Early Indigenous Literatures

Biological marking still important, but as a form of balance

Tusee is here marked physically as related to her mother through her "penciled eyebrows and slightly extended nostrils" while her "sturdiness" is attributed to her father. The attention to her appearance and lineage creates ties between the family, but these ties are not marked as more or less important than others. Taking up only two sentences, these markers also waver between the binary of biology/culture since ones sturdiness might mean anything from their stance to their way of holding themselves. Here we see that it is not attention to physical inheritances which is the issue, but a settler system which seeks to monolithically define belonging.

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