0:13

my friend i’m good

0:23

[Music]

0:34

don’t even start that conversation that’ll just go in a whole totally different direction

0:40

we don’t want to be talking about the activities the activities of the two spirits

0:45

because we’re all a mission all day too that’s right yeah we just go from different regions

0:51

when i first came down i was surrounded by like 10 mohawk women so when i saw my first niche person i

0:57

was like i’m not alone i know that’s usually the case it’s usually the case

1:03

you guys are we ready oh yeah sure okay maybe you’ve already started i don’t

1:09

know okay hello everyone uh hello all our

1:15

friends on zoom joining us tonight and hello everyone who’s made the trek through the uh almost insufferable heat and humidity

1:23

to come to the cool fisher lounges in the art gallery of hamilton

1:29

just to let you know tonight’s conversation will venture into some

1:38

intense uh topics it might be triggering for you if anyone online needs assistance please let us know in

1:44

the chat and we’ll do uh everything that we can to get you connected with someone who can help you and the same goes for

1:50

people who are with us here physically um just i’m i’m here i’ll just be in the back you see denise on the camera we

1:58

have select agh staff infiltrating the audience here including

2:03

shauna jordan and toby um so yeah you can’t escape agh staff people we we’re

2:10

yeah um uh it’s it gives me such great pleasure

2:15

to do this event i’m so happy that uh speakers of truth has become now a regular feature of the gallery’s public

2:22

program we have been doing these every second month

2:28

since september and they just keep getting better and better

2:34

before i welcome our panel let me just take a moment to acknowledge that we are here uh those of us uh who are here in

2:41

this building are on the traditional territories of the erie the neutral the huron wendat um the the haudenosaunee

2:48

and the honest novick the it is land that is uh governed by

2:54

agreements such as the dish with one spoon wampum that was made between the haldon ashoni and the anishinaabeg

3:00

nations uh it is also governed by agreements such as the seven times 1792

3:06

between the lakes uh purchased between the crown and the mississauga of the credit first nation

3:12

um land acknowledgement is now a regular part of how the gallery

3:17

delivers a public program it is just the very very very easy tip of the iceberg of

3:25

reconciliation work and for an institution like this that is

3:30

based on uh really colonial principles colonialism infiltrates our permanent

3:36

collection it shapes the walls here and it even though we passionately believe that

3:43

this is still a space that has a capacity to bring a conversation here

3:51

where our indigenous partners can feel safe can have a

3:57

conversation and speak truth that it’s a that it’s a reverent space that we can listen to that truth and absorb it and

4:03

continue our learning um that’s the mission of this of this gallery and that’s that’s uh it affects us every day

4:12

there’s so much more that we need to do but uh a land acknowledgement as is at least a way for us to remind ourselves

4:19

of the work that we have ahead to uh to educate ourselves about all of the issues that are hot uh

4:26

uh for this nation and around the world murdered and missing indigenous women’s

4:31

girls trans and two-spirited um the the the

4:36

bloody history of residential schools its victims and survivors uh and a raft

4:43

of unsettled land claims that are still active that is our

4:48

obligation as allies to to learn them to listen to

4:55

all the teachings that that uh that befall us and uh to act with

5:00

integrity so um there’s your land acknowledgment um

5:06

the uh i’m thrilled to have uh natasha uh

5:12

sorry the walker gishi make one change my name i know [Music] [Laughter]

5:19

um tristan and laura cucci uh here tonight

5:25

um they are this is our pride edition this is our uh national indigenous history month

5:32

edition um so it’s a big beautiful honor to have the three of you here and thank

5:37

you for joining us for speakers of truth [Applause]

5:48

natasha disney natasha really is not my real name

5:53

nawaka gishi miguan is my name i come from the chippewa kettle and stony point first nation i am anishinabe o jokwe a

6:00

member of the anishinaabe community uh in southwestern ontario i am a first

6:06

generation residential school survivor my mother is the survivor i am a federal indian day school survivor

6:13

i am auntie uncle of 118 nieces and nephews with two more on the way and

6:21

i’m very pleased and very honored to be here to maguette’s tour and everybody for being here

6:27

boy i am nervous to follow that up uh my name is tristan mclaren i’m an anish nave from up north by fort william way

6:34

uh i’m bear clan and semi recently new to hamilton i’ve been here for about five

6:40

years now and i’m excited to be here

6:45

ani uh

6:59

my name is laura and uh i’ve lived in hamilton since i was 12. um my dad’s side of the family

7:05

is from nipissing first nation and i’m redtail hot clan and yeah i’m

7:12

super excited for our conversation today we really haven’t any set plan where our

7:18

conversations will lead us but in a previous meeting that my relatives and i have had we are

7:25

determined that there’s so much to cover in terms of being two-speared in terms

7:30

of being an indigenous queer and that we were going to just let our conversations

7:36

flow where they have to go because each of us represent a different generation each of us represent a different path a

7:43

different road and each of us represent a difference a different part of being two-spirited

7:50

along this big spectrum of gender gender identity that’s known from

7:56

the indigenous communities but we also we also had agreed that it’s important that in order for us to have our

8:03

conversations that people needed to have a little bit of history about who we are and what two spirit means first two

8:10

spirit is a coin term an umbrella term that represents all the many various

8:16

phrases or terms in indigenous languages that that represent indigenous queer

8:22

people and that each of us would probably have a different term that helps

8:27

identify who we are as indigenous queer within our communities

8:32

and that indigenous queer two-spirit people have always been a part of the tradition of indigenous

8:39

communities and that indigenous queer people had very special roles and

8:45

responsibilities within our communities and that there had been heavy influence

8:51

that had happened throughout colonization throughout assimilation and throughout acts of genocide that had

