Trans/formative identities: narrations of decolonization in mixed-race and transgender lives.

• Main Author: Hunt, Sarah E.
• Other Authors: Walsh, Andrea N.
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: gender identity; transgender people; racially-mixed people; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Anthropology; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Social Sciences::Women's studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2374

This interdisciplinary research paper explores story and metaphor of "trans/formative identities" as a basis for challenging normative racial and gender categories. Autoethnography is used as a method for weaving the author's own experience as a mixed-race Indigenous person with academic research and theory. The discussion is contextualized by an analysis of institutionalized colonial relationships framing Indigenous knowledge in academia and the role of Indian status in defining Indigenous identity. Six mixed-race and transgender or genderqueer people in Victoria and Vancouver. British Columbia are interviewed and the themes from their shared experiences are used as the basis for further understanding trans/formative identities. These themes are: irony; contradiction and impossibility; stories of home and family; naming and language; embodied negotiations, contextual selves, and; artistic visions.