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Indigeneity and Blackness: Partners in the Struggles of Settler-Colonialism 
Octavia Andrade-Dixon 

 

Introduction 

The North American continent, as it is known today, has experienced forced transformations 

over the past five hundred years. Through the hands of different European powers, what is 

known as Turtle Island by many was transformed into a radically different society. Colonizers 

built this territory through violent and unjust processes of dispossession and through the 

structural genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of African peoples. These 

processes are conceptualized as Settler-Colonialism and Trans-Atlantic Slavery. Through 

colonial violence, Indigenous identities have faced a barrage of Western values imposed on their 

everyday lives. Further, these impositions and shifts in societal structure have become 

internalised and therefore naturalized within Indigenous livelihood. For the descendants of slaves 

throughout the Americas, similar generational traumas have been enacted upon them by 

colonizing powers. Although the same perpetrators enacted these traumas, and in the same 

geographic space, they are kept separate within colonial rhetoric. However, I contest that these 

are not wholly separate entities, but processes that are in conversation with each other and hold 

strong similarities. Black and Indigenous communities are directly influenced by settler-colonial 

morality through the naturalization of heteropatriarchy and evangelical practises into community 

governance. This heteropatriarchy is then weaponized by the cis-gendered heterosexual (cishet) 

male population for their societal advancement and to regulate the actions of women and 

queer/two-spirit persons.  

Colonialism and Christianity   

Assimilatory practises are a method that settler-colonial states use to strip the subjects of 

colonization of their identity, in this instance, Indigenous and Black folk. Through residential 

schools, the policing of spirituality and the enforcement of colonially-acceptable governing 

systems, Indigenous and Black people have had to adapt and negotiate their identities as a means 

of survival. In turn, they have internalized these colonial moralities within their communities. 

Christianity is a primary tool of colonization that has been incorporated into both societies to 

different degrees.  

Christianity was incorporated into Indigenous communities as a means of survival in the 

face of violent colonialism (Barker 198). Authentic forms of spirituality were repressed by 

colonizers. Indigenous peoples were forced to disguise their traditions within an acceptable 

religion as a covert means of preserving and ensuring the survival of their own cultural. 

However, in the current epoch, it becomes harder to differentiate between what is authentically 

Indigenous, and what has been naturalized. In instances such as the Diné Marriage Act, it was 

asserted by the Navajo Nation Council that barring same-sex marriage aligns with traditional 

values of the Navajo people (Barker 206). Many tribe members were shocked at this assertion 

and contested the view that position was compatible with their long-held values (Barker 207). 

From their understanding, acceptance and tolerance were the seminal values of their tribes; 

however, the rulings of the tribal governments were in direct opposition to this idea (Barker 

209). In the Navajo nation, despite the existence of Nadleeh spirit stories that detail individuals 

with both masculine and feminine identities who were highly regarded in their society, they 



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chose to naturalize Christianity into their spirituality instead (Barker, 212). The interpretation 

enforces a colonial perspective on a non-colonial governing system. The Navajo Nation Council 

no longer recognized that these ideals were not authentic to their people and, in its application of 

imposed ideals, it excluded a subset of its own people. The blurring of what is colonial and 

authentically Indigenous was lost in this instance.  

In Black communities, the same blurring of original values and Christianity has occurred. 

For the “peculiar institution” to be successful, enslaved Africans were barred from practising 

their authentic religions. The enforcement of Christianity, coupled with the intermixing of people 

from different tribes and geographical areas, ensured was difficult to maintain connections to 

authentic modes of spirituality. Many enslaved Africans also disguised their original practices 

within Christian practises because it was the only way to maintain the former under plantation 

surveillance. Currently, Christianity is a religion that has a stronghold within the Black 

community, but elements of authentic spiritualities bleed through. My maternal grandmother is a 

devout Christian and believes certain “worldly practises” are “of the devil.” Yet, she often 

references Obeah, an African influenced religion and medicinal practise with supernatural and 

natural elements, a religion that does not align with Christianity (Wisecup 411). These references 

are typically negative and are used to describe situations where she believes someone has 

directed bad energy or curses upon her, aligning with how it is used by many Jamaicans today. 

