Survivance, described as an active sense of existence and a continuance of Native life and culture, is difficult for queer Indigenous people to achieve because of current systems of power erasing both their Native American presence and oppressing queer bodies. To attain their own sense of survivance, queer Native Americans are typically forced to choose one aspect of their identity by abandoning the other in tribal or queer spaces, which refuse to recognize the duality of their sense of self. IRL, written by Tommy Pico (Kumeyaay), is a long-form poem representational of queer Native American survivance with its speaker’s odyssey of searching for a space that can accommodate both his queer and Indigenous identities. Through conversations with Muse, an abstract and formless entity living in his head, Teebs, the speaker of the poem and alter ego of the author, navigates several different ideas of space. Interestingly, the idea of space Teebs desires, a place where the speaker may derive a sense of identity from, takes on both physical and digital forms throughout the poem, ultimately compelling him to negotiate several different ideas of self in order to achieve survivance.
This search for space is mirrored by Pico’s signature writing style that uses text-speak—language commonly used in text messages, on social media, and instant messaging applications—to characterize how Teebs occupies and moves across several different borders and boundaries in the poem. IRL encompasses the experience of queer Native Americans struggling to practice survivance through the speaker preserving his identity by moving between and across spaces. The constant search for a space intended to protect the dual identity of the speaker in IRL is illustrative of queer Indigenous survivance as this marginalized group faces oppression from both Native and non-Native communities.
While there have been new insights and discussions specifically focused on queer Native life, not much scholarship has been conducted to explore how they practice survivance. To aid in my analysis of how IRL portrays queer Indigenous survivance, I apply Craig Womack’s (Muscogee Creek) intersectional theory between queer and Indigenous studies—suspicioning—to interpret how queer Native Americans desire space. This essay functions as a critical analysis in current scholarly discussions about queer Indigenous people and their survivance. First, I will discuss the historical shapes and spaces of tribal nations and urban queer environments as they relate to how queer Native American bodies can exist within them. Second, I will give an overview of the historical relationship between technology and queer bodies followed by an examination of how the act of suspicioning functions in the poem. Finally, informed by important interventions in queer critiques and Indigenous studies, I argue for how IRL desires for queer Indigeneity to disidentify from oppressive, dominant spaces in order to create its own separate space. This paper articulates the experiences of queer Native Americans having to achieve survivance through the constant renegotiation of identity based on the space they exist in. I am choosing to use the term ‘queer,’ rather than ‘Two-Spirit,’ because IRL’s protagonist identifies as a gay Native American man and ‘queer’ can act as an umbrella term that acknowledges the fluidity of gender expression and diverse sexualities in the LGBTQ2+ community, to which my argument could be extended to include.
Queer Native Americans have a dual marginalized identity, an identity that is oppressed from colonial subjugation and tribal traditions. Specifically, many queer Native Americans experience a disconnect or separation from their tribal nations because of queerphobia and bigotry endured on the reservation. In many Indigenous communities, queer bodies and lifestyles are ridiculed and considered to be abominations. There are even tribes that have banned same-sex marriage and make no laws intended to support their queer communities. For example, in 2004, the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court temporarily prohibited the acceptance of marriage applications when two Cherokee women tried to marry each other. Even though the couple kept fighting for their right to be married, the Cherokee Nation “voted unanimously to ban same-sex marriage and defined marriage as a civil contract between one man and one woman” (Justice 210) with the authorization of the Cherokee Nation Marriage and Family Act of 2004. In excusing the passing of the law, tribal nation leaders invented a “false moral panic for a nonexistent threat” (Justice 211) by presupposing that sacred Indigenous traditions would be destroyed by same-sex marriage. Sadly, many “non-gay Indians” believe that queer subjectivities “should not be recognized as associated with contemporary Native peoples” (Lang 300) and by extension, the tribal nation. The existence of queer Native bodies seeking an active presence in the tribal nation seems to provoke fears relating to tribal sovereignty and futurity.