8:58

threatened who we are in our existence as two-spirit people

9:03

i think probably one of the easiest things to remind ourselves is that when settlers when foreigners

9:10

when explorers first came over here to our territories they only brought two

9:15

genders with them and that was male and female and in our communities many of our

9:21

communities had anywhere from 15 to 17 different genders within our communities

9:27

that were recognized in our communities and that those who identified as two-spirit had very specific roles

9:34

special roles and we’re honored and respected within our communities so each

9:39

of us represent on some on along our journeys we’ve had

9:44

different experiences and i think that collectively each of us have there has

9:50

been some difficulty not with just mainstream community but also within our

9:55

own indigenous communities because we must remember that through the process of genocide through the process

10:02

of colonization that many indigenous people were heavily influenced from

10:07

foreign beliefs values standards and constructs

10:13

indigenous communities we had very many different constructs we had our own

10:19

systems of governance we had that included everybody in the in community

10:24

not just those who were elected in fact we didn’t have that electoral process

10:29

that we’re seeing happen in municipalities and in provinces and across canada we didn’t have those kind

10:37

of systems those systems that the heads of the provinces and that the federal

10:43

government have were exclusively giving one person such power whereas within our

10:50

governance system everybody carried power everybody had a voice in our community and quite often the two-spirit

10:57

people held some of those very important roles and had some of those very important responsibilities in our

11:03

communities that uh and that that’s not the only kind of construct that was different

11:09

what was dramatically different from foreigners and settlers and explorers was our constructive family

11:16

our constructive family was so different that your cousins

11:21

those are our siblings and with those cousins being our siblings they carried the same roles and responsibilities that

11:29

the um that our biologically born siblings would have your aunties and uncles are our moms and

11:36

dads so we had many moms and many dads and they carried all those same responsibilities that our biological

11:42

parents carried and so our con our constructs and our legal principles and governance uh

11:49

justice system as well as family constructs it only makes sense then that of course our

11:56

constructed gender and gender identity was very different and how we respond to gender and gender identity was very

12:03

different as well and i can keep going on and on and on but i do want to afford

12:09

an opportunity to so that’s just some of the history of who we are as in two-spirited people our uh to kind of

12:17

lay a floor plan a blueprint of how we’re going to move forward you have to have an open mind and an open heart to

12:23

understand that these constructs for us indigenous people were radically different than than mainstream are for

12:30

settlers here i guess they’re looking at me like i

12:35

have to keep on talking weird with the microphone thing

12:42

um yeah and like i i feel like i want to just like add to what you’re saying

12:47

about our roles and responsibilities within our communities and i think it’s really important that

12:54

we talk about what some of those roles and responsibilities could have looked like and how they can translate to now

13:00

and so one of the ways that i’ve actually been able to embody

13:06

a two-spirit role in responsibility is by learning indigenous language and so learning my

13:13

language of my community anishinaabemowin but also becoming multilingual across multiple

13:20

indigenous languages so i’m also learning kanye gahaga

13:26

so which makes sense on so many levels because i’ve lived in this region my

13:31

whole life basically raised by six nations aunties and uncles

13:37

so you know it makes sense that i that i learn the language that’s here too and so um

13:44

as a two-spirit person it would have been a responsibility of mine as a diplomat

13:49

to go to different communities and negotiate and be a messenger those kinds of things were important and

13:56

that would have been my role so for me picking up these languages is fulfilling a role as a two-spirit person and so

14:04

yeah that’s just like one thing that i’m doing yeah um i i can kind of when i think about

14:11

when i knew two spirit was a term that uh fit kind of comfortably on me uh was

14:16

upon hearing the these traditional roles in the way that fit because i always kind of liked the term two-spirit at

14:22

least as i came to the south um because at the time it was oh queer indian it’s like okay yeah i guess that makes sense

14:28

um but it wasn’t until i heard these descriptions as kind of these healers and these emotional caretakers and this

14:34

middle ground that would bring people together and that’s kind of something i’ve been doing through my whole life i’ve worn a

14:39

lot of hats i originally studied to be a nurse and i did that for a while then i became a social worker uh and now i’m

14:46

kind of studying to combine those things and work traditional medicines into those things and i’ve always been drawn

14:51

to this idea of of emotional healing and placing kind of the the human at the beginning of healing as opposed to

14:59

a biomedical model of health as an absence of disease and so as these

15:04

things kind of came together for me that’s when everything kind of clicked and the term two-spirit suddenly became

15:10

a much more fitting garment and i felt very comfortable with it even is as it’s an umbrella term it

15:16

gives me that kind of space uh to be a little bit gender fluid and to be a little bit connected to other

15:22

in-digit queers as they see it fitting themselves which was wonderful and comforting

15:28

and it and and i love hearing the stories of how the things that we’re doing in 2022

15:35

are married well with our traditional roles and responsibilities so as the

15:41

indigenous justice coordinator at the hamilton community legal clinic i’m advocating and being the voice for

15:48

many indigenous people who do not who have not found their voice or who do not

15:53

have not been afforded an ability to use their voice are are afraid because of

15:59

systems of oppression racism and discrimination to to use their voice so a lot of what i do professionally also

16:07

provides me the opportunity to live out and fulfill those roles and responsibilities that we have as

16:14

two-spirit people so very much like my relatives here the things that we do on a day-to-day

16:21

basis are part of the roles and responsibilities we are part of our roles and responsibilities are that we

16:27

would bring people together we bring families together communities together that we are messengers that we would

16:34

historically in our communities run from community to community and warn

16:40

individuals of perhaps any danger that was coming to the community and

16:45

historically we need one we know that one of the best known well-known two-spirit people by an indigenous

