Indigenous Sistergirls’ Experiences of Family and Community

Abstract

Whilst increasing attention has been paid to the experiences of Indigenous sistergirls over the past decade, there still remains a dearth of empirical research on the experiences of this diverse population of Indigenous people. This paper seeks to add to the small body of existing literature by reporting on a thematic analysis of existing media in which eighteen sistergirls shared their experiences of family and community. The thematic analysis identified two themes within each of these topics. Specifically, when talking about family, both familial acceptance and rejection were salient themes. When talking about community, both the traditional role of sistergirls in their communities and negative responses from communities were salient themes. The paper concludes by suggesting that increased knowledge about the lives of sistergirls may assist social workers in supporting sistergirls both in their own outreach endeavours, and in providing more culturally competent services.

Blak, Bi+ and Borderlands: An Autoethnography on Multiplicities of Indigenous Queer Identities Using Borderland Theory

“…Baylis (2015) examined how gender and sexual diversity of Indigenous peoples is scarcely mentioned in Australian histories which reinforces the hetero-centric literature surrounding historic Aboriginal cultures. Despite this, more recent research suggested that sistergirls (Indigenous transfemme identity identities falling outside western gender binaries) have long been a part of Aboriginal communities since before colonisation (Riggs & Toone, 2017).…”

‘Being together really helped’: Australian transgender and non-binary people and their animal companions living through violence and marginalisation

“…Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) significantly affects gender and sexuality diverse people (Bolam and Bates, 2016; Brown and Herman, 2015; Riggs and Toone, 2017; Waters, 2016). This includes violence and abuse between intimate partners, and from other family members (Hines and Malley-Morrison, 2004; Turell, 2012; Turell and Herrmann, 2008).…”

Who holds the key? Negotiating gatekeepers, community politics, and the “right” to research in Indigenous spaces

“…Contexts of gender and sexual diversity are not a Western phenomenon nor a recent occurrence. Indigenous individuals who identified as gender and/or sexually diverse were accepted and part of our communities pre‐colonisation (Riggs & Toone, 2017). The reduction of Indigenous Australian gender and sexual diversity in communities points to ongoing acts of colonisation that highlight the more malign way in which the settler state has used its power to produce Indigenous Australian people's sexuality as dirty and deviant (Sullivan, 2018a); as a result, communities have become bounded by colonial heteropatriarchal ideologies that stymie individual sovereignty (O'Sullivan, 2015; Sullivan & Day, 2019a; Sullivan & Day, 2019b).…”