These anxieties concerning the status of tribal nationhood originate from assimilationist directives born from settler colonialism, which deny the practice of queer tendencies. When Native American communities were rebuilding their nations, many of them reified colonial abuse by ratifying laws that uphold its discriminatory legacy. As Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation) points out in “Notes Toward a Theory of Anomaly,” because of the effects of colonization, “the sexphobic, antiqueer, and patriarchal bigotry of many Christian denominations has penetrated quite deeply into the values and concerns” (208) of tribal nations, making the experiences of queer Indigenous people difficult. Being a queer Native American is seen as “something outside the apparently fixed boundaries of ‘real’ Indianness” (Justice 208) as it’s viewed as a deviation from and a threat to Native American autonomy. In “Decolonizing the Queer Native Body,” Chris Finley (Colville Confederated Tribes) addresses how “the relationship of sexuality to colonial power” (Finley 32) has been reestablished by Native tribes stratifying their own sovereignty separate from the U.S. government. Unfortunately, many Indigenous communities have “internalized and institutionalized” (Finley 34) heteropatriarchy by synthesizing heteronormative practices into their written laws and traditions. Indigenous gay activists describe the “lack of LGBTQ2+ acceptance” as a “form of ‘assimilation’ to dominant gender and sexuality ideologies” (Gilley 48) created by colonial regimes. Modeled after the U.S. nation-state’s heterosexism, these laws extend greater power and authority to cisgender heterosexual Native American men living in tribal spaces compared to women and LGBTQ2+ members. In effect, queer Native Americans’ identities become invisible because their Indigenous spaces do not recognize their whole identity.
Alluding to the Kumeyaay nation’s erasure of queer identities in IRL, Teebs indicates the separation he feels with his Native identity by referring to the violent genocide committed against his people in the eighteenth century. He mentions that after the Kumeyaay people were forced to “convert/to Catholicism,” (Pico 27) that “whatever Kumeyaay word” (Pico 93) existed for “two-spirit traditional roles” (Pico 93) became “erased/Assimilationist homophobia” (Pico 93) resulting in Teebs’ inability to appreciate his own heritage. When “conquerors/invade the narrative n just mow” (Pico 85) over Indigenous sovereignties and cultures, these societies have to slowly repair their traditions. Because settler colonialism vigorously pursues the total erasure of Indigeneity through the complete destruction of all indicators of it, tribal nations risk losing their connections with their cultural past by implementing conservative customs as a way of preserving their nation’s future. In the case of IRL, queer Native American survivance is threatened by Indigenous eradication, which was first introduced by colonizers and has continued in the twenty-first century through tribal legislation and settler occupation.
Unsurprisingly, with sexual violence being encoded into tribal customs and paired with an intolerance for queer lifestyles, many queer Native Americans—feeling distant from their heritage and culture—emigrate to cosmopolitan areas more likely to accept their queer identities. Since Indigenous spaces refuse to acknowledge their dual queer existence, urban environments call to this community because they promise spaces that can be more accepting of their entire existence. Despite there being queer spaces in these areas, which can promote “safe environments” that can “challenge heteronormativity” (Cheded and Skandalis 342), this “next life” (Pico 18) for queer Native Americans poses other issues to their ability to achieve survivance. Unfortunately, even metropolises are not resistant to settler colonialism as the Indigenous aspects of their identities face similar threats of erasure. In IRL, Teebs expresses a desire “to be normal enough” (Pico 20) to fully experience support from queer spaces because he feels “condescended to” (Pico 26) by non-Native members of the community who possess stereotypical assumptions about his Kumeyaay heritage. A non-Native controlled queer space places the queer Native American “back behind museum/glass” (Pico 27) as Indigeneity becomes erased by a “general invisibility/of being a function of the/past” (Pico 14) that does not permit the contemporary presence of an Indigenous presence. What occurs is a “secondary marginalization” (Cohen 70) whereby a larger marginalized group—usually white gay men—further marginalizes a subgroup of their community—queer Native Americans. With race and ethnicity being subsumed by the larger LGBTQ2+ movement, followed by normalizing the Native body as a subject of the settler-state, urban queer spaces prove to be as exclusionary as Indigenous spaces. Non-Native queer activists often “naturalize settler colonialism by making demands on the state for citizenship” by framing “indigenous cultures in a mythic past” (Cox) that can be overlooked and ignored. Settler homonationalism refers to the “absenting [of] Native people from sexual modernity” (Morgensen 106) as executed by queer non-Native dominance, leading to queer non-Native participation in the continuance of settler colonialism. For example, issues specifically related to queer Native concerns like the social acceptance of Two-Spirit individuals become ignored for more neutral causes that can benefit the larger community. While non-Native queer activists challenge systems of oppression working against LGBTQ2+ acceptance, they risk falling into a trap of normalizing settlement because queer Indigenous rights cannot be attained from the same state that constantly strips them from their Native identity. On the reservations, they face queerphobia and in the cities, they are confronted with cultural eradication and homogenization.