16:52

person by the name of wewa who comes from the zuni tribe down in one of our southern

16:58

indigenous communities that was very much their responsibility that laura has

17:03

also fulfilling is languages weewa was well known for knowing many languages not just the

17:10

languages of the foreigners which she picked up very quickly but also the

17:15

various indigenous languages so she could communicate with this with the settlers with the explorers with the

17:21

newcomers to the territory but also uh having known all the

17:27

indigenous languages of the many different indigenous communities we was very famous

17:32

running and telling of danger and it was weewa who started running from community to community

17:39

and actually a warning of danger that was coming towards the two-spirit people but also indigenous women because at the

17:46

same time that settlers and foreigners were attacking the existence of two spirit people

17:52

they were also attacking the presence and the respected

17:57

spaces and places that indigenous women held within our communities so we was

18:03

fulfilling those responsibilities and it’s so beautiful to hear that my relatives here are doing the same thing

18:10

and so i grew up in my reserve on keto and stony point and family member to doodle george of the upper wash crisis

18:17

and over my time period i’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff that has happened i grew

18:23

up fighting for indigenous sovereignty for indigenous rights

18:28

creating space for indigenous people within our own territories but then also

18:34

enforcing and reclaiming our space within indigenous people trying to reclaim their space for two spirit

18:40

people and that’s a really heavy chore to do that we’re not just fighting the

18:46

colonization and and all the forced racism and discrimination like the british north american act and the

18:52

indian act on indigenous people but we’re also so we’re not only fighting foreign systems of governance and

18:59

foreign standards and values but we’re also continually fighting the heavy influence that uh foreigners have had on

19:06

our own people and fighting this crazy heavy shroud of homophobia within our

19:12

community and many of those systems of homophobia come from things like canadian indian

19:18

residential schools where they brought in foreign christian and organized

19:24

religious values that spoke heavily against our existence as two-spirit people so it

19:31

threatened us so each of us in our own way in our own time have had to do this

19:36

constant fighting to reclaim our space

19:44

yeah like for me uh

19:49

there’s not a straight or monogamous bone in my body [Laughter] um

19:56

and you know i’ve tried i gave it a good try i really did but i yeah i i really had to work hard

20:03

to to get to a place where i’m like okay this is who i am and it’s all right and in fact

20:09

um i am supposed to be celebrated for who i am and that my community

20:15

um that there’s a place for me in my community for who i am and you know my

20:22

um my very first serious boyfriend back when i was in high school i basically told him look

20:30

you know this is who i am uh if you’re not cool with it you don’t have to do this with me and so

20:38

that was when i was 15 i already knew um and i was boundaried about that and i

20:45

tried very hard throughout my life to you know honor that about myself and you know

20:51

face it was hard it was really hard because i wasn’t always successful i kind of always just kind of fell in line

20:56

with like you know what the script of you know being a

21:01

woman is supposed to be about you get married to a man and you have kids and it was very hard for me to like imagine

21:08

a life outside of that and so it took me a long time to figure out

21:13

that it’s okay i can actually i actually can have my kid and be who i am and it wasn’t until

21:20

i was in my late 30s that i actually came out fully to my family and my community

21:26

and um you know it was hard growing up in the 90s we didn’t have language

21:32

like the most language that we had at that time the fact that that bisexual was around

21:39

that was a word so that was the word that i used um because it really wasn’t anything else two spirit i hadn’t heard

21:46

of it yet um it was probably just it was fresh at that time i think two spirit just came

21:51

out in the early 90s so it was yeah around the same time so i it hadn’t

21:57

gotten to me yet it’s not like i got the two-spirit memo one day and just went oh that’s what it is

22:03

um like i actually didn’t hear about it until like i don’t even know when i can’t tell you

22:08

when i actually heard the term two spirit for the first time was i really don’t know but when i did

22:15

hear it i was like oh okay cool then we’re gonna go with that

22:20

so that just felt right to me but yeah um so it took me a long time to finally get

22:26

to a place where i could um live openly um prior to that

22:31

um i was only open to my select friends you know the ones that were on a need to

22:37

know basis my closest buddies and um and my sister and my mom knew but i couldn’t

22:44

i couldn’t bring myself to tell anybody else um but yeah then once i did come out i was

22:51

really uh yeah i get really emotional because i

22:56

i i really was accepted for who i was and i’m lucky because i know that that’s not

23:02

how it is for everyone and i feel really lucky and blessed that i have such a good family and a good surrounding

23:08

of friends that were that loved me and i was it was relieved

23:13

it was a relieved feeling and um

23:19

i only wish i could share all of that and give it away

23:24

so that i wasn’t the only one because it’s just

23:30

that’s the way it should be and i don’t know what i did to deserve that but

23:35

um just existing is is okay and

23:41

and i feel really happy that my son knows that that’s also okay you know

23:47

and um i think

23:54

i think too with um having a later start in official open queer dating

24:01

that was also a trip like the dating pool when you’re older is already bad enough

24:08

but when uh yeah like hey do you pnp yeah

24:16

exactly so so yeah um

24:21

it just uh it just has been it’s been quite a trip and i’ve enjoyed

24:27

amazing relationships with um gender diverse people and

24:33

um i’m just glad i’m lucky that i managed to figure it out and

24:40

be able to live openly and uh and be an example for my kid more than anything and it’s so beautiful

24:47

how far we’ve come but it we still have so much more work to do

24:54

but how far that we’ve come that in your time you were able to talk to your

25:00

partner at that time about being two-spirit but in my time coming from a indigenous anishinaabe

