Joseph M. Pierce

indigiqueerconfidential.ghost.ioIndigiQueer ConfidentialWriting on art, queer thought, museums, and Indigenous politics by Joseph M. Pierce. Friends, comrades, lovers unite!

I write Indigiqueer Confidential on Ghost: short essays on Native art, Indigiqueer secrets, museums, books, and the occasional NDN rage. indigiqueerconfidential.ghost.io

Obviously not a new idea, but I’m realizing that for me the problem with being overcommitted is that it generates a low level sense of disappointment in myself, both for being late to complete things promised, and for being disappointed in my self-disappointment.

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Bruno Dies

@brunodias.dev

the contrast between seeing US democrats fall over themselves to embrace idiot transphobia all year and tonight seeing footage of the president embracing my (trans) congresswoman, Erika Hilton, at the election night party

I’ll be in Toronto for this fab Queer Kinship conference talking about BOOOOOOOOODY

It' not a tour! But I'm doing lots of readings, keynotes, conferences: Minneapolis (virtually), Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, Providence, this fall. TODAY virtual radio reading of my secret memoir! Details on Indigiqueer Confidential 👇

indigiqueerconfidential.ghost.io/fall-updates...

indigiqueerconfidential.ghost.ioFall updates (readings, talks, and conferences)Long time no see, babes. I have been under an administrative rock, well maybe not under so much as pushing it up and watching it roll back down. If Sisyphus were Indian... But it's good. Lots of Nati...

Foucault turns to Boas and says: but you cannot forget that the truth is an expression of power, not the divine. To which Boas replies: I have never been to church. But I still believe in the field.

I had a dream last night in which I was sleeping in my office. :/

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Stephanie Lamy

@stephlamy.bsky.social

For my ENG speaking followers Unprecedented High School blockades began in the outskirts of Paris in Créteil on the 21st of Sept. National mobilisations followed on the 29th of September, the 1st and the 6th of October. The movement is ongoing and has spread both in scope and scale. #tippingpoint

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Ken Wissoker

@kwissoker.bsky.social

Happy to be in Toronto at the #4S2026 science studies meeting with Assistant Editor Kate Mullen and a lot of great @dukepress.bsky.social books!

I found out that my great grandfather, William, applied to Chilocco Indian School, was admitted, attended, but deserted after one week. Seven days in September 1926. A hundred years ago.

moma.orgT.C. Cannon. Two Guns Arikara. 1973/1977 | MoMAAudio from 1950–1980: Works from the Collection. Explore Floor 4 with audio commentaries from artists and curators.

I recorded an audio for MoMA about TC Cannon’s Two Guns Arikara, a painting that just keeps asking me more questions. Like what is he thinking? What is a purple pompadour? What is NDN modernism? www.moma.org/audio/playli...

Very grateful to see that Speculative Relations received an honorable mention for the ASA John Hope Franklin Prize this year.💛 Congratulations to Kimberly Juanita Brown for the brilliant Black Elegies, which received the award, and to fellow honorable mention David Serlin. theasa.net/wp-content/u...

theasa.nettheasa.net

Got myself to inbox 0 but 4 new ones came in the meantime. Inbox 4 is the new 0.

21 Sept

Ok party is fine but i cant figure out why “party in my house” is so awkward rhythmically. The “my” is so long and doesn’t fit with the rest of the line. Or am i wrong?

17 Sept

NDN thought: be a good relative, but don’t take no shit either.

15 Sept

I rushed out of my office, sped across campus, and burst into class 10 minutes late, only to discover…I was 50 minutes early. Not my class.

15 Sept

I don’t even know who Macklemore is but I’m interested in how the vocabulary of “the political” travels across genres of culture. Some spaces are assumed to be apolitical while others are not. And then a sudden piercing of the illusion.

10 Sept

I realize that I point at people when I speak sometimes. Like 👉🏼 hey I thought of something! But I suspect sometimes people take it as accusatory. And it’s not. 🫵🏽

4 Sept

After teaching Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, I keep thinking about how his work links contemporary materials with ancestral motifs that are communal. He is the one drawing, but the motifs emerge through listening and dreaming, which always happen in community. ❤️ Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe Fruits (Wapu) 2021 MoMA

3 Sept

Ok random art thought: the thing I don’t like about Duchamp is that he takes ordinary things and imbues them with power by changing their context, their place. And that’s what a lot of Indigenous art does. And yet, it isn’t thought of as art, but craft. NDNs are the real modernists lol.