Furthermore, queer Native American bodies face both fetishization and rejection within these urban queer spaces because of racialized ideas of attraction born from colonialism. Within these spaces, a queer Indigenous existence is already viewed as out of the ordinary on account of settler systems of power historically erasing Native presence. It’s essential to acknowledge how these spaces also “constitute a fertile terrain for the reproduction of systems of oppression and inequality” (Cheded and Skandalis 343) that can be especially harmful to queer Native Americans. To be more specific, in spaces made by and intended for gay men, there is “widespread racism and xenophobia” (Cheded and Skandalis 344) present that has filtered down through centuries of the U.S. government encroaching on Native lands and rights. In When Did Indians Become Straight?, Mark Rifkin describes this process as one that “emerges in relation to the ongoing imperial project of (re)producing the settler state” (26) against the formation of a queer Indigenous space. Queer Native Americans experience a similar kind of isolation as non-Indigenous individuals “pass on racial attitudes they have absorbed” (Flores) from their various cultural and subcultural backgrounds. Consequently, Teebs emphasizes how queer Native Americans “are reluctant to tell” (Pico 25) queer non-Natives about their Indigenous culture within a queer space because the only stories they want to hear are those rooted in a mythological past where Indigeneity is considered to belong. Tired of his existence being simplified as “an Indian thing” (Pico 94) by non-Native members of the queer community, Teebs expresses how there is “no post-colonial/America” (Pico 43) whereby queer Native Americans can successfully practice survivance in a queer space. Much like the speaker of the poem, many Indigenous people that are also queer find their Native identities ridiculed and made into a way of life that is reserved for the past. Further, because of the historical relationship between the United States and Native American tribal nations, there are “expectations of access to Indigenous lives” (Eils 82) and bodies that restrict queer Natives from the right to privacy and autonomy over themselves within these spaces. This kind of erasure and violence differs from genocidal assault in that it is a slow and quiet process uniquely enacted by another marginalized system of oppression. With both physical tribal spaces and physical queer spaces denying complete acceptance of a queer Native American identity, queer Indigenous people search for spaces on a digital plane as a way to attain survivance.
Since the mid-twentieth century, technology has dramatically advanced—the most notable example of this being the invention of the Internet in 1983, which inevitably led to the creation and usage of the World Wide Web. From the beginning, this interconnected system of public webpages has constructed a variety of spaces for any user to explore and navigate through. These spaces have not only enabled people to find communities that support their identities, but greater access to them has also been extended with inventions like smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile technological devices. It should then be no surprise that “queer practices have been long infused with textural sensibilities” (Cheded and Skandalis 342) as queer bodies, in their relation to touch and contact, have historically been policed through criminalization, medicalization, abjection, mockery, social exclusion, and other juridical practices and societal norms. When their physical existence is so heavily scrutinized, it makes perfect sense that queer people would search for a greater sense of safety in a virtual or digital environment where there is greater freedom to express themselves without risk of physical harm. The idea of a queer space makes “alternative relationalities visible” and can offer “different spatial performances within multiple rhythms and flows” (Clark 170) that work against heteronormative practices. Queer creativity and resilience have even led to their “utilizing digital technologies to connect with each other” to “create alternative virtual intimacies” (Cheded and Skandalis 343) with the launch of geo-location dating apps such as Grindr and Scruff, which are intended specifically for queer men. Interestingly, apps like these have been reconfiguring how queer people are accessing and moving through a digital space since they emphasize physical encounters as much as they encourage digital communication—a hybridized experience of sexuality whereby a liminal space can be created between the physical and digital.
