In Australia, among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, those who have same-sex relationships have progressively been excluded from the redefining of their cultures, that has been made necessary because of recent multicultural policies. Beyond the political scene, the attitudes of Indigenous people towards those individuals vary significantly according to the specific history of their contact with white people since the beginning of colonisation. However the same social logic seems to be at work behind the inclusion and exclusion processes of those “different ” people seizing vernacular or occidental sexual categories to constitute themselves as social subject on the fringes of their cultures, which have to some extent become heterosexist. Discussed here, are the expressions of this social logic generating a multiplicity of relationships at the heart of the cultural experiences and identity constructions of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders who deviate from the social norms in the way they act as “men ” or “women ”.
Keywords
- “aboriginal people”
- “transgressive gender relations”
- “gendered expression” [agir sexué]
- “identity”
- “social logic”
- “person”
- “tradition”
- “sistergirl”