Peer-reviewed article
“The Land's Been Queer Longer Than the Colonizers Have Been Here. Hiy Hiy.” Impacts of Anti‐Queer and Trans Policies and Resistance Through Art, Queer Joy, and Worldmaking Among Youth
Jessica Wright, Gillian Robinson ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study looks at how 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Alberta, Canada, respond to rising anti-queer and anti-trans policies. Young people made collages as part of an arts-based participatory method. The collages showed how they experience time, place and emotion in queer life. The authors describe three strategies the youth used: managing shame and identity while holding on to hope, grounding queer and trans identities in land, ancestry and Indigenous cultural frameworks, and building affirming community spaces. The authors argue that queer joy is a deliberate form of resistance.
Key points
- Youth dealt with pervasive shame and identity management in a political climate they described as "apocalyptic", while fostering hope.
- Youth grounded queer and trans identities in permanence through connections to land, queer ancestry and Indigenous cultural frameworks.
- This challenges narratives that treat queerness as new or unnatural.
- Affirming community spaces, both literal and metaphorical, made queer joy a practice of self-actualization and political resistance.
- The authors call for institutional support for 2SLGBTQ+ youth.
Limitations
The abstract does not give the number, ages or background of participants, so we cannot judge how widely the findings apply. It is a qualitative study in one province and does not measure the effects of policies or of any intervention.
Abstract
ABSTRACT This study explores how 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Alberta, Canada—the country's most Conservative province—mobilize queer joy as a form of resistance amid rising anti‐queer and anti‐trans policies under a settler colonial, cisheteropatriarchal regime. Drawing from youth‐produced collages, we demonstrate that this visual arts‐based participatory method revealed the complex temporalities, spatialities, and affective textures of queer life. Our findings articulate three interrelated strategies: (1) navigating pervasive shame and identity management within an “apocalyptic” political climate while fostering hope beyond oppressive governance; (2) grounding queer and trans identities in permanence through connections to land, queer ancestry, and Indigenous cultural frameworks, challenging dominant narratives that position queerness as new or unnatural; and (3) cultivating affirming community spaces—both literal and metaphorical—where queer joy becomes a generative practice of self‐actualization and political resistance. Drawing on critical queer theory and Indigenous scholarship, we contend that queer joy functions as a deliberate and powerful form of resistance—a refusal to accept linear narratives of progress or erasure. This work highlights the vital need for institutional support for 2SLGBTQ+ youth while emphasizing that resistance entails not only survival but also the sustained presence of joy as enduring defiance.