Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Re-imagining a Queer Indigenous Past: Affective Archives and Minor Gestures in the Sámi Documentary Sparrooabbán

2021; Volume: 60; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cj.2021.0020

2578-4919

Katariina Kyrölä, Tuija Huuki,

Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

This article examines the possibilities for re-imagining a queer indigenous past in Sparrooabbán (Me and My Little Sister, Suvi West, 2016)—the first feature-length documentary film that discusses non-heterosexuality in Sámi communities. We explore how the film queers the gákti, the traditional Sámi dress; how it uses elements other than verbal expression to mark queer traces in Sápmi; and how spirituality and faith create a (dis)connection to a Two-Spirit past and present. We argue that the documentary produces a series of minor transformative gestures to create a queer Sámi archive of affect when there is no conventional archival knowledge of gender and sexual diversity pre–settler colonialism.