In their process of securing survivance, queer Native Americans utilize the same multidimensional tools offered by queer digital spaces to homosocialize with others in the larger community. Rather than moving through physical spaces that systematically exclude parts of their identities, many of them prefer the “fluid and everchanging aspects of a technological space” (Gudelunas 361) that are not rooted in colonial protocols. Like non-Native users, queer Native Americans are able to possess and maintain a sense of privacy and control over their own bodies as they are the creators of their online avatars. For once, their Native identities are not up “for public consumption” (Pico 26) because the digital space cannot harm their bodies in ways physical spaces have the potential to. Plus, they are encouraged to circulate through a variety of virtual identities they can put on based on the circumstance. These diverse identities are constructed when queer Native Americans take part in multiple applications and sites that exist like social media platforms and dating-apps, which require different communication styles and methods of representation. The digital sphere then grants a special kind of autonomy to queer Native Americans because they can manipulate the parameters of their experience, which is a privilege that’s been denied by generations of genocidal violence on behalf of the settler state.
Throughout IRL, Tommy Pico illustrates how queer Native Americans access and roam through cyber space because of Teebs’ constant communication with other gay men on dating apps and social media direct messages. The speaker of the poem continually renegotiates his selfhood because of immediate feedback from the various digital mediums he communicates within. Depending on the modality, how Teebs converses with potential romantic interests and friends shifts according to the context. The following excerpt reveals the degree of confidence and assurance Teebs emulates when he texts other queer individuals.
“…I tell Max
Just so you know, when bird
flu comes—chops humanity
to a stump—I’m going
to be great. I hope you’ll b
too 🙂 …” (Pico 25)
Compared to how the speaker miserably soliloquizes ideas on their own existence, his tone changes when he is uses a messaging platform to communicate with others in the same space. The identity Teebs takes on in this space is one that is brazen as he satirically dangles his immunity to bird flu over someone who will not be safe from it. The “humanity” the speaker is referring to can be assumed to represent the U.S settler state. Similarly, Teebs acts self-assured when he has conversations with other gay men on dating apps as exemplified by the following:
“I tell Short George
I wrote u a poem and lose it.
I tell Big Ginge I physically
can’t. take. It. I tell Q-Tip Dick
off, with high tide candor.” (Pico 59)
Through Teebs’ descriptive nicknames for the men he meets on dating apps, this excerpt demonstrates the degree of power queer Native Americans can wield because of a digital space. Because their words and existence are not being systemically monitored and removed, a virtual platform allows for what a physical space cannot for marginalized identities. The ability to give labels to descendants of colonizers as openly as this is not a privilege queer Indigenous people have in a physical landscape. Moreover, a dating app gives this marginalized group an opportunity to exhibit “high tide candor,” to be able to vocalize their innermost thoughts honestly, which acts against colonial efforts to silence Native Americans. But unlike how Teebs approaches conversations with other queer individuals on dating apps and texting, the following excerpt showcases the speaker’s disillusioned perspective with social media, specifically as it relates to how the gay community in Brooklyn uses it:
“Yr a garbage
person if you can’t
take a good photo,
is the underlying mess-
age of “gay” “culture”
in Brooklyn The concept
of fame in the United
States I hate
having my picture taken… (Pico 94)
This passage highlights the speaker’s aversion towards the conception of a frivolous and superficial lifestyle that can be depicted by social media, which seems to be a common priority for the larger queer community. As I’ve mentioned before, the digital space permits the creation of several identities, which means users can become different versions of themselves that do not exist in reality. And these multiple ideas of selfhood function as a way for individuals to move freely between simulated borders and boundaries. With Teebs’ feelings of estrangement from this aspect of the digital sphere, Pico sets up a situation whereby the queer Native speaker is always searching for a space he can exist comfortably in, but never quite finding it.
According to Craig Womack (Muscogee Creek), a leading scholar in Indigenous and queer studies, suspicioning is a type of action in which an individual yearns for a concrete resolution or certainty they are never going to achieve. It can be thought of as a performance, as in a “state of suspension and action” (Womack 149) where there is a holding out for the possibility of truth. Suspicioning “constitutes a process in which one studies the relative merits of changing one’s mind” (Womack 145) as they seek a material conclusion for their desires. In “Suspicioning,” Womack applies his concept to Joy Harjo’s poetry as he examines the ambiguity of her language surrounding same-sex encounters and desire in their work. For his analysis, suspicioning operates as a process in challenging the easy categorization of and officially sanctioned ideas on Native selfhood from the ongoing effects of settler colonialism. Respectfully, I wish to extend his theory of suspicioning to how queer Native Americans navigate the spaces they find themselves moving between, both physical and digital, as they try to achieve survivance. Using IRL, I want to examine how Tommy Pico purposely has Teebs suspicion a space where he can feel free from harm, but never quite finding it.