Despite the negative connotation, the invocation of Obeah is her acknowledgement of African 

spiritualities and how they are still interwoven in our cultural framework. These instances of 

syncretism between Christianity and authentic religions are a common thread between Black and 

Indigenous folk, as both groups experienced colonialism in similar ways. 

Weaponizing Heteropatriarchy  

The influences of Christianity on authentic governing practises manifest themselves in the ways 

in which men perpetuate heteropatriarchy within Black and Indigenous communities. It is 

disguised as beneficial but is detrimental to non-cishet male members of the community. Due to 

the heteropatriarchal nature of broader settler societies, men were not admonished for this 

behaviour by outsiders. Within Indigenous nations, heteropatriarchy has been enacted 

systematically at the legislative level. We see this in such practices as the marriage ban and the 

Indian Act. 

The Cherokee National Council banned same-sex marriage on the grounds that the 

original Cherokee text was not gender-neutral but binary (Barker 202). However, the underlying 

reason was fear of settler-colonial government interference in the nation’s affairs if the latter 

caught wind of queer indigenous people circumventing federal law (Barker 201). The council 

willingly excluded queer Cherokees from the legal privileges granted through marriage, because 

it would threaten their perceived security within settler-colonial society. 

The Indian Act serves as yet another example of prioritizing male benefits. Women 

activists advocated for amendments to Bill C-31’s Section12 (1) (b), which stripped Indigenous 

women and their children of their status if they had white partners (Lawrence 14). The women’s 

efforts were not supported by male organizers, since the latter were not affected by this piece in 

the legislation and were more concerned that drawing attention to the Indian act would affect 

them detrimentally (Lawrence 14). Had it not been women fighting against male complacency, a 



Octavia Andrade-Dixon 
Indigeneity and Blackness 

27 
 

large proportion of Indigenous people would not have status, leading to community alienation 

and inability to access resources.  

Heteropatriarchal manifestations in the Black community often take place in similar 

spaces, such as organizing. Most notably, these practices were enacted within the civil rights 

movement. The most prominent names out of the Civil Rights movement were often those of 

men, such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. However, bar Rosa Parks, many women were 

an active part of the movement but did not receive the same level of acknowledgement. Women 

served as integral organizers creating flyers, organizing students and working on the ground with 

disenfranchised community members (Barnett 168). Despite the time and labour they put into the 

movements, they were not allowed to be leaders because much of the civil rights movement held 

leaders from the church, thus ensuring a firmly male-dominated leadership space. 

In Black and Indigenous communities, cishet male security is made the primary 

governing goal. When men in the community enact legislation or organizing tactics, it does not 

include the plights of all members. The notion of “community first” is a guise used to maintain 

the oppression of heterosexual women and queer community members. Although the thought 

process is gradual freedom, the reality is that men create conditional freedoms for themselves in 

which they find pride in functioning like cishet white men. The ability to assert dominance over 

the subjugated members of the community grants them the confidence they cannot find in 

broader society because of their marginalized positions. Thus, through the “community first” 

rhetoric and by weaponizing what is seen as traditional faith-based values, men are given space 

to perpetuate this cycle until marginalized members of the community fight for their rights at an 

intracommunity level.  

Heteropatriarchy as Regulation  

In the same way that weaponizing heteropatriarchy benefits the cishet male, it is used to the 

detriment of cishet women and queer individuals in Black and Indigenous communities. Within 

Indigenous communities, colonial laws and heteropatriarchal ideals remain unchallenged because 

they benefit cishet men, and allow them to maintain control over the women in their society. 

Through the Indian Act, Indigenous women had to be married to Indigenous men for their 

children to maintain status. However, men were able to intermarry and pass status to their 

biracial children (Lawrence15). The law allowed for men in the community to limit women’s 

choices to only other status men because of the burden of transferring status to their children. It 

was also queer exclusionary, only allowing for heterosexual partnerships and erasing two-spirit 

identities. 

When the law came under increased scrutiny and was challenged by Indigenous peoples, 

most activists were women. Further, once women fought back and marginally more egalitarian 

marriage acts were put into place, there were still heteropatriarchal tones to the legislation. 

