Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory

ASEGI STORIES QWo-LI DRISKILL ASEGI STORIES Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory TUCSON The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2016 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2016 Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3048-9 ( paper) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Publication of this book is made possible in part by a subsidy from the School of Language, Culture, and Society at Oregon State University. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Driskill, Qwo-Li, author. Title: Asegi stories : Cherokee queer and two-spirit memory / Qwo-Li Driskill. Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015033001 | ISBN 9780816530489 ( pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Cherokee Indians—Sexual behavior. | Sexual minorities—Identity. | Indian sexual minorities—Social conditions. | Gender identity. Classification: LCC E99.C5 D795 2016 | DDC 975.004 /97557—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn .loc.gov/2015033001 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). The root of oppression is loss of memory. PAULA GUNN ALLEN I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it. JOY HARJO, from “GRAce” CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Asegi Stories: Memories Between the Basket Walls 3 1 Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances Between Native and Queer Studies 21 2 The Queer Lady of Cofitachequi andO ther Asegi Routes 39 3 Unweaving the Basket: Missionaries, Slavery, and the Regulation of Gender and Sexuality 101 4 Beautiful as the Red Rainbow: Cherokee Two-Spirits Rebeautifying Erotic Memory 137 5 ᎠᏎᎩ ᎠᏰᏟ ( Asegi Ayetl): Cherokee Two-Spirit People Reimagining Nation 154 Epilogue. Doubleweave: An Asegi Manifesto 166 Notes 171 Works Cited 195 Index 207 IlluSTRATIONS 1 Rivercane, Mulberry Plantation 40 2 Looking across the river from the Mulberry Plantation 50 3 Map by Theodor de Bry, 1594 52 4 Theodor de Bry, “Valboa throws some Indians, who had committed the terrible sin of sodomy, to the dogs to be torn apart,” 1594 53 5 Map of the Southeast by Cornelius Wytfliet, 1597 68 6 “La Florida,” map by Geronimo Chaves, 1584 74 7 “Part of North America,” map by John Lawson, 1709 75 8 “A draught of the Cherokee Country: on the west side of the Twenty Four Mountains, commonly called Over the Hills,” Henry Timberlake, 1765 87 9 “A MAP of the Coast of EAST FLORIDA from the River St. John Southward near to CAPE CANAVERAL,” William Bartram, 1791 90 10 “A Map of the American Indian Nations, adjoining to the Mississippi, West & East Florida, Georgia, S. & N. Carolina, Virginia, &c,” James Adair, 1775 95 11 Cherokee pipe depicting a couple having sex 150 12 Cherokee pipe, Seated Woman 151 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A DO TO MY FAMILY: partner Michael Floyd for his love and support. I couldn’t have finished this book without you. Gvgeyu, Usdi. W Wado to my father Paul Driskill, who passed away before he could see this book. I miss you terribly. Wado to my mother Jeannie Driskill for al- ways supporting me in being happy. Wado to my sister Rebecca Fuller for her love and support. There are few folks who are lucky enough to have a friendship that spans most of their life: wado to Colin Kennedy Donovan for gift- ing me with being one of those lucky few. Wado to all of my colleagues at Oregon State University, particularly Patti Duncan, who talked me through both ideas and stress and gave feedback early on in the writing of this book. Wado to our Oregon State University writing group, Kryn Freeling-Burton, Ron Mize, and Patti Sakurai, for creating a space for me to work and for being willing to read and comment on drafts. Wado to the other scholars who have been both an emotional and intellectual support during this work, providing feedback and helping me talk through ideas, particularly Chris Finley, Daniel Heath Justice, Scott Lauria Morgensen, Lisa Tatonetti, and Jim Ridolfo. Some of this work and research started while I was a PhD student in Cultural Rhetorics at Michigan State University. A particular wado to Malea Powell, who served as my dissertation director and continues to mentor me and support my work. There is no way to say how grateful I am for all of your love, XII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS support, and friendship. Wado, as well, Kimberli Lee, my friend and mentor, as well as Jeff Grabill and Terese Guinsatao Monberg for your mentorship. Wado to my friend and mentor Susan Applegate Krouse, who was a constant support of my work and a close friend while I was at Michigan State Univer- sity. I miss you, Susan. I’ll finish the tear dress. Wado to my Cherokee wonder twin Angela Haas, for being a dear friend and co-conspirator. Gvgeyu, Oganali. Wado to The Clamecac Collective: Catalina Bartlett, Casie C. Cobos, Ga- briela Ríos, Marcos Del Hierro, Victor Del Hierro, Aydé Enríquez-Loya, Gar- rett Nichols, Stephanie Wheeler, and Alma Villanueva. Wado to my colleagues at Texas A&M University, particularly Shona Jack- son and Vanita Reddy, whose friendships were lifelines to me while living in College Station. Wado, as well, to Valerie Balester, Angie Cruz, Amy Earhart, Robert Griffin, Angela Pulley Hudson, and Mikko Tukhanen. Wado to Kristen Buckles at the University of Arizona Press for believing in this project. Wado to the research sites and people that allowed me to do archival work for this project: the City of Camden Archives & Museum, Bo Taylor and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the Newberry Library, the Mulberry Plan- tation ( James and Mary Boykin Chestnut House), the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Wado to Joe Floyd, who helped facilitate my research in Camden, South Carolina. Earlier versions of chapter 1 and chapter 5 were published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no. 1–2 (2010): 69–92, and in Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature ( Tucson: Univer- sity of Arizona Press, 2011), respectively. Some of the research for this book was supported by grants from Texas A&M University’s Glasscock Center for Humanities Research and the Pro- gram to Enhance Scholarly and Creative Activities. Wado to all of the Cherokee Two-Spirit and queer folks who share their words, stories, and memories. ASEGI STORIES INTRODUCTION ASEGI STORIES Memories Between the Basket Walls You have to be able to look that far in the future and know. Because if you can see that far into the past, you can see that far into the future. If you look at how our people used to live, you know what was important to them. You can tell. [T]hat’s what we try to keep going. COREY TABER, CHEROKEE TWO-SPIRIT ActIVIST SPLINT ᏐᏬ/SOQUO/ONE: ᏔᎷᏣ/TALUTSA/BASKET WE AVE BASKETS. Mostly, I weave the double-wall baskets that are closely associated with Cherokees in Oklahoma, but I also weave our old South- I eastern style of doublewoven rivercane baskets and coiled baskets.1 I’m not an expert weaver and still have a lot to learn: how to gather materials for weaving, how to process cane, how to weave other styles of baskets that are now a part of Cherokee weaving traditions. I share this because weaving deeply informs my theorizing about Cherokee Two-Spirit and queer memories and histories and has become my guiding metaphor for thinking about the ways in which Cherokee Two-Spirit and queer people are reimagining our pasts and futures through a practice of re-storying in the present. By “re-storying,” I mean a retelling and imagining of stories that restores and continues cultural memories. Chicana scholar Casie C. Cobos theorizes “embodied storying,” the ways in which Chicanas continue Indigenous identi- ties through embodied practices, and writes that embodied storying “requires interrogating ways that History and the archive have acted upon Indigenous bodies and looking for ways that this can be countered by (re)telling stories.”2 Asegi Stories centralizes such an interrogation of dominant histories in order to listen to the Other stories and what they do as a tactic to transform our collective futures. 4 INTRODUCTION Asegi Stories is a weaving, drawing material from interviews and historical documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered Two-Spirit critiques that can contribute to larger intertribal movements for social justice. The theoreti- cal and methodological underpinnings of this research draw from numerous activist, artistic, and intellectual genealogies, what Maori scholar Linda Tuhi- wai Smith calls “dissent lines.”3 These dissent lines include Cherokee traditions, other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots activisms, queer and trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native studies, and decolonial pol itics. I conceive these dissent lines as splints of cane that are doublewoven with my personal reflections and relationship with these materials in order to create a basket that looks like a book to carry these stories. Like a rivercane basket, at times a particular splint emerges in the pattern before going back into the larger weaving. An “over/under” weaving pattern that alternates the strands of personal reflections and academic analysis as an intentional part of the design for this book takes inspiration from Mar- ilou Awiakta’s use of doubleweaving as a Cherokee-centered writing structure in Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom.4 In Cherokee “tradition,” baskets are usually (though not exclusively) woven by women. This weaving, then, is also intentionally an expression of my identity as asegi aquadanto, or “strange hearted” person.

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