25:07

community that was heavily influenced with religion where we had four or five

25:13

churches in a community of 500 people and then the occasional roll-up summer

25:19

camp churches that every indigenous community had the evangelist come in with their tents and they come and plop

25:25

down and want 10 of your monthly earnings and then they take off for the winter and come back the next year kind

25:32

of camp meetings but in my community when i grow up in high school absolutely not you are not queer there are no queer

25:39

in my community and so you couldn’t talk to anybody safely about that so i when i

25:45

was in high school i had all the pretty girlfriends at high school and people talked why wasn’t lyndon

25:53

sexually active with the pretty girls that he was dating with and it’s because i was trying

25:58

desperately to hide who i was and all of that influence came from the church

26:05

because my mom went to residential school she had learned about the church

26:10

in residential school and she had learned that um she had to send her kids to church and

26:18

so we had to go to church until we were 16 years of age traveling an hour and 15

26:23

minutes from our reserve to a church over in the united states and sit there go we went to church every

26:30

friday night every sunday morning and every sunday night and you would constantly hear those

26:37

messages so i remember the first time when you talk about two spirit and hearing that term i

26:43

remember the first time i heard that term and it was after being in church one

26:48

afternoon i was the fundamental born-again christian that would walk down the

26:54

street and say and stop you do you have jesus in your life that’s i was that person at one point

27:01

and in my church sitting there one afternoon in the back with my sister who’s a devout christian probably the

27:09

best christian that i know because love is love for her and uh but i remember that day when i

27:15

was 15 years old sitting at the back of the church and the preacher up there started talking about how homosexuals

27:22

were going to burn in hell and that they were going to feel this everlasting pain

27:28

in this place called shale hades and i looked at my sister and i saw her she was uncomfortable

27:34

in her space and [Music] then i thought to myself what the hell

27:40

am i doing in here what am i doing in this church and so i got up left and i went out to my

27:46

sister’s car and sat there so she came out and we drove all the way back an hour and 15 20 minutes hour and a half

27:52

back to the res and we had no conversation then

27:57

sunday afternoons were the time where because you have 10 siblings everybody’s fighting for mom and dad’s attention

28:04

nobody wanted to hang out with dad in the garage sunday afternoon but i did so that was my time with my dad alone to go

28:10

sit out in the garage and this day i’m only my dad always said to me got a big mouth and on this day i was

28:17

really quiet and i wasn’t talking about a lot and he said to me what’s wrong with you chunk that’s my nickname back home

28:23

nobody uses real names back home so my nickname back home is chunk what’s wrong with you chunk you’re not

28:29

very talkative today and i said ah you know just kind of scared he said something’s up so i told him i said that

28:34

the pastor in the church was talking about how homosexuals are gonna go burn in hell and they’re gonna feel this

28:41

pain and my dad real quietly while he’s got the hood of the truck up and he’s working on a motor of the car

28:48

he had these crazy big silver framed glasses and with the light blue tint and

28:54

i remember him he’s bent over doing work on his motor and he looked up at me and he said

29:00

that’s not what we believe is anishinaabe people he said we have two spirit people and

29:06

that’s the first time that i had ever heard of two spirit people but i didn’t want to question my dad because i was

29:12

still closeted and i i remember very specifically when i

29:17

heard that term and how much it meant something to me even though i didn’t know quite what it was but that my dad

29:24

was starting to teach me about our constructed gender gender identity

29:29

really meant something to me so i just left it at that because i didn’t want them to know at

29:34

that point that i was identifying as two-spirit

29:40

i grew up in thunder bay uh and thunder bay has a

29:45

active uh has a very active queer community but it’s uh i maintain that it’s a city

29:51

that’s about just 10 years stuck in the past and so my experience with being queer was very wrapped up in shame it

29:58

was this very shameful thing um where you know relatives would come up to me and they’d give me the like are you gay like you

30:05

know it’s okay we still love you which on its own feels terrible right because your cousins aren’t getting that talk no

30:12

if they’re asking it’s because they think you are right and so they’re always saying you know it’s okay if you

30:17

are we’ll still love you and there’s that implicit message that there’s something to get over in the first place

30:24

and so they turn from you know it’s okay if you’re gay to these homophobic jokes and you know as soon as

30:30

my hair got long it’s like there’s tristan looking like a and it’s like nope um which was so

30:37

stressful um and so uh with my friends i was i was very openly queer

30:44

but when i got home or when i was around family i remember having to to clamp it down despite these messages that would

30:49

be uh it would be okay it would be accepted because it it wasn’t uh you know these

30:56

whenever a queer person was mentioned it was stories of tragedy or failure or the

31:01

ways that coming out can hurt you uh and make your life hard and there wasn’t there wasn’t these queer success stories

31:08

or queer people who were doing well and i remember the first time that i i met a

31:13

queer couple who was who were successful who had kind of been doing well with their lives uh was

31:19

when i was about 15 or 16 i went to my local board game store with all the nerds uh and there was a very

31:25

nice lesbian couple that were they were very successful they were very professional and they’re very wonderful and welcoming

31:32

and that was the space that i first felt very comfortable being queer but i remember

31:37

talking about them at some point and hearing i don’t even remember it something like oh yeah those dikes and

31:43

it just bolted it into my head that like all right you cannot leave this space with that as

31:49

soon as you exit you got to go back to being straight um and that kind of informed my relationships as uh you know the queer

31:56

relations i had became very very shameful and they became things where i would you know i always had a girlfriend

32:02

and then i was always sleeping with men on the side and i wouldn’t talk about it i’d bring it up i wouldn’t bring it up

32:09

and that brought kind of a weird dimension to it where when you have to be secretive

32:15

you couldn’t really do it like guys in my high school because people would know them and i couldn’t do it with people on

