ABSTRACT
The model of colonization tends to strip Indigenous peoples of their agency and erases the resiliency of their cultures. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many qallunaat in the Arctic, including explorers, whalers, and ethnographers, noted that Inuit culture, and Inuit shamanism in particular, were in decline. One thing that became apparent while identifying interview participants was that, while a fair number of Inuit are out as gay or Two-Spirit, very few are out as trans or gender non-conforming. In considering the often coercive Christianization of Inuit communities as a mechanism of colonization, it is tempting to frame total spiritual revitalization as a strategy for decolonization. If gender and sexual diversity do not fit within a Christian framework but fit into a precontact spiritual framework, then the liberation of diverse genders and sexualities must then rest on returning to those precontact structures.
