Maria Lugones critiques Anibal Quijano’s essay on colonialism and capitialism on how the gender in his essay does not delve into the complexities of aboriginal philosophies that Eurocentric beliefs stripped indigenous people of. When settlers came to America, the conception of humanity was consolidated into two groups: the superior vs. the inferior; rational vs. irrational; civilized vs. primitive; and the modern vs. the traditional. Indigenous peoples were categorized into the latter: the inferior, irrational, primitive, and traditional. The mentality of these white Europeans was that because they were civilized, they could conquer, and so they used religious imposition of the binary gender in order to dismantle and destroy the foundation of indigenous peoples’ philosophy and politics. For the most part, Indigenous peoples practiced gynocentric egalitarianism, where the female is believed to be at the core of everything, such as the earth. Women within these tribes were political leaders, warriors, mothers, elders, and decision makers. Their presence and participation was highly valued. Because these philosophies did not fit in with white colonist’s religious belief system, the colonists used four strategies to transform the Indian tribes from gynocentric and egalitarian to hierarchical and patriarchal. First, they replaced the female creators with a male centered God; second, they destroyed their established philosophies and tribal government; third, they removed these tribes from their homelands in order to dislocate connection to home and place; fourth, they replaced the clan systems (which were female centered) to male systems where women would take on their father’s name, have no ownership of property, and so on.
Today, we can see these systems of destruction towards indigenous peoples still being used. However, indigenous peoples are rising, and continue to grow and rise up from the ground. At Standing Rock, females were the ones at the front lines against the Bismarck police. The women were the ones strapping their babies to their backs and participating in protecting our water, which is the source of all life. When Standing Rock was first covered by media, there was no camera on the women who are the backbone of these tribal communities. In a video recorded by Fusion, an indigenous woman and activist named Kandi Mosset said how it is no coincidence that women are the protectors of water because when a woman is pregnant, she carries her child in water. Unfortunately, the focus from media attention was on the men, but eventually smaller based medias were recording the women and photographing their fight and resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Along with this reclamation of power within these tribal communities, where the woman is the center of the powerhouse, gender is being reclaimed as not of biology and science, but of energy and spirit. When settlers arrived in the Americas, their philosophy was that gender was determined by biology, such as having a penis or vagina, and this system is still in place today. The gender binary leaves out those who do not claim themselves as either male or female or are transgender. Within the community at Standing Rock, they were dismantling this destructive gender binary, reviving “Two Spirit.” Essentially, someone who is Two Spirit claims an identity that is both male and female and is fluid. My generation is working towards reclaiming our indigenous philosophies, where gynocentric egalitarianism and the Two Spirit are the norm. We are here for the fight against the hierarchical and patriotic system, as we have been doing for the past 525 years.
