“We Can Hold Space for Everyone”: Indigiqueer Identities, Intergenerational Belonging and Cultural Protocols in So-Called Australia

Abstract

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that centres Indigenous queer (henceforth, Indigiqueer) and Indigenous older people and Elders’ voices to explore the everyday tensions between protecting Indigenous cultural protocols against colonial incursions and the challenges presented by shifts in essentialist understandings of gender in the country now called Australia. There is to date very little written that address this topic, although there are two seminal works that investigate the matters more broadly, one by leading Aboriginal scholar Professor Bronwyn Carlson, and another by Noongar Wardandi scholar Professor Braden Hil. Our study uses a set of vignettes based on two interviews with Indigiqueer people and a yarning circle with Indigenous older people and Elders. The interviews and yarning circle are structured as a discussion between community members to provide some preliminary analysis about contemporary dynamic intergenerational debates within Indigenous communities in which competing understandings of culture, gender, safety, and responsibility coexist. For participants, intergenerationality is seen as central to both harm and healing, feelings of belonging and ostracism and ultimately to current and future Indigenous and Indigiqueer survivance and thrivance. Indigenous older people and Elders demonstrate an openness to different sexualities and an acceptance of sexuality-diverse people but are hesitant to allow gender-diverse people to participate in gendered community activities such as playing the didgeridoo (yidaki). To the contrary, Indigenous queer (henceforth Indigiqueer) participants articulate their fears regarding safety, exclusion, care and social isolation emerging from exclusionist gendered binary protocols. Younger generations are seen by all participants as sites of potentiality, that in combination with the power of shared storytelling and mutually constructed understandings, enable a shift towards greater acceptance, openness, and visibility. The paper also reveals the ways in which Indigiqueer people navigate spatial, cultural and social differences between regional and urban spaces, that are seen as differentially accepting of either their Indigeneity or their gender and sexuality diversity. The study’s findings also demonstrate the importance of Indigiqueer-controlled spaces and culturally safe organisations, that are grounded in community-led practices of care, belonging, and self-determination.