(Re)charging Queer Indigenous zones: Pedagogical hub-making with the Land of the Spirit Waters

Abstract

This article situates the multiple formations of pedagogical hubs that Two-Spirit, Queer, and Trans (2S/Q/T) Indigenous educators co-constitute with the Land of the Spirit Waters (central and south Texas, United States). Through these pedagogical hubs, 2S/Q/T Indigenous educators are re-constituting a Queer Indigenous cosmology bonded intimately with their relationships with the Land, ceremony, community, and other 2S/Q/T people. Guided by these relationalities, they come together to teach, create, and sustain 2S/Q/T Indigenous subjectivities, as, within specific Indigenous communities, gender and sexuality can often be seen in rigid and impenetrable ways. One of these pedagogical hubs is a Queer and youth-led Danza Mexica (Aztec dancing) group in Austin, Texas. In learning with the Land, I co-theorize with the concept of the recharge zone, an area in which Water runoff accumulates within a particular region, fills the aquifer below, and later emerges as springs that give life to the area. I argue that 2S/Q/T Indigenous people are mirroring these geological processes because their acts of gathering, much like a recharge zone, give life to a region marked by cis-heteropatriarchy and the enduring remnants of settler sexualities. Thus, the process of (re)charging Queer Indigenous zones presents multiple registers of epistemology and learning with the Land and demonstrates how 2S/Q/T Indigenous people co-create and fortify dreams, stories, experiences, and futures that have always already been Queer.