneous identities as being not only refugees but also, for being queer, is of vital importance.

Rainbow Refugee (Photo from Rainbow Refugee’s Facebook Page)

That being said, for many queer refugees who flee their home for their own safety, what if “home” had already been penetrated by colonial forces? To give context to why queer refugees exist, as of May 2017 out of the 124 countries in the world, 72 of them criminalize same-sex sexual relations (ILGA). In a report conducted in 2014, 57% of all countries that criminalize same-sex sexual relations were once British colonies. Furthermore, 70% of all former British colonies continued to criminalize forms of homosexuality.

If we recognize residual colonial laws criminalizing same-sex sexual relations are often the culprit behind why many queer refugees must flee their countries, then states such as Canada, the United States, and Britain must take the responsibility to accept them. After all, are queer refugees not simply traversing from ‘West to West’? From being excluded from a home country tainted with homophobic colonial laws to then being excluded from host countries that are rooted in colonial powers. Drawing the connection of colonial laws or colonial forces that have negatively impacted refugees are significant because all refugees implicated in such colonial systems are therefore deserving of their entrance through the borders of new countries.

Yet, various scholars who study the intersection between queerness, race, and migration identify unique barriers that queer refugees face. Karma R. Chávez discusses the notion of “cultural citizenship” as a way for queer immigrants and refugees to normalize themselves to be seen as less threatening within a largely white and heteronormative society. In Rainbow Refugee, queer refugee-seekers are expected to demonstrate in law courts not only that they are legitimately queer, but also, that they are positively contributing to Canadian society. This performative act of belonging to Canada is a standard unique to queer refugees that they are expected to demonstrate. In “Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire” (2008) Agathangelou et al. discuss the neoliberal underpinnings of the notion of a “global lockdown” that physically confines and targets refugee camps and immigrant detention centres. In our current globalized world, it is integral to resist ideas of queer and non-queer refugees as non-belonging subjects in Western states if Western states are to blame in the first place for being perpetrators of political and climate instability. Here, note that I am referring to non-queer refugees as equally deserving because they too become queered in discourses of national belonging. To borrow from Cathy Cohen, an anti-racist feminist queer scholar, this idea that to be queer encompasses more than sexuality, but of dis-belonging and subjugation through being interpreted as non-normative, is important in my reconceptualization for a plea for all refugees to be seen as legitimate, not just queer ones.

And not to mention, what about queer refugees who flee countries that do not have a British or European colonial history? There comes a point where all refugees have lives that matter because, in a globalized world, the problems of one country are inextricably linked to the external pressures, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation perpetrated by the world’s most economically ‘advanced’ nations: Western states as a product of neoliberalism and global capitalism.

Ultimately, diasporic queer refugees expose the contradictory notion of having to redeem themselves in a state like Canada or the United States when in fact similar anti-same-sex sexual relations laws in Canada and the United States have only until more recently been decriminalized. It is important for people to start recognizing how interconnected our world is, and how a history of colonialism cannot be erased when thinking about refugees, especially queer refugees.

Works Cited:

Agathangelou, A., Bassicchis, M. D., &. Tamara, S. L. (2008). Intimate investments: homonormativity, global lockdown and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review, 100: 120-143.

Chavez, K. (2010). Border (in)securities: normative and differential belonging in LGBTQ and immigrant rights discourse. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(2): 136-155.

Cohen, C. (1997). Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: the radical potential of queer politics? GLQ, 3(4): 437-465.

Qmunity Website. Retrieved from: https://qmunity.ca

Rainbow Refugee Website: Retrieved from: https://www.rainbowrefugee.com