32:20

the reserve because they all knew my family so i ended up running kind of from my reserve and kind of distancing

32:27

myself from that and that left uh much much older men um so when i was you know

32:32

15 i was seeing guys in like their 40s and 50s because that’s who was available

32:38

right those are men that were also trying to keep what they were secret uh which was looking back predatory right

32:44

like it was one of these things where i was a very young very queer young man kind of trying to figure out who i was

32:49

and struggling with gender identity and struggling with the shame of that and these older men you know some of them

32:55

perhaps well-meaning and and kind of shameful in their own right were struggling with it but some were clearly

33:01

kind of taking advantage of a person who did not know uh what was going on and so it really kind of informed my early

33:08

relationship with men so that now i still have a hard time uh trusting or feeling comfortable

33:14

around a man that’s interested in me right away that gets my guard up and i instantly think well what’s wrong with

33:19

you why why are you looking at me what kind of brought you here uh and then that

33:25

immediately kind of brings me back to that that attitude of you know 11 years ago being a young queer kid

33:32

um in rural thunder bay uh where that just that just wasn’t okay uh even as much as

33:39

people would explicitly say it was you could just see in their eyes the hope that like you would say no and that’s

33:44

not me i’m not gay um and it kind of carried with me uh and so now that i’ve kind of i’m coming out

33:51

and i’m starting to experience this i remember hearing um you know some members of my family would sometimes say

33:57

things like oh you know like we always kind of knew or like you know why why did you feel that you couldn’t come out

34:03

to us and i just felt this shock uh that they were taking this experience that was so

34:09

hard for me and and uh it took a lot for me to come out to them and they were offended that i hadn’t come out sooner

34:16

they were hurt that i hadn’t decided to to trust them with this sooner uh and

34:21

instantly i have this this montage of just homophobic jokes and remarks and

34:26

and things they had said about other queer community members um and i just had to drop it i just had to say like no

34:32

i don’t know i’m just uncomfortable i guess and even now kind of talking about this i can feel myself getting uh nervous and

34:40

getting sweaty and getting uh panicky uh because it’s strange and hard to kind of come out of

34:46

that sense of shame uh like i’ve done something wrong just in talking about it yeah and that that

34:53

still sticks with me and it’s one of the things that i’m still trying to get over and it is tough i know that we we were

34:59

talking about back in our communities and with indigenous people where we’re still constantly fighting the

35:04

colonialism and the influence of colonialism and organized religion and

35:10

and still the heavy shroud of homophobia that happens within our communities whether on or off reserve whether within

35:16

our first nations communities or not and i know that just a couple years ago laura and i

35:22

had been confronted with that form of homophobia when we went to the annual

35:29

powwow here in hamilton so we had been asked laura and i to

35:34

bring in and first together two spirit people in the city of hamilton constructed an eagle

35:40

staff to represent who we were as a nation as as two spirit people and to help people understand that our lived

35:47

experiences are are even different from other indigenous people based on gender gender identity and and the heavy

35:54

influence of christianity within our communities and so together we constructed this eagle staff to

36:00

represent who we are as in two-spirit people and feeling so proud

36:06

and happy taking it out on its first run in our community hamilton has been my

36:11

home community now for 10 years i’ve lived here but i’ve been working in this area for

36:18

many many years almost 30 years working in this area and so on this day laura and i were

36:24

going to the powwow to dance in this two-spirit eagle staff and bam

36:30

there was the ugly ugly face of homophobia standing right in front of us and denying our

36:36

existence once again from our own people from somebody from our own community

36:42

telling us that this ego staff was not was not welcome

36:48

and by telling us that the ego staff is not welcome in that it had to go to the back of the blind even though

36:53

traditionally all ego staffs go first they were denying this individual was

36:59

denying once again our existence and that’s really hard

37:09

when it comes from your own community and at the same time the same year

37:15

i was dealing with that same from my own res community so having my new community here in hamilton do the same

37:22

thing to me that my community was doing that was really a hard struggle

37:27

and when we weren’t going to back down that’s when they tried a different

37:33

tactic tactic on us and they use language shaming on us so the arena director at the powwow then

37:40

told us that if they were not even they were not even going to talk to us any longer if we didn’t speak with to

37:46

them in the language and at that point in time neither laura and i were fluent in the language so we were

37:53

stuck finally somebody walking by micah burning

37:58

from heard what was going on and jumped in in front of the director and she said

38:04

there’s going to be no name shaming here that’s going to happen

38:09

and so then the conversation took place between micah bernin and this arena director

38:15

luckily at the same time laura’s father who’s a language keeper was walking by

38:20

and was curious about what was going on and he came over and he spoke to the director in the language and

38:27

addressed the director and then all of a sudden all that homo homophobia was displaced but

38:34

it’s difficult when you’re having to fight the effects and the impacts of

38:40

colonialism on gender gender identity and you’re fighting that ugly system and

38:46

then when you have to continue to fight it with your own people it’s just it’s really hard doing that it feels like

38:53

double duty all the time and fighting for that kind of stuff and when we gathered and we were talking

39:00

about our stories about coming up i told them that back home the homophobia was really bad in my

39:06

community and but the same homophobes in my community

39:11

that were threatening to beat me up or beat up the other

39:16

identified two-spirit people in a community were all the same men who were knocking

39:22

on our doors at midnight and say hey can i have some can i let’s have some

39:28

sex seriously two of my cousins and i have many cousins who are two spirit

39:33

but these two relatives of mine specifically one night around the fire the three of us sat there talking about

39:40

all the homophobes in the community and we had identified that all of the

39:45

homophobes all of the guys in our community who were threatening to be violent against us were also the

