Decolonizing Queerness
Precolonial indigenous genders and sexualities around the world and homophobia as a legacy of colonialism
This exhibit explores a slice of the myriad approaches taken to gender and sexuality by cultures and communities around the world. Not only do “non-Western” peoples have different ideas about men and women, several perceive more than two sexes. Rather than judging third gender persons to be horrible or pitiful mistakes, they are seen as being charged with holy purpose and extraordinary abilities. Same-sex erotic behavior can range from no big deal to a typical part of adolescence or of military life to culture-defining inspirational love story. By learning about the sexual diversity of pre-colonial indigenous civilizations, the unspoken assumptions at the root of Western civilization are uncovered.
For those in the West, it is tempting to naturalize and universalize our ways of thinking and being. We often assume that the way things are now is how they’ve always been and the way things are here is how they are everywhere—or, things are better here and now compared with elsewhere and in the past. European colonial powers imposed their attitudes toward gender diverse individuals and same-sex eroticism on the peoples they conquered and exploited across the globe, substituting their “civilized” Christian morality for indigenous knowledge.
Most cultures across time lack so much as a concept of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation,” so it is not useful to try to wedge the incredible diversity of categories that aboriginal peoples use to identify social roles or characterize behavior we might label “sexual” into our contemporary LGBTQ framework. Every group, even in the West, has multiple accounts of what kinds of humans exist, how they came to be, what they exist for, and why it matters. It is also impossible (and inappropriate) to claim the mantle of an identity from a culture outside your own. However, the existence of those identities and ways of being can inspire us to break down the myths of imperialism and claim new space in our own cultures.
Ideas about gender, sexuality, morality, and human nature vary across cultures and historical periods. Yet Western and Christian frameworks have often been treated as universal, obscuring Indigenous systems of knowledge that understand gender and sexuality in profoundly different ways.
Decolonizing Queerness explores Indigenous perspectives across the world, revealing the cultural assumptions that shape how we interpret gender and sexuality today. The exhibit invites visitors to reconsider what they have been taught to regard as natural, normal, or timeless, and to encounter Indigenous knowledge on its own terms.
Why This Exhibit?
What Visitors Will Discover
Indigenous understandings of gender and sexuality rooted in distinct cultural and historical contexts across the world.
The diversity of traditions across South Asia, East Asia, Africa, the Americas, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, spanning several millennia BCE to the present.
How colonial rule through conquistadors, merchants, and missionaries led to assimilation policies that disrupt(ed) and reshape(d) Indigenous gender systems.
The persistence of Indigenous identities and traditions that challenge assumptions about gender and sexuality as universal categories.
Contemporary efforts to reclaim and sustain Indigenous cultural knowledge and ways of understanding gender and sexuality.
Preview the exhibit
Who Is This Exhibit For?
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Libraries & archives
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Colleges & universities
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Pride events
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Faith communities
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Workplaces and professional associations
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Middle & High Schools
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Government
What Makes This Exhibit Different?
Decolonizing Queerness examines the cultural frameworks behind the identities we often take for granted. Indigenous gender traditions are frequently collected into familiar Western categories, stripped of the cultural systems that give them meaning. This can obscure more than it explains.
By centering Indigenous frameworks, the exhibit moves beyond treating these traditions as historical curiosities or equivalents of contemporary Western LGBTQ+ identities. It asks visitors to consider how the categories we use shape what we see, what we misunderstand, and whose knowledge we recognize. The result is a deeper encounter with the global history of gender and sexuality, grounded in Indigenous cultural contexts and attentive to the communities and traditions that remain alive today.
Testimonial
“Rotating the Decolonizing Queerness exhibit over the academic year presented us with unique opportunities for passive and active programming and partnership. Collaborating with multicultural units, academic departments, libraries, and student organizations during heritage & history months and observances; i.e., Latinx Heritage Month, LGBTQ+ History Month, Native November, Black History Month, Middle Eastern & North African (MENA) Heritage Month, Trans Day of Visibility, and Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American (APIDA) Heritage Month. By hosting the exhibit in the Center, we witnessed increased traffic from students and community members alike. I believe Decolonizing Queerness inspired students toward research of their own.”
Warren S, MPH, Assistant Dean of Students & Director, UW-Madison Gender and Sexuality Campus Center
Exhibit Details
Format | Retractable vinyl banner exhibition
Panels | 11
Display footprint | Approximately 33 linear feet
Debut | 2023
Rental period | Varies by host and engagement
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