A land of one’s own: whiteness and indigeneity on lesbian land

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay takes up the question of queer white women’s sexualities in the context of the colonialist project using archival material from the lesbian land movement in the United States. The lesbian land movement, sometimes called the women’s land movement, was a phenomenon between 1970 and 1990 that merged lesbian feminism, identity politics, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, and a back-to-the-land do it yourself (DIY) ethos. Driven by scholarship in Queer Indigenous Studies, this article demonstrates how the experiences of Indigenous-identified women in the lesbian land movement reveal the ongoing operation and modification of colonialist land rhetoric. White women produced a position for themselves that was neither free from nor aligned with patriarchal colonialist operations. Within lesbian land communities, forms of settler sexuality surfaced in the operation of sexual norms, which shaped power hierarchies despite women’s countercultural political commitments. Finally, the article considers an event that engages histories of racism and colonialism with lesbian separatism in a complex moment of decolonialist triumph. Bringing Native-identified women’s accounts and Queer Indigenous theories to bear on a point in US lesbian history heavily marked by whiteness reveals both the possibility and the importance of integrating Indigenous Studies into conversations moving beyond Indigenous-centred themes.