39:53

same individuals in the community who were sleeping with one of us

39:58

or with some other male in the community and that

40:03

as we got older we realized how sad that really was that they never reached the

40:08

point in their life that they could feel comfortable or safe enough to be who

40:13

they are like laura i had a an awesome family

40:19

very supportive family but i didn’t really know that until i came out

40:25

all that hiding in the closet kind of stuff happened because

40:31

it was a it’s not safe being queer and it wasn’t safe being indigenous and

40:38

you could hide being queer but you couldn’t hide be an indigenous

40:44

and so there was this constant threat of violence from being indigenous and from

40:49

being queer that really dictated to me and i know many of my relatives too the

40:56

process of coming out so for me i was kind of pushed out of

41:01

the closet but there’s the whole other stuff about the traditional roles and

41:06

responsibilities of two spirit people too that was always in the back of my mind since my dad talked about

41:12

two-spirit people but the first step to understanding my roles and responsibilities was actually

41:19

coming out of the closet and finally one day i had a partner in i

41:24

was 15 years old and like tristan my when i was 15 years old

41:32

my first partner was 38 years old and it was because i felt safe that he

41:38

was not going to tell anybody in my community he lived in a nearby urban center he was never going to come

41:44

down to the reserve and he had a car that he could pick me up and i didn’t have a car at 15.

41:51

i ditched him when i turned 16 and i got my license and got my own car then i could find

41:57

that i could find somebody my own age but the homophobia in the community was so

42:03

heavy that it wasn’t safe coming out in a community and by the time that i had

42:08

decided i got a new partner in the city of london which was an hour and 15 minutes away

42:14

and brought my partner down and i had determined i was going to come out to my parents first

42:20

so at my parents house i was we were my partner and i were down visiting my partner was helping my dad

42:27

and my brother-in-law do some stuff and i went over to visit my grandma and the phone rang and it was my dad saying you

42:33

need to come over here we need to talk and so i thought okay that’s weird they don’t usually bug me when i’m over

42:39

visiting my grandma so something had to be up so i went back over everybody was out the house i couldn’t find my partner

42:45

anywhere and my mom and dad were sitting in a living room and my dad was at one chair

42:51

my mom was at another chair and i saw on the coffee table in front of the couch i recognized there’s a

42:57

letter and i recognized the letter immediately and it was a love letter that my partner

43:04

had given to me and it was in my suitcase when we went down to visit my family my

43:09

partner and i we displaced my baby sister and my baby sister was pissed off

43:14

that she had to move out of her room so she went digging through my luggage found this letter and took it to my

43:20

parents and so that’s how my parents had found out that i was two spirit they were really cool and really

43:27

groovy with it and my mom and dad sat there and they tried to understand first

43:33

that they had so much going on in her head it made sense to my dad why i was bothered about the whole christian thing

43:39

the two-spirit homosexual thing that fell into place for him but what really bothered me was when my

43:46

father started to internalize it and ask questions like is this because i didn’t let you play hockey because my

43:53

parents had five boys i’m being i’m the youngest boy and i was the one who really wanted to play hockey but all the

43:59

other boys were in hockey so they were my dad was getting tired running around doing the hockey thing with the other

44:04

boys so they had decided to put me in piano lessons which i’m very grateful my parents put me in music for 13 years i

44:12

studied the piano and i can pick up any instrument like that now so i’m very gracious but i still wanted to play

44:17

hockey but what bothered me is they were taking so seriously and they were internalizing and they

44:23

felt like it was their problem somehow and my role back home has always been

44:29

when a traditional role of two-spirit people is the joker is the comedian and instantly watching my parents with

44:36

their big eyes with big tears and that really bothered me so i knew that i had to do

44:41

something comical i was uncomfortable about the whole conversation so rather sit down on the

44:47

couch i laid down on the couch and so when i knew i had to break this

44:52

saddened kind of air that was floating around in the living room i sat up and

44:57

said you don’t have to worry it has nothing to do with hockey it has nothing to do with playing with piano

45:05

and then i looked at them and i smiled and i said but you might want to rethink

45:10

the fruit loops and homo milk that you gave me every morning when i was growing up so that kind of dropped the whole

45:17

seriousness of the situation for them i think what was really weird though like like you had mentioned in laura had

45:24

mentioned as well in conversation over the years that when so i told my parents that was cool

45:31

all of my siblings said yeah we knew and i remember one of my older brothers

45:41

my one of my older brothers just absolutely hated that i was gay and so he was the first one to come to me and

45:47

say you’re no longer welcome in my home and for five years i did not talk to him

45:52

i would sit right beside him at the dinner table at different feasts that we would have and i would not

45:58

acknowledge him and then one day at the fifth year my father said ut need to get this

46:06

straightened out i don’t know who has to apologize to who but it’s not happening in my home again

46:12

so fix this up so my brother did eventually come to me and apologize and said to me that

46:24

he was so sorry that he missed five years of my life and i was building a relationship

46:30

that’s what led me to want to come out of the closet with my family as i could not stand

46:36

them not knowing who i am i could not stand that i was hiding this part of who i am and i could not stand

46:45

that i was not going to be able to as long as i was closeted i was not going to be able to be the two-spirit person

46:51

that i wanted to be because my influence back home even though there is and i was just sharing this with with my relatives

46:58

here earlier one of my biggest influences back home growing up being a closeted queer that i was

47:05

there was this gentleman in my community who was teased and picked on all the time

47:11

and no matter where he was in the world he was a very successful two-spirited

47:16

man worked for many big magazines traveling all over the world was very respected in the community for who he

47:23

was as a professional zero respect for an individual who was two spirit but no matter where he was in

