73. 'Indigenous Feminism Redefined' │ Cherry Smiley

Whose Body Is It

Nlaka’pamux and Diné Nations scholar and radical feminist Cherry Smiley is done with the academy. She began her academic career studying prostitution and male violence against indigenous women. With the space to study, reflect and write, she grew angry. “As you’re learning and growing, learning from women who came before you, the anger is spilling out everywhere,” she said of her consciousness raising process. It was cold comfort to know that so many of the harms she had witnessed or personally experienced were so much bigger than her. While writing about prostitution and female subordination, she encountered institutional bias against heterodoxy. Whether it was while hunting for a faculty position, or seeking publication for her articles, Cherry found that the academy “only want you if you’re going to do what they tell you to,” and for her, this meant reciting the litany ‘sex work is work’ and ‘transwomen are women.’

Institutional orthodoxy was not the worst of it. The hostility she faced from resource officers and faculty for her ‘transphobic’ politics prevented her from accessing resources after being sexually assaulted and left her feeling alienated and hopeless. Radical feminist texts helped her feel less alone, and as it has for so many women, saved her life. In this episode Cherry discusses what the dominant discourse gets wrong about colonialism and asks why it's always women who are given all the rules.

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