Suspicioning, as it relates to queer Native Americans, could refer to the action of constantly traveling across multiple spaces from a desire to secure a sense of survivance. There seems to be a perpetual disconnect between their identities and the spaces they suspicion themselves into because of erasure from traumas of colonialism and queerphobia. To queer Native Americans, the “Internet is comprised of possibility,” (Pico 52) it’s a space that is thought to embrace their whole identity—both the queer and Indigenous parts of it—and can accommodate what both physical queer spaces and their tribal heritage cannot. But the digital space becomes a desired space for queer Natives that is not able to be readily achieved as Teebs realizes “the uncertainty” of the safety of this space when he is asked, “Is this an Indian thing?” because the “underlying message of ‘gay’ ‘culture’” (Pico 94) is one that promotes a sense of superficiality the speaker feels both distanced and alienated from. While this community has access to digital spaces, it’s a pass that comes with limitations, a desire for a space that is never quite fulfilled as their Native identity is treated as an oddity by queer non-Native people.
Following this, Pico characterizes Teebs’ process of suspicioning by having the speaker search for a space “in-between/Kumeyaay and Brooklyn” (Pico 96) that possesses an undefinable word. As the speaker navigates the digital plane, he wonders if the space he is seeking safety from is “lost” before realizing it “doesn’t exist” (Pico 96) when he recognizes not feeling comfortable with his Native identity nor feeling comfortable in the queer space of Brooklyn.Attempting to name the space the speaker seeks, Teebs remembers that “in Kumeyaay/there’s a concept for in-/between” that is described as “not knowing,” (Pico 95) an uncertainty that has no definable quality to it. With the line break cutting off at the en dash, Pico further emphasizes Teebs’ suspicioning because it signifies a lack of space that should be found in the ‘in-between,’ but is not currently there. The lack of finding real space ties into the idea of suspicioning in that it is an actionable desire that will not be fulfilled. Despite the speaker “mourning for the old life,” meaning his prior existence on the Kumeyaay reservation, Teebs makes his “poems long,” (Pico 97) which reflects the long, arduous process of suspicioning a digital space queer Native Americans can feel safe in. Teebs describes this action as “a new ceremony” (Pico 97) through which he hopes to find a community that can accept both his queer and Indigenous identity. The act of suspicioning entails a certain kind of desiring an uncertain, intangible state of life or space that is not going to be gained. With queer Native Americans being rejected by their tribal heritage and being excluded from queer spaces, they are forced to suspicion a space that can embrace both of their identities, which is a process that does not end. This mirrors the continued impacts from settler colonialism because their tribal nations’ rejection of their queer identity stems from settler standards of ‘appropriate’ sexuality and the queer community’s scrutinization comes from Othering, a systematic practicethat began with the first colonizers of the New World. Even though a digital space should be accessible and available to those who wish to participate, there are still systems of power and oppression preventing this marginalized community from possessing their own autonomy and feeling completely safe in a space.
Additionally, this theory of suspicioning can be applied to the absence of Muse and the speaker’s desire to converse with him. As Teebs roves through numerous spaces in IRL, he yearns for this formless entity’s presence to transform into a tangible body he can glean a sense of community from because the queer urban environment of New York City cannot provide it for him. It should be assumed that Muse possesses a similar dual identity to Teebs’ when the speaker declares that not everyone can “occupy the Muse” (78), further signifying Muse as the space queer Native Americans desire. When Teebs acknowledges that he “can’t hold” and “can’t/own Muse” since it is the “embodiment of abstract/concept” (29), the immaterial being becomes a representation of the space Teebs is continuously trying to find. The speaker is “crushing/on Muse” (1) and longs for a queer Native space, but this deceptive figure moves like “disappearing fog” (16) that “must be chased,” (31) but is never actually caught. Muse functions as the personification of space queer Native Americans crave to become a part of because he is depicted as an elusive presence; he is the space always on the horizon and lives in the liminal space between Indigenous and queer environments. Pico indicates the lack of closure and trust in Teebs’ relationship with Muse as the latter “banks/on fantasy” (53) and empty promises, which can be applied to how the futurity of queer Native Americans is marked by uncertainty. But it’s the “prospect of Muse/leaving (threat of freedom)” (43) keeping Teebs trapped in a cycle suspicioning for space where all of his identity can be accepted. Unfortunately, if Muse ceases to exist or ‘leaves’, and more specifically, if this yearning for a space that can promote survivance is surrendered, then the community’s futurity becomes jeopardized, further satisfying colonial agendas of removing Indigeneity from the land. This never-ending cycle of postulating place is characteristic of how queer Indigenous people practice survivance because they are constantly having to adjust facets of themselves in different spaces in order to survive and continue.