47:30

the world he always came home for powwow and he always danced fancy saul which

47:36

had been traditionally in my community that dance was only for women to do but

47:43

he would get up in a powwow and he would dance that fancy shawl he started his spiritual journey now and

47:50

started when i was younger but he would never know the influence that he had for young closeted queers like me

47:57

so in my mind that’s also part of my role in responsibility in my communities

48:03

both here in hamilton and back home on my res is that i have to let young

48:08

closeted indigenous queer people see that we do exist

48:14

and that we are at the powwows and that we are contrary and we are men who dress

48:19

like women and women who dress like men because that’s going to mean something for them too

48:25

i um to steal from ali beardsley which is a non-binary

48:30

comedian that i absolutely love they said one of the worst parts about being in the closet is how isolating it is and

48:37

that’s something that really resonated with me and i think about those those wonderful queer people who kind of helped us come

48:45

out of the closet and i think about the regrets that i have it kind of not coming out sooner because when i did

48:50

come out it was a lot of people saying like you know we love you no matter what this is great this is who you are and

48:56

that’s fantastic and that’s fine my relationship with them is good uh i i recently went back

49:02

and kind of came out to my father which is one of the ones that was a little bit uh nerve-wracking but

49:08

i had a party to go to and i decided that i was going to go queer as hell so i might as well come out to him and it

49:14

went it went very well and and i remember um that similar thing of of not feeling

49:19

safe on community i would never step foot onto my reserve dress the way i am now and wearing makeup because i don’t

49:25

physically feel safe um and so i remember coming up to him and he said uh you know hey you want to go for a drive

49:31

that’s you know he likes to get in his truck and we go drive around the res and uh you know maybe we go shoot some pop

49:36

cans or we just look at the trees or whatever and i remember feeling so nervous as i i was wearing this exact

49:42

skirt and i said hey would it be okay if i dress like this uh and he went yeah i don’t care if you dress like you look

49:48

like a librarian uh and so i just smiled at that because uh i felt really

49:53

safe you know my dad’s a big guy you know six foot some couple hundred pounds is a big dude and that was the only time

49:59

that i’d feel safe being around my community dressed like this is with someone so obviously masculine um that

50:06

made me feel more comfortable and i think about those kind of uh you know being in the closet so isolating

50:11

and i think about the other indigenous queer people that were probably you know knew they were queer

50:19

and just didn’t know how to say it didn’t want to be exposed to that violence and how if i had come out a little bit sooner and dress the way i

50:25

did a little bit sooner maybe it would have been easier for them to kind of see that it was all right and that it didn’t

50:31

have to end in this queer tragedy and so that’s kind of been a big driving force uh for me now in making sure that i

50:37

really named myself loudly and say that i’m too spirit and

50:43

that came with a weird kind of pushback where people will be like oh but do you have to be so in our faces about it does

50:48

it have to be your whole personality that you’re gay um and my first response is usually like

50:54

off uh and uh and really it’s it’s kind of like well yeah because there are

51:01

little kids who are seeing you know that it’s not okay to be it’s scary to

51:06

be gay it’s something that you need to hide and i don’t want them to feel that way anymore so now as an adult i’ve been

51:12

really cognizant and try to be really aware and really deliberate in how i dress and how

51:18

i name myself as a queer person and i had a really positive experience coming down here at the south with i call them

51:24

my work aunties uh but i’ve got these wonderful women that i’ve worked with as a social worker that have really kind of

51:30

fostered me and taught me a lot of things and i remember just kind of dropping in a con casual conversation

51:36

with each of them you know i’d say like oh you know i’m too spirit or you know i use they them pronouns or something like

51:41

that and getting just uh you know it wasn’t even a big thing they just acknowledged it in a very healthy way

51:49

and it was it was wonderful uh and it’s something that’s kind of stuck with me is this very casual acceptance that

51:55

didn’t have to be a big deal and it just felt so good and it’s something that’s kind of really stuck

52:00

with me that’s how it was too when i first came out i had work aunties as well as you do

52:07

and it was the same thing i would be like well i’m like

52:13

two spirit and they’d be like so and then moving on like it was like

52:20

nothing and meanwhile i’m like oh god like

52:25

just let me like pick my heart up off the floor and try and swallow it down again like oh my gosh yeah yeah the work aunties

52:34

that support system was huge for me when i was first working yeah yeah for sure

52:40

um but yeah that as you’re i really it it breaks my heart that the

52:47

closet is still a place where young people feel like they have to stay and i stayed in it too

52:53

too long you know um my relationships with um with other women were held in

52:58

secret the only place that i had camaraderie was

53:04

when i was in my early 20s it was just the start of the internet kinda

53:11

like the internet was there but it wasn’t like social media the way it is now um there was like it started out as a as

53:19

an email list and then it grew to an online discussion

53:25

forum and it was in that forum that i kind of really came into my own

53:31

and like was like connecting with other by women who were

53:36

in straight relationships straight appearing relationships um and so

53:42

often i would be behind the keyboard literally like mentoring a lot of these women because

53:48

to me i would know who i was for like since i was a kid whereas a lot of these women were like

53:55

just kind of coming around um to who they were some of them were way

54:01

older than me like i was in my 20s but there were women in their 30s

54:06

40s even 50s who were just trying to navigate their identity and

54:12

their sexuality and they were married and didn’t know what to do to like talk to their husbands about it and do they

54:18

come out do they whatever like it was it was an intense time but it was an amazing time too because

54:27

we’d get together we had parties and some of these parties would be like

54:33

either we would like rent out a venue so that we get the whole venue to ourselves

54:38

and have crazy dance parties that were just amazing other times there were ski trips

