The University of Arizona Press
April 16, 2026
The University of Arizona podcast features an interview with Gabriel S. Estrada author of Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions. Estrada is a professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl texts. A Caxcan/Xicanx genderqueer author, ze published over twenty works on Indigenous LGBTQI+/Two-Spirit film and literature.
When asked about what drew Estrada to Indigenous cinema as a scholarly subject, Estrada replied that ze received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Arizona and “Media studies was part of comp lit. Then I found my first job in American Indian studies . . . and I identify both with Indigeneity and being Xhicanx (I’m using the gender queer form of that with double x at beginning and at the end). So I was interested in Indigenous and Xhicanx cinema and film throughout my education. . . . Then I got a new job teaching religious studies, and I noticed that with teaching graduate classes, some students who were neurodivergent said: ‘we can’t just read and write essays, we need to look at other visual things, we need to write poetry.’ And I thought this is great because film allows us to look at the world in so many different ways that go beyond just looking at a text.”
Listen to the full podcast here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
About the book:
The seven Indigenous directions—east, south, west, north, down, up, and center—provide a map of understanding gender in media history.
In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book’s seven chapters—each one of the directions—look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak. Estrada discusses how the cinema brings into focus the ways that many Indigenous genders do not conform with the male/female binary, genders and sexualities that may or may not overlap with contemporary constructions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and two-spirit (LGBTQI2+) identities.
