Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration – Quill & Quire

Many activists, writers, and communities are addressing the nexus of race, sexuality, and gender, and the ways these things combine to form a person’s identity. Indigenous Men and Masculinities accomplishes this by discussing aboriginal masculinity from various points of view. Arguably, the book takes a similar approach to that of an intersectional feminist: countering the popular opinion that gender equality is a movement inherently of or for women, and acknowledging that people of all genders benefit from taking a critical look at the patriarchy.

The timely text examines the ways colonization attempted to diminish aboriginal beliefs about gender, and as a result, aboriginal traditions and values from around the world. In the midst of our imperative nation-wide discussion about missing and murdered aboriginal women, the book urges us to address how colonization has affected aboriginal men and people of other genders by creating and enforcing a patriarchal society. The book cannot provide a clear-cut solution capable of abolishing or reversing these effects – we must first collectively face and recognize the atrocities committed by white colonizers.

Indigenous Men and Masculinities, which serves as a potential companion to Sam McKegney’s Masculindians: Conversations About Indigenous Manhood, comprises 16 essays authored by international scholars and activists. Most of the chapters address the ways white colonizers attempted to enforce patriarchy on a non-patriarchal society. The book argues that these Europeans introduced a harmful binary recognizing only two distinct genders – men and women.

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