ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the iterations of queer theory from the gay and lesbian movement to the emergent body of queer Indigenous theory, highlighting its potential to inform gender and sexuality research in the context of archaeological research. Queer theory is no longer applied exclusively to gender or sexuality. Gender and sexuality are constructed in settler society in ways that bolster settler colonialism. Settler values predominantly dictate that gender is based directly on biological sex and that biological sex is a static and concrete aspect of an individual’s identity. However, social scientists have begun to accept that in addition to gender, sex is a socially constructed aspect of identity. Settler biopolitics are largely constructed through western scientism and biological reductionism and grounded in our narratives of sex as natural, biological, and non-cultural.