Unlike other styles of writing, poetry requires a certain level of skill in manipulating style and empty space to exact meaning from a sparse amount of words. Poetry allows writers to wield language to not only help reveal the deeper significance of their words, but can also help them conceptualize their words through design. When compared to other forms of writing, poetry is the most performative as so much attention to detail and structure is necessary to ensure the visual aspect of a poem serves the content of it well. As I’ve mentioned earlier in this essay, Tommy Pico utilizes text-speak—language reserved for texting and social media— and the openness of the digital feed in IRL to articulate Teebs’ act of suspicioning for space, which can be seen by the following excerpt:
“…In this
way the world of ambiguity
has its hospitable cont-
inents But the days Owl
onward. Confront the swirl-
ing panic of Do I live, or
leave—For ppl like us, isn’t
this always the question
at the bottom of every
question.
Make a decision to cut
emissions b4 greenhouse
gasses turn us into
Venus. Let’s be realistic:
in one scenario, I turn
right, New York is drained
of moisture and combusts.
In another, I turn left
and go to the gym.” (Pico 38)
This passage, much like the rest of the epic poem, is structured like a social media feed that never stops scrolling, ultimately forcing readers to keep following the line of text until there is a noticeable break. Because the poem mimics a digital timeline that’s constantly updating itself, the shape of the poem reflects suspicioning because it’s perpetually moving and wandering down the page, further accentuating how the speaker bounces from one idea to the next in a matter of a few words or lines. Teebs wishes to “confront the swirl-/ing panic” threatening his existence, yet is unable to “make a decision” because neither space—the drained state of New York symbolizing his Kumeyaay heritage and the gym personifying his queer identity—allows for the duality of these identities, which affirms how queer Native Americans hold out for the possibility of certainty, even when it’s never possible. Also, with the poem not letting readers slowly digest the text as a result of the constant motion demanded by digital communication, the act of suspicioning then becomes thrust onto them as they follow the speaker’s journey, expecting a conclusion that is not delivered as seen by the ending with Teebs’ conversation with James:
“He responds w/
a pic of his computer
screen His phone #
on it so we
text n he’s like
come over n I’m like
do u have A/C he says
Yes n I just straight up
drop the mic
n Leave.” (Pico 98)
The ending of IRL clearly portrays the performative aspect of suspicioning because the poem, and the questions it raises regarding queer Native American survivance, remains unresolved when the speaker cuts it off in the middle of an action. Over the course of the poem, Teebs interrogates and challenges complications regarding the existence of a queer Indigenous space, but the outcome provides no real closure for him. With Teebs’ frenetic way of thinking and moving, Pico invites readers to suspicion a concrete resolution for the speaker, and as he nears the first formations of it, the author purposely brings the poem to a quick, unsatisfactory end. IRL, through its speaker’s exploration of spaces, further amplified by a scrolling method of storytelling and text-speak language, embodies the concept of suspicioning as an action to achieve survivance by queer Native Americans.
