QUEER NDN LOVE: Poetics, Land, and Decolonial Eroticism

This chapter analyzes contemporary Native American poetry, in particular by authors whose work engages with embodied relations and eroticism. It argues that queer NDN (Indigenous) poets have turned to love as a theme and in doing so, expand its meanings beyond traditional understandings of queerness. The chapter briefly rehearses queer Indigenous studies as a field and then turns to five examples: the work of Lee Maracle, Arielle Twist, Jake Skeets, Natalie Diaz, and Billy-Ray Belcourt. The chapter concludes with a meditation on decolonial praxis and queer Indigenous love, advocating for an ethico-erotics of land as a method.