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How Does Your Positionality Bias Your Epistemology?

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Using the free website or free app (find on Apple or Google Play) Native Land research the land(s) where you grew up. If you grew up in several different places feel free to list the most relevant. If you grew up outside of the US or Canada, depending on country of origin, Native Land may still work.  However, if you are not from the US and/or Canada and your country of origin is not listed, please use where you are currently located, or a place in the US or Canada that feels relevant to you. Once you have learned the original inhabitants of that land, visit their website and note something you find interesting about their culture. Feel free to include additional resources if applicable.

Next, I invite you to think about the values ascribed to sexuality where you grew up.  For example were values or ideas around sexuality conservative, liberal, open-minded, oppressed, etc. Then, think about how these values were forced upon Indigenous people through colonization and settler ideology.

Write a 2-4 paragraph response based on your findings.  Please see my example below:

Hometown: Fargo, ND

Hometown values: conservative, abstinence only sex education, religious

Original Inhabitants: Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC)

Interesting information: Though Fargo, North Dakota was once the homelands of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, they have been forcibly relocated to an area in Minnesota called Scott, MN.

Impact: Conservative values imposed through religious and political ideologies have shaped the way people in this region of the United States think about sexuality.  For example, North Dakota has never had a female governor.  What message might this send to the original inhabitants to the land who valued matriarchal thinking (Waln, 2017).

Source: https://www.lakotatimes.com/articles/lakota-people-have-always-been-matriarchal/