Defiantly Qtpi: Resistance to Colonial Constructions of Indigeneity in the Promotion Queer and Trans Pacific Islanders' Wellbeing

Background and Purpose: Few culturally grounded health interventions (CGHI) currently address Queer and Trans Pacific Islanders (QTPI) experiences of lateral oppression that negatively impacts their holistic wellbeing. Settler policies and institutions perpetuate cisheteronormativity in Pasifika communities by requiring conformity to heterosexual intimacy and cisbinary gender to maintain access citizenship, welfare, and land. These power structures pressure Pasifika communities to reproduce cisheteronormativity as a measure of Indigenous belonging that is used to police QTPI cultural ways of being, genders and intimacies within their families and communities. Resistance to colonial constructions of Indigeneity may improve QTPI wellbeing by facilitating better connectedness with family, community, and other sources of Indigenous wellbeing.

To improve CGHIs ability to address QTPI lateral oppression and improve QTPI health, we explored (1) QTPI resistance settler colonial constructions of Indigeneity, (2) the relationship between QTPI Indigeneity and their health, and (3) and the ways QTPI build Indigenous connectedness to engage cultural determinants of health.

Methods: In 2019, through an Indigenist Collaborative Research (ICR) (Walters et al., 2009) study with the two QTPI led organizations, 11 semi-structured interviews with QTPI adults in WA were purposively collected. A community advisory committee (CAC) of QTPI elders and leaders guided all research activities. 6 Sāmoan and 5 CHamoru participants recruited through social media and email and were asked to share their experiences of health, healthcare, and culture in facilitating their health. Using collaborative qualitative analysis (Richards & Hemphill, 2018) with a team of 3 researchers and non-coding CAC reviewer coded transcripts inductively and extracted emergent themes. Following ICR principles, our CAC member centered QTPI epistemologies into our analysis and ensured community’s stories were honored and accurately interpreted.

Findings

Though lateral oppression in Pasifika, Queer, and Transgender communities, and structural oppression QTPI experienced contributed negatively to their holistic wellbeing, many QTPI promoted their wellbeing through defiant practices of relationality. Through building a relational practice of love and care for their sense of spirit, through practices like gender transition and forgiveness for internalized shame, QTPI were able to heal disconnectedness with their cultures and improved their wellbeing. Through resurgent Pasifika collective kinship practices, specifically chosen family and collective care, QTPI were able to heal the disconnectedness to their ancestors, family, communities that had negative consequences on their wellbeing by finding supportive and resources to practice and honor their cultural ways of being. QTPI stories of past and present as QTPI stories of past and present also provided a resource for the continuation of QTPI ways of being through the empowerment of cultural and ancestral connectedness.

Conclusion and Implications: Despite settler colonial forces that seek to erase and suppress QTPI cultural ways of being, QTPI continue to exist through Indigenous practices that challenge and refuse settler constructions of their Indigeneity. Our findings suggest that CGHI in social work practice should center defiant practices of Indigeneity in improving indigenous connectedness through CGHI in improving the holistic wellbeing of QTPI. Structural changes and a critical community consciousness is still needed to further improve the belonging of QTPI.