Even though the U.S. constitution recognizes tribal nations as independent, sovereign nations outside of its jurisdiction, settler colonialism continues to operate as an ongoing system of processes working to erase any trace of Indigenous existence. Popular culture in the United States shapes Native American existence as one affiliated with the past as exaggerated by caricatures and stereotypes many American media companies depend on. By associating Indigeneity with these tokens, their futurity becomes further troubled by contemporary modes of settler aggression. Where queer Native Americans are respectively concerned, as Andrea Smith points out in “Queer Theory and Native Studies,” the narrative of “leaving home to attain personal liberation” (55) in urban spaces makes them even more vulnerable to being “entrapped in a logic of genocidal” (53) erasure, further pressuring them to assimilate into the dominant culture. Bridging the gap between queer theory and Indigenous studies, Smith defines the act of disidentification as a “mode of dealing with dominant ideology” in a way that “neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it,” (55) which can describe how queer Native Americans practice survivance. Disidentification encourages a marginalized group to “engage in multiple strategies” that can “dismantle the settler state” (58) while existing under it at the same time. This method of resistance can be identified with their struggle to practice survivance because they can live in spaces between the settler state and the tribal nation.
If suspicioning refers to a constant state of longing for community and space, disidentification could potentially be used as a method to end the cycle and achieve survivance. This form of defiance “insists on queer, Indigenous presence on queer Indigenous terms” (Eils 97) which requires a complete synthetization of their dual identity. While the speaker in IRL never arrives at the space he initially desired at the beginning of the poem, Teebs admits to feeling “small/online and in real life” (Pico 21) when he repeatedly has “to merge and b/someone else” (Pico 64) depending on the space, rather than being able to exhibit all of his identity at once. Having to always rearrange an aspect of their identity is an example of how the “binary is/another weapon of the/oppressor” (Pico 87) being used to police and erase queer Native American identity. Queer Indigenous people possess “a rich vista of idiosyncrasies” (Pico 25) giving them the ability to creatively work against systems of oppression. Tommy Pico illustrates queer Native American innovativeness as it opposes colonial dominance when Teebs labels himself as “NDN” (Pico 95), demonstrating a level of power the speaker is actively taking back. The label, ‘NDN’, implies the conflation between Indigenous and queer identities as it reflects an appreciation for tribal culture and utilizes the queer digital imagination. From this, if their survivance can be designated as an “NDN/thing” (Pico 95) and if they can talk “about being NDN” (Pico 40), further evoking the sense of an autonomous presence and emphasizing Native American resilience against settler colonialism, it can be assumed that ‘NDN things’ occur within an ‘NDN’ space. In this space, “boundaries/aren’t cages” (Pico 15) anymore and there’s “no myth to speak/for” (Pico 72) the livelihoods of queer Native Americans because the aim of its existence is to advocate for their futurity. Following the creation of this digital queer Indigenous space, the identity of the community never has to “change with audience” (Pico 26) as they would be encouraged to grow “inside ancestor/survival instincts” (Pico 81) and still be able to exhibit their queerness. Teebs’ classification of his own identity suggests how queer Native Americans can exercise disidentification with dominant exclusionary spaces as a means of constructing their own spaces instead of dwelling on the peripheries of others. This “identity formation” (Greensmith and Giwa 131) is achieved by queer Indigenous people recognizing and representing queer Indigeneity resistant to contemporary modes of assimilation as insisted by urban non-Native queer spaces and tribal nation spaces. Disidentification centers the queer Indigenous body within its own space, promising the perpetuation of its survivance and preserving its dual identity, too.
In constructing this epic poem, Tommy Pico intentionally designed this project to ruminate on the speaker’s survivance as a gay “NDN” man whose physical body is constantly subjected to colonial standards of expression and whose queer existence is ridiculed and dismissed. Because of IRL’s length, the author is able to demonstrate the shifting contemporary boundaries between the self and other by creating a multi-layered and hypertextual body of work that is pulling from so many different aspects of urban queer spaces and digital spaces. Pico creates a highly accessible poem whereby the language of the text emphasizes queer Indigeneity’s ability not only to survive in a digital landscape, but also to thrive enough to use the language of it for their own methods of expression. The most significant example of this can be seen by the speaker’s decision to label himself “NDN” rather than spelling out the actual word, which was a title wrongly assigned by white imperialists. This manner of disidentifying the value of their identity away from more dominant, aggressive spaces is an actionable process queer Native Americans can practice to attain survivance. Ultimately though, queer Indigenous survivance depends on the act of suspicioning to desire and find a space that can ensure the futurity of their dual identities at once. The nonstop flows across different spaces, shaped by a yearning for a sense of community, is illustrative of how queer Native Americans practice survivance.
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This Is Adam's World 