Gender in a Bordertown hits all somehow, amiright?
I mean have you ever thought about it?
To me, Bordertowns, whether you’re in Kinłaní–or any other town/settlement that neighbors a Native nation–gender is more fluid, or just all somehow, and harder to pin down, so therefore it gets policed even more. But that’s met with some hefty resistance and existence of trans/non-binary on those streets. Yes, it was on the DL most times, but also not. Memories of trans women I befriended come to mind, they unapologetically and authentically lived as their full selves. Gendercide? Who’s gendercide? Mmm-hmm. What’s that about seeds buried? That’s right, we are still here.
Yá’át’ééh, shí ei dilbaa nishłį.
Still here and still theorizing and performing gender in ways that will make you think (at least twice) about gender. Which is a declaration: here I am, in all my nadleeh/dilbaa/2S finery all UP in your town.
I grew up in one of these Bordertowns, I was a long-haired tomboyish kid. In 1993 I was in high school (I came out right my senior year), trying to figure out how to be in such a liminal space, I stuck around for college and engaged in the LGBTQ club on campus. This was before I knew about what dilbaa and nadleeh was or meant. I was learning how my masc peers were internalizing and performing their gender. Oof, there is so much to unlearn from those years I’ll admit, but I’ve hung on to some lessons with my dear life. Like living authentically and unapologetically and to dream, dreaming is just as important as the other work we do in community. It’s taken me this long to get to a space where I can use dreaming as a way to world-make with our futures in mind.
What I want to get across in this post is this: gender in colonial/liminal spaces like Bordertowns is mushy or ever-changing, and that’s because of many things, but mostly because of memory, decolonization, learning, and cultural and linguistic revitalization/protection. For me, memory and dreaming have been closely tied with my own research and writing on this platform and with poetry (I try to write as much as I can in Diné Bizaad), so in a way each of these levels of the process are closely intertwined and make me a mess sometimes. So does my gender, sometimes. This is because I grew up chronologically, geographically, and psychically close to my homelands, a sacred mountain, and the Bordertown at the foot of that mountain. **note: I’m writing on Denetdale’s analysis of gender in Navajo national narratives, and how those narratives turn into policy like the Diné Marriage Act of 2005. Of further note, the governing body of the Navajo Nation is a carbon copy of the US federal-style administration, it’s no coincidence that a Bordertown like where I grew up existed nearby and thrives to this day on revenue from Navajo patronage; not to mention that these towns started out as man-camps only existing to extract natural resources.
Gender in Bordertowns then becomes very important in the process of assimilation. On the contested land of such locations gender plays a crucial role in measuring how “modern” you are (how well have you internalized it), then how you police others and their gender. I think some philosopher wrote something about this? With the constant messaging around what and how men and women do, (men wear pants and work outside, women wear skirts and make bread, etc.) we’ve internalized this so deeply that even discussions of how “traditional” Diné gender is understood are hard to take without a whole lotta ashįhii because two genders is just too bland for our taste.
So we find ways to spice it up. Like riding our bikes to Monsoon for Techno Night in the freezing cold because no one had a car or wanted a jacket to mess with the carefully selected attire. It’s wild to think about how gender is wrapped up in everyday life, this is why as a non-binary person I have so much anxiety about leaving the house. Literally everything we do is somehow tinged with conceptions of gender, going to the dentist, shopping, getting your car fixed, going to the doctor, getting your mail…you get the picture.
It also has everything to do with geography, too. I was born on Dinétah, grew up there and will return there when I’m old and that is the place where I learned of my own context and possibility. When I was growing up I saw other Queer people like me and recognized them right away as being “like me.” My nalí had friends who were nadleehí, and our grandma from “across the wash” was masculine of Butch and when she regaled me and my siblings with her feats of strength there was a twinkle in her eye and once they even winked at me. Recognition and safety. And Context. I had that…on the Rez.
When I was in a Bordertown my safety, recognition, and context was not there. Sure I had already been acculturated to know enough that I should wear pink, not blue since my name, feminine at the time, should match my hair also. But beyond that I was without guideposts like Rex, or Frances, or Roland, people in my community who were dilbaa and nadleehí like me, people I saw and interacted with on a regular basis.
Bordertowns are lonely places. You’re displaced from your networks and people who understand you, you have to learn a whole new, other way to be and sound and act while you’re at school, and then your friends on the playground, or walking home from school. I went back to the Rez every summer. Those were some of the best times ever, for many reasons, but mostly because my context made sense and my gender performance could take a needed break!
It’s a strange place to grow up, where Indigenous people and their own set of gender-understandings come into daily contact with settler-colonial mindsets about gender. I’m still figuring out where I can be my full self in these towns, it seems like that changes from day to day, too. It seems like we should need to come to terms with how fluid we all are, get rid of the idea that we could and should try to control one another, and dream up how we can all be safe wherever we are.
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