Indigenous erotica

This week on Unreserved, we're bringing Indigenous sexy back! Conversations with Indigenous people who are decolonizing sex and reclaiming their intimate selves.

This is the explicit podcast version filled with sensuous poems written and read by Indigenous poets. If this is not your thing, you can listen to a milder version at CBC Listen.

Kim TallBear is an Indigenous Studies scholar of science, technology and sex at the University of Alberta. She created Tipi Confessions in 2015. It's an all-Indigenous night of sexy storytelling and performance, featuring audience confessions read aloud. She says when we talk about sex and Indigenous people, it shouldn't just be about trauma. Her events are a way to share joy and power.

Tashina Makokis is a Nehiyaw Iskwe artist in Edmonton. She was making poinsettia flowers from moose hide one day when she noticed they bore a strong resemblance to a certain intimate body part. Now she's turned that happy accident into a successful line of moosehide vulva jewelry.

A few years ago, Anishinabe Kwe Kanina Terry was reeling from ending a toxic relationship. As a way to get her 'glow-up', she posed for some racy 'bushoir' photos. That inspired her to create the Indigenous Hide Babes calendar full of sun-kissed skin draped in moose and deer hide. It’s a provocative project that’s reminding Indigenous people of their beauty and helping them connect with and reclaim their bodies.

Twenty years ago when author and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm went looking for Indigenous Erotica she was surprised to find little to none. So she decided to create space and permission for writers to explore their love and lust on the page. Without Reservation: Indigenous Erotica was the first collection of its kind. Two decades later, Akiwenzie-Damm says writers and artists feel safer and more comfortable accept and expressing their sexuality and sensuality, as part of being human.

Plus erotic poems by Randy Lundy, Janet Rogers, Gregory Scofield, and Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm.