Four links not posted here before (2015, 2018, 2019, 2020):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9s3WVIzm-Q (Length 42:31)
Research Online Videos
Presentation by Dr Qwo-Li Driskill at the Cultured Queer / Queering Culture: Indigenous Perspectives on Queerness sysmposium [sic], University of Wollongong [New South Wales, Australia], 19 February 2015.
https://gettysburgian.com/2018/11/qwo-li-driskill-offers-message-of-hope-to-students-community-members/ (Nov 25, 2018)
More than 100 students, faculty, and community members filled Kline Theater on Wednesday, November 14 to hear Qwo Li Driskill, a two-spirit Cherokee author, talk about life as a two-spirit indigenous person.
Gettysburg Professor and author Stephanie Sellers introduced Professor Driskill, who is the queer studies organizer for the WGS department of Oregon State University, acknowledging and thanking the ancestors and elders of the many native American nations that call Pennsylvania home. The reverence of the whole affair was quite remarkable, as Professor Driskill led the audience through an engaging lecture about hir experience and that of other two-spirit Cherokees s/he has interviewed for hir dissertation.
S/he opened by explaining that s/he weaves baskets; often, they are double walled weaves, which creates a third space. S/he compared this to the lives of two-spirit people (a term only used to refer to indigenous people who identify as what is referred to in western society as gender non-conforming or gender fluid). Driskill explained that in Cherokee, there are no gendered pronouns, and that colonialization created that issue, as two-spirit people have always existed in Cherokee nations. However, this preexisting and acceptance of two-spirit people cannot, as s/he emphasized, be romanticized as an overwhelming popularity and appreciation by the entire Cherokee and greater native American population.
At the conclusion of the lecture, a student asked, “What gives you hope?” Driskill responded quite candidly, “I have a lot of hope about the younger generation of folks.”
https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/research/podcast/e178/ (Accompanying audio about 34 minutes)
RIA # 178: Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill on Indigenous & Two-spirit Studies
November 4, 2019 Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill
On this episode, Katie is joined by Qwo-Li Driskill, a (non-citizen) Cherokee Two-Spirit and Queer writer, activist, and performer also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent. They are the author of Walking with Ghosts: Poems (Salt Publishing, 2005) and the co-editor of Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (University of Arizona, 2011) and Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions is Theory, Politics, and Literature (University of Arizona, 2011). Their book Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory (University of Arizona 2016) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017.
https://festival.artseverywhere.ca/presenter/qwo-li-driskill/A FESTIVAL OF IDEAS — January 22 - 26, 2020 — Guelph [University in Guelph, Ontario, Canada]
Qwo-Li Driskill
Qwo-Li Driskill is a (non-citizen) Cherokee Two-Spirit and Queer writer, activist, and performer also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent. S/he is the author of several books, including Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017. S/he is the Director of Graduate Studies Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University.
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