Amendments to Bill C-31 did not remove the necessity of marriage from passing status but gave 

more room for intermarriage. Under this protocol, Indigenous women with an Indigenous mother 

and non-status father became 6(2)s, the lower-status denomination. This maintains the burden for 

former non-status women to marry a status man to prevent her children from losing status. 

Though this applies to male 6(2)s as well, society does not burden men with the same 

expectation to procreate with the same urgency it does women. Additionally, there is no mention 

of two-spirit or queer couples processes of childbearing, such as sperm or egg donors. How 



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would their children navigate status if the biological parent was a 6(2)? This question is left 

unanswered with the changes.  

Black women also experience the burden of maintaining the Black family. Within the 

Black community, racial maintenance followed an inverse process: any child who was part Black 

was deemed Black. This meant slave masters would sexually abuse enslaved women to create a 

larger labour force (Nelson). In turn, there is a strong stigma when Black women date white men. 

For Black men, who were fetishized differently, however, white women are objects of desire and 

personal advancement (Romano 130). The thought process continues currently as Black men 

face less scrutiny when they date white or non-white women. The expectation for Black women 

is that they will exclusively date Black and not “betray” the community by dating white or non-

Black. Societal pressures reveal themselves in the marriage practises of Black men and women. 

Black men have a 25% rate of marriage to white women, but Black women only have a 12% rate 

of marriage to white men (Wang). 

Within my family dynamic, there have been explicitly gendered pressures to have Black 

partners on me and my female family members in contrast to my male family members. My 

Haitian grandmother, whose own mother was Italian, has vocally disapproved or expressed 

apprehension about the white or non-Black partners my female cousins and I have had. However, 

I have not heard the same sentiment when my male cousin dates white women. Despite the 

trauma she has dealt with due to her biracial identity, she has not extended the same warnings 

equally amongst her grandchildren. The pervasiveness of gendered control on Black and 

Indigenous women lies not only in the individual expectations of the family but in the broader 

landscapes of community and nation.  

Conclusion  

Black and Indigenous peoples have suffered at the hands of colonialism for centuries. Both 

people’s homelands and cultures and been ravaged by European influences. As a result, the 

pervasive heteropatriarchal systems of colonizers have become commonplace in our 

communities, through modes such as religion and legal governance. Men have continuously 

prioritized themselves at the expense of cishet women and queer folk in our communities. The 

work we put in as cishet women and queer folk is not acknowledged or congratulated until we 

start the applause ourselves. If not for women and queer folk, many members of the community 

would be left to the wayside. We pick up pieces of community when no one else is willing, and 

through these efforts, our cultures survive. If not for the women who fought for their children to 

have status, many Indigenous people today would be systematically excluded from their people. 

If not for queer advocates, equality amongst all members would be a myth. The work of women 

and queer folk is what pushes us towards decolonization and staying in touch with our authentic 

ways rather than holding onto colonizer ways.  

 

 

 

 

 



Octavia Andrade-Dixon 
Indigeneity and Blackness 

29 
 

Works Cited 

 

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University Press. 

 

Barnett, B. M. (1993). Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders In The Civil Rights Movement: 

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Lawrence, B. (2003). Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and the 

United States: An Overview. Hypatia, 18(2), 3–31. doi: 10.1353/hyp.2003.0031 

 

Lewis, R., & Ford-Robertson, J. (2010). Understanding the Occurrence of Interracial Marriage in 

the United States Through Differential Assimilation. Journal of Black Studies, 41(2), 405–420. 

doi: 10.1177/0021934709355120 

 

Nelson, C (2019) Exploring Slavery Through the Fugitive Slavery Archive [lecture] 

 

Romano, R. (2018). Something Old, Something New: Black Women, Interracial Dating, and the 

Black Marriage Crisis. Differences, 29(2), 126–153. doi: 10.1215/10407391-6999802 

 

UBC. “Bill C-31.” Indigenousfoundations, First Nations & Indigenous Studies UBC, 2009, 

https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/bill_c-31/. 

 

Wang, W. (2015, June 12). Interracial marriage: Who is 'marrying out'? Retrieved from 

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial-marriage-who-is-marrying-out/. 

 

Wisecup, K. (2013). Knowing obeah. Atlantic Studies, 10(3), 406–425. doi: 

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