Refusal, 2:05, 2020
Refusal, is a small gesture of mine, acknowledging that one of the most powerful ways to stand against the settler state is by standing your ground as an Indigenous person, by not going away, and by taking up space. This video also speaks to my refusal of the desire of the settler state to classify my Inupiaq identity based on my appearance and other colonial modes of measurement that cannot fully speak to who I am. I am denying viewers the opportunity to classify who I am simply based on my appearance.
As Deborah Bird has highlighted, “To get in the way of settler colonization, all the [N]ative [person] has to do is stay home.” Indigenous peoples, and specifically queer Indigenous folks, are a threat to the empire simply through our existence. This threat is found within our refusal of the U.S. empire’s queerphobic and patriarchal principles. Standing our ground and taking up space as Indigenous peoples gets in the way of settler colonialism and is Indigenous refusal.