1 Sept

Happy one year anniversary (belated) to Speculative Relations, a book that is big and yellow and has color pictures! And smells like a book! And sold more than 1,000 copies, which is a lot for university press books! Huzaaaaaaaaa

25 Aug

Oh no 😭

25 Aug

Long time profe, first time Professor.

12 Aug

On the TGV from Paris to Avignon and the ladies behind us have to be from Long Island, playing gin rummy, and talking about their translation apps.

8 Aug

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

This post is unavailable.

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Mark Simpson-Vos

@simpsonvos.bsky.social

29 July

Hey - those of you without books coming out or not in publishing might not know, but it’s fall catalog season and new books are going to be dropping regularly! If you care about books, authors, literacy, the future of humanity… if you see a new book looking cool, help spread the word!

28 July

🐽😘

26 July

I’m so honored and humbled to share that ✨Speculative Relations✨ was given the Best Subsequent Book Award by NAISA this year, and to be in the company of Luis Cárcamo Huechante (in person) and Jodi Byrd (from afar). @dukepress.bsky.social

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Duke University Press

@dukepress.bsky.social

23 July

Congratulations to Joseph M. Pierce @pepepierce.bsky.social, whose "Speculative Relations" won the 2026 Best Subsequent Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies Prize, and to Jodi A. Byrd @arsavium.bsky.social and Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante whose books received honorable mention! #NAISA

20 July

If you’re coming to Temuco for NAISA don’t forget your power /plug adapter. Or if you do, you can get one in a bodega or hardware store.

Joseph M. Pierce reposted

Kneecap

@kneecapceol.bsky.social

Argentina has no flow. Spain ever swarming.

Argentina needs to string together 5 minutes of possession or it’s going to be bad.

Argentina has no flow. Spain ever swarming.

Bypassing the midfield, Spain will eventually find some joy.

Watching the game in my hotel in Santiago. Taxista said he was supporting Spain.

18 July

Heading wayyyyyyyy south for NAISA.

I've seen a lot of discourse online about how Argentina is a racist country, or not, a lot of Argentine people defending themselves, and a lot of that defense hinges on not wanting outsiders to define what Argentine racism is, a thread.

Now then, point 2, who gets to say this? Who gets to say that Argentina, like all 'American' countries, is founded on a racial dynamic that at every turn aimed to diminish Black and Indigenous presence?

I will only say that the argument that only Argentines get to say what Argentine racism is depends on a premise that such a debate is possible from within the very system created to perpetuate it.

and suffered high casualty rates in those wars of 'frontier expansion'. In addition, nearly all of the architects of modern Argentina, the famed generation of 1880, were adherents to one version or another of social darwinism--Spencer was a key reference for them.

last thing on point 1: this means that the structural nature of the Argentine state was not one of assimilation, but erasure. They key ideological tenets were that racial mixing would diminish the Argentine national 'stock', and so European immigration was preferred to racial mixing.

Instead, what we see in Argentina was a political program aimed at importing European immigrants which was paired with a genocidal war against Indigenous communities in the central and southern regions of the country, known as the "Conquest of the Desert" in the 1870s.

Only a few decades earlier, in 1830, studies show that about 1/3 of the population of Buenos Aires was Black. This tends to lead people to say that Argentina can't be racist because those Black people were absorbed into the population, but in fact they were recruited or pressed into military service

However, most people defending Argentina now claim it is and was a racially mixed country. This is false. The official policy of the Argentine state throughout the 19th century was not one of racial mixing, but of racial whitening through massive immigration from Europe. That is clearly racist.

Unlike other Latin American countries with a large *urban* Indigenous population, such as Perú or México, Argentina did not have a history of racial mixing on the same scale or with the same characteristics--and of course the discourse of mestizaje is also, still, racist.

There are two crucial elements to consider: 1) what does race and racism mean in Argentina--including how is it different from other countries in Latin America, and 2) what types of critiques become salient from within the Argentine social sphere, versus from outside of it.

Regarding the first: Like all "American" countries, the imposition of colonial norms, structures, and discourses, was based on a nascent understanding of racial difference that privileged white, Europeans. Argentina was no different.