Speaker
Description
I have previously presented arguments for understanding skateboarding as a queer act. Queerness has been defined as ‘being’ and ‘doing’ that challenges and defies normative scripts in order to create new possibilities. Skateboarding is a practice that reimagines and repurposes the urban landscape by manipulating its designs for unintended purposes and creating new relationships with space. In this way, skateboarding may challenge the neoliberal symbolism and function of Western architecture and urban planning into a site of play and hedonism. Extending this line of thought, I am interested in exploring the queer potential of skateboarding as a decolonizing/indigenizing act that can reclaim and reform relationships with colonized spaces. Though most often associated with blonde southern California youth, skateboarding is derived from the indigenous Polynesian practice of surfing (a practice with its own history of whitewashing and commodification). Drawing from indigenous surf studies work dealing with issues of sovereignty, identity, and (dis)possession, as well as scholarship on indigenizing urban spaces, this presentation explores the indigenizing/decolonizing potential of skateboarding. I examine this potential as demonstrated by indigenous skateboarding groups, collaborations, and initiatives including Apache Skateboards in the United States, Nations Skate Youth in Canada, Songline Skateboarding in Australia, and Postal Skateboards in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
