Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, the foundational text of borderlands theory, situates Indians and Europeans in a dichotomy that can be healed through mestizaje. Anzaldúa positions Indian culture as having ‘no tolerance for deviance,’ a problem that can be healed by the ‘tolerance for ambiguity’ that those of mixed race ‘necessarily possess.’ Thus a rigid, unambiguous Indian becomes juxtaposed unfavorably with the mestiza who ‘can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries.’ As many scholars have noted, Native identity is relegated to a primitive past, a premodern precursor to the more modern, sophisticated mestizo identity. In queer of color critique in particular, mestizaje and queerness often intersect to disappear indigeneity through the figure of the diasporic or hybrid queer subject. The consequence is that queer of color critique, while making critical interventions into both critical race and queer studies, generally lacks an analysis of settler colonialism and genocide.
Andy Smith, “Queer Theory and Native Studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism.”
(via queering the game of life)
