When Did Indians Become Straight? explores the complex relationship between contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance and self-representation. Examining a wide range of texts (including captivity narratives, fiction, government documents, and anthropological tracts), Mark Rifkin offers a cultural and literary history of the ways Native peoples have been inserted into Euramerican discourses of sexuality and how Native intellectuals have sought to reaffirm their peoples' sovereignty and self-determination.
When Did Indians Become Straight ? explores the complex relationship between sexual mores and shifting forms of Native American self-representation. It offers a cultural and literary history that stretches from the early-nineteenth century to the early-twenty-first century, demonstrating how Euramerican and Native writers have drawn on discourses of sexuality in portraying Native peoples and their sovereignty.