According to Ana-Maurine Lara’s “Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty,” people are disciplined into gendered, racialized, and sexualized norms. This discipline affects the body-land differently based on racial imaginaries. The concept of body-land is not just the physical mass of one’s body, but rather a being that is co-constituted by nature. Recognizing this concept can help us better understand the complex relationships between our bodies, nature, and society.
I find it especially relevant in “Body-Land” that for Queer : Indigenous peoples across the Americas, their survival is constantly threatened by various destructive forces that destroy body-lands. These forces include/are called as colonization, globalization, neoliberalism, nation-states, militarization, space programs, etc. The chapter also discusses the concept of sovereignty in three modes: as a mode of ecological interdependence, as a mode of anti-imperialist resistance, and as the rights of the poor against the impositions of the wealthy elites.
I like a quote in page 80 where Lara quotes Naina-Lula, “Who controls the seeds controls the people because we ourselves are seeds.” In the context of the chapter, the quote highlights the importance of sovereignty over one’s own body-land. Just as controlling the seeds allows one to control the people, having sovereignty over one’s body-land allows one to have control over their own being and relationship with nature. It is also a way to resist the forces, as mentioned before, that seek to destroy them.