FEM 2110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Gayle Rubin, Dean Spade, Settler Colonialism
4 Sep 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
26/02/2019
Summary of the class
● Assignment: Marrow Thieves
○ reflect on this novel in a way that is informed (politically speaking)
○ reflect on the ways in which the arguments in the book change your
perspective and talk about the context and the critique of where these
arguments come from
○ see how it being an essay or non-fiction would change your experience of the
story
● Guest presentation: Stephanie Claude
● Film: What I Love About Being Queer
● Love and Sex and Romance: Gayle Rubin, Dean Spade and Kaleigh Trace
Notes for the guest lecture: Context behind Marrow Thieves
● settler colonialism is a form of colonialism which seeks to replace the original
Indigenous population of the colonized territory with a new society of non-Indigenous
settlers
● based on the disappearance on the disappearance of Indigenous people (physical,
cultural, linguistical and political)
○ is still existent and ongoing
○ maintains a hierarchy
○ always denied and erased to maintain national pride (in history books, they
make it seem like it was all peaceful and agreed upon)
○ trying to assimilate them to justify their erasure
● understand the themes addressed in the novel (past and present)
● wanted to write the book to have Indigenous people as the protagonists for once and
for them to have a presence in the future
● the connection of language to Indigenous people is something to look out for in the
novel
● brought about real current events to also raise awareness to issues like global warming
● government handles the loss of dreams from the large population by thinking that it
comes from the marrow of the Indigenous people’s bones who have not lost that
ability
● younger members have a candour that brings about a sense of hope since they were
born after the cataclysm that ensued after the separation of communities
● 1. Indigenous feminist theories address the particular injustices that arise for
Indigenous women as a result of the intersections of race, gender, and colonialism
○ impacted in particular ways
○ feminism in its broader sense is just not enough
○ emphasis is placed on colonialism
● 2. Indigenous feminist theories highlight their agency and resistance to interlocking
systems of colonialism, racism and sexism
