ABSTRACT
Practices that norm and control the bodies of Indigenous people are an extension of practices that maintain colonial occupation of the land from which we spring. Symbolic imagery related to the Americas has shifted to reflect the complex ways in which Indigenous people, particularly women, are objectified by the colonial gaze. Europeans originally personified the New World in the large, bare-breasted body of the “Indian Queen,” who was both nurturing and dangerous. As Settler body values shifted the lithe figure of the “Indian Princess” came to the fore of the colonial imagination, the fecund body of the queen became refigured as the “Indian Squaw,” marked by excess fat, excess sexual appetite, and excess reproduction. While controlling the symbolic body of Indigenous America, colonial practices also strive to shape the literal bodies of Indigenous people through the discourse of health. Increasingly health research funders are framing “obesity” as an epidemic among the Indigenous peoples of North America. This essay examines how federally funded health research projects have framed Indigenous “obesity” in ways that erase the impacts of colonialism and are heavily invested in neoliberal consumerism. Such colonial body norms might be challenged if we centre Indigenous values related to food, body size, and body meaning.
