From racy stage shows to 'bushoir' calendar babes, how Indigenous artists are decolonizing sex

Not everyone would be willing to confess their sexual secrets to a room full of strangers. That's where Kim TallBear and her Indigenous erotica event, Tipi Confessions, comes in.

"I confess: my first lesbian experience was with a white person. Even if she couldn't give any land back, she did give me many orgasms," says TallBear, reading an anonymous confession written and submitted by an audience member at a show during Toronto's 2019 Queer Film Festival. 

The crowd hoots, hollers and cheers.

Tipi Confessions is a live theatre event, with its co-creators and hosts reflecting on sexual desire and sex positivity through an Indigenous lens. Alongside sexy storytelling and performances, the night is punctuated by the anonymous audience confessions.

Some confessions are all about the laughs. Others, about being vulnerable.

"I confess, I have often had sex more for others' pleasure than my own. This bothers me," read co-founder Tracy Bear at a 2015 event in Edmonton, eliciting a sympathetic "aww" from the crowd.

TallBear, who is an Indigenous scholar of science, technology and sex at the University of Alberta, created Tipi Confessions in 2015, with Bear and Kirsten Lindquist, as a play on the Texas show Bedpost Confessions.

"I think that it provides people an opportunity to sit there in an audience, of sometimes a few hundred people, and realize that we all have these awkward, difficult, hurtful, challenging and joyful moments that we can bring into a conversation about sexuality," TallBear told Unreserved's Rosanna Deerchild.

And they're not the only ones exploring this. Indigenous creators across several artistic disciplines are rediscovering and reclaiming their sexuality through their work — sometimes for fun, other times as a direct response to the effects of colonialism. 

That work could take the form of Kanina Terry's Hide Babes Calendar, featuring pinup photos of Indigenous men and women in sexy outfits made of moose or deer hide — a style she dubs "bushoir."

"Our bodies are sacred. And I think having a beautiful, soft, sacred hide next to them is … for me, it's just such an amazing feeling," said Terry, who is Anishinaabe-kwe from Lac Seul First Nation in Ontario.

Or Edmonton artist Tashina Makokis, who makes earrings resembling vulvas out of moosehide strips, Swarovski crystals — and thematically appropriate beaver hair.

It's a more diverse landscape compared to when author and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm first started looking for Indigenous erotica more than 20 years ago.

At the time, she was surprised to find almost none. When she asked writers she knew about the topic, most realized it wasn't even on their radar.