ABSTRACT
Deeply engaging with scholarship on Indigenous conceptions of gender with an extended critical discussion of terminology from a wide range of First Nations cultural perspectives and exegesis of Indigenous screen texts, this chapter will explore how the term trans* (with an asterisk) and trans are codified by western perspectives. First Nations and Indigenous traditions include Third Gender, Two Spirit and concepts beyond the Western binary of ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Contemporary exemplar texts such as A Place in the Middle (Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, USA, 2014), based within Hawai’ian society and cultural traditions; Burning For Acceptance (Carmel Young, Aus., 2009), a documentary about the Indigenous Sistergirls of the Tiwi Islands of Northern Australia; Tchindas (Pablo García Pérez de Lara, USA, 2015), about Tchinda, a trans woman in Cape Verde, West Africa; Two Spirits (Lydia Nibley, USA, 2010), a documentary which recounts the distressing murder of Navajo nádleehi youth Fred Martinez are important texts that give voice to contemporary Indigenous Two Spirit cinematic transactivism. Subheadings: ‘Transliterate approaches to reading films from non-western and First Nations filmmakers,’ exploring cultural protocols and sensitivities regarding the recorded image and the key question of whether this requires a different form of transliteracy from audiences.
