Playing Indian and other settler stories: disrupting Western narratives of Indigenous girlhood

Abstract

This article explores the discourses and practices about and by Indigenous girls that are emerging in an era of globalized, postfeminist girlhood. Post-girl-power discourses impact representations of Indigenous girls in damaging ways by reifying their construction as objects of the colonial imaginary and as cultural commodities. To disrupt their persistent representation as disposable and ungrievable, I tackle three kinds of performances in girl-focused popular culture and media: spectral narratives,epistemologies of ignorance and playing Indian. I then draw on a growing decolonization scholarship in Indigenous studies to take stock of the cultural and political possibilities enabled by Indigenous girl cultures in Western-colonized settler states.

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