Between the late 18th and early 20th century, scholars, missionaries, traders, settlers, and government officials in the Americas, Europe, and Asia interpreted Indigenous cultural self-preservation as further proof of “Aboriginal” secretiveness and untrustworthiness.
Ethnological descriptions of Siberian shamans as sexless, asexual, or given to “perversions”—namely, “transvestitism” and “homosexuality”—further reveal the wild speculations that ethnographic writers indulged in.
White Colonial Supremacism placed Indigenous people in fixed and transhistorical categories, willfully obscuring a reality of cultural dynamism and physical movement in a bid to contain, control, and, if necessary, destroy Native people.
Non-Indigenous linguists attempted to corral gendered pronouns and impose some sort of order on Indigenous cultures. These intellectual labors were in keeping with the empirical thrust of the Western intellectual tradition.
In contrast, Native communities operated in worlds in which metaphor and mnemonic devices reminded people of the importance of adaptation and renewal to ensure balance in the overlapping worlds of the physical and the spiritual.
The full article is available here
