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The article explores two intertwined ideas: that the United States is a settler colonial nation-state and that settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process. The article engages Native feminist theories to excavate the deep connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy, highlighting five central challenges that Native feminist theories pose to gender and women's studies. From problematizing settler colonialism and its intersections to questioning academic participation in Indigenous dispossession, responding to these challenges requires a significant departure from how gender and women's studies is regularly understood and taught. Too often, the consideration of Indigenous peoples remains rooted in understanding colonialism as an historical point in time away from which our society has progressed. Centering settler colonialism within gender and women's studies instead exposes the still-existing structure of settler colonialism and its powerful effects on Indigenous peoples and settlers. Taking as its audience practitioners of both "whitestream" and other feminisms and writing in conversation with a long history of Native feminist theorizing, the article offers critical suggestions for the meaningful engagement of Native feminisms. Overall, it aims to persuade readers that attending to the links between heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism is intellectually and politically imperative for all peoples living within settler colonial contexts.
Keywords: heteropaternalism / heteropatriarchy / Indigenous perspectives on feminist theory / Native feminist theories / settler colonialism / whitestream feminism
Native feminist theories centrally address two intertwined ideas that are significant but often overlooked in feminist discourses: the United States and many other Western countries, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are settler colonial nation-states, and settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process. Because the United States is balanced upon notions of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, everyone living in the country is not only racialized and gendered, but also has a relationship to settler colonialism. Native feminist theories offer new and reclaimed ways of thinking through not only how settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous and settler communities, but also how feminist theories can imagine and realize different modes of nationalism and alliances in the future (see also Smith 2007).1 This article highlights five central challenges that Native feminist theories pose to gender and women's studies. With these challenges, we offer suggestions for meaningful engagement, arguing...