If the gothic genre is about something from another world, then rez gothic is about settlers: Mallory Whiteduck, ‘Rez Gothic: Monstrous Aunties, Double Selves, and the Detritus of Settler Colonialism’, Native American and Indigenous Studies, 13, 2, 2026, pp. 38-61 | settler colonial studies blog

If the gothic genre is about something from another world, then rez gothic is about settlers: Mallory Whiteduck, ‘Rez Gothic: Monstrous Aunties, Double Selves, and the Detritus of Settler Colonialism’, Native American and Indigenous Studies, 13, 2, 2026, pp. 38-61

21Oct26

Abstract: Rez gothic aesthetics sit at the intersection of rez aesthetics and the gothic and speak to Native American and Indigenous experiences of the world. Their location in everyday Native life produces an ambivalence about binaries like good/bad, beauty/ugly, and comfort/fright that prevent simple associations between the rez and tragedy and Native American and Indigenous peoples themselves from being understood as flattened stereotypes or victims. The socioeconomic conditions of the reservation are sometimes interpreted by onlookers as terrifying. Rez gothic aesthetics show how Native people interpret and transform those so-called horrors to show that the true horror is not ofNative life, but of the centuries of settler colonial strategies weaponized to eliminate it. I study the rez gothic aesthetics in Trickster, a 2020 fantasy drama television series that was embroiled in an ethnic fraud controversy. I suggest that we view Tricksteras a text with multiple authors and create space to celebrate the work of the Native American and Indigenous writers, producers, actors, designers, choreographers, and musicians who worked together to create art worthy of critical attention.

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