54:44

there was no skiing um other times they were like we’d go to like a swingers bar and like

54:51

reserve one section for us and so those were some amazing times and though that system of women is what got

54:58

me through my 20s and i really missed it when everything kind of fell apart

55:04

at some point i think with the um just the cost of operating the whole

55:11

system and there was there was some other stuff that happened but eventually it disbanded but um but i’m

55:17

still in touch with quite a few of those women actually and and they’re kind of like

55:23

this sisterhood that i have that’s always been there and it’s lovely and i think back on those

55:28

times very fondly but um yeah they were the ones that got me through

55:34

but again it wasn’t something that i could talk about really like they were a group of friends that i just didn’t talk

55:40

about with other friends and they were a group of friends that i didn’t talk about at work and they were

55:45

a group of friends that none of my family knew about like um yeah so

55:51

um actually like when my when i got pregnant with my son these um women threw me a bridal a

55:58

bridal shower baby shower i cannot tell you some of the gifts i

56:04

got it was it was the best baby shower but uh yeah these these women saw me off in

56:11

a great way so but yeah like um once i actually came out um

56:18

it was just a relief to be able to have relationships in the open transparent

56:23

you know not hidden away not you know under this cloak of shame or secrecy or um

56:30

i mean even still i mean the complexities of having a same-sex relationship in public is is

56:37

like a whole other thing so there’s never really safety truly but um it was just nice to not have to hide

56:44

you know and i think that’s one of the more frustrating things for me that along my

56:50

journey is that realizing after we learn our way of life and our way of being that all of this

56:58

other hardship and that i’m talking about and that my relatives had experienced we should have never had to

57:05

have experienced that within our territories because we didn’t have all this garbage

57:12

in our community so i think that’s part of the struggle for me and the frustrating stuff for me comes from

57:19

having to constantly see our young people who are still you know even though it is a little bit easier for our

57:25

younger relatives it’s still very complicated process coming out because of the heavy influence and and the stuff

57:32

that we’re talking about the hardships of being two-spirit are indigenous queer these are the impacts of colonization on

57:39

indigenous communities this is our reality i remember one of my older brothers saying to me yeah we all knew

57:46

that you were gay when you were a kid when you were a kid you were this little guy who wanted to do all the little boy

57:52

stuff but you wanted to do all the little girl stuff too so you wanted to run around the neighborhood with your

57:58

pellet gun and shoot everybody with a pellet gun but you also wanted all the barbie dolls too

58:04

and so they knew at a very young age and at that very young age when our families would have seen these

58:13

roles that we were out that were already manifesting themselves the masculine and the feminine

58:19

manifesting through us that’s the time when our families and our communities would have gathered and

58:26

that’s when they would have started to teach us the masculine and the feminine all of those ceremonies all of those

58:33

things that we should have learned at that at that early age yeah exactly like

58:38

i feel lucky that i got to like i i was very fasted when i got my first period

58:44

and my aunties took care of me in that traditional way and i’m the first woman

58:50

in several generations to have that at the same time though there were times

58:55

where like according to our teachings that we have to sit back at times when we’re on our moon cycle

59:01

and we stay away from the medicines and stay away from ceremonies there were times where i just didn’t feel that that was right for me

59:08

and i still don’t know what to do about those things you know there were times where i was like i

59:14

you know a pow wow too like i wasn’t supposed to dance when i’m on my moon and i was like but i but i need to

59:21

like there’s a part of me that needs this healing there’s a part of me that needs to access this medicine

59:27

and i’m not less i’m not

59:38

we’re powerful and we’re not going to cancel out those medicines yeah we’re not going to do

59:44

damage to your ceremony that energy is special that’s sacred

59:52

why did i have to sit there and abstain from the medicine that i needed at that

59:58

time and you know what can we do what can we do to make it better for the

1:00:05

youth that are afraid to come home you know and i

1:00:11

think i think what what you’ve hit upon again is how our constructs and our way of life and

1:00:17

way of being is so dramatically different like i know my mom talked about um just

1:00:24

briefly because my mom wouldn’t talk much about in the anishinaabe way of life after

1:00:29

having been influenced from residential school much of that knowledge she had pushed back

1:00:36

into way back in her mind because she affiliated our way of life then as

1:00:43

something being dangerous so she didn’t engage much in it but she still remembered

1:00:48

but our the differences between the moon cycle the moon time the administration the

1:00:55

period time for women from indigenous communities to non-indigenous communities is so way different like it

1:01:01

was a time of it’s like festival and party extravaganza let’s have a good

1:01:06

time everybody come and feast and party that a young a young girl is now

1:01:11

starting a new journey let’s let’s talk about that and and let’s not hide it

1:01:17

it’s there’s nothing to be ashamed of so that whole system of shame for many different things

1:01:24

including the menstrual cycle is not it’s not ours we didn’t have that kind of shame i remember one day when i was

1:01:31

in a meeting at the office here at the legal clinic we’re sitting in a staff meeting and i’m

1:01:36

looking at my phone and i could see it’s my niece calling me and so i just let it go to voicemail and

1:01:44

but she kept calling so i thought oh no when you have a big family that and somebody’s calling you you know

1:01:50

something big is going on if they’re persistent so i excused myself from the meeting and when i took her call

1:01:56

thinking the worse but my niece was excited i was the second person she called to say uncle

1:02:03

i started my period and now we have to have ceremony that’s how our communities

1:02:10

celebrate and so when we’re i think part of my frustration is that we’re constantly

1:02:16

fighting to regain and reclaim our space as two-spirit people which makes us

1:02:22

really significantly different than other members under what i call the gay acronym the lgbtq gp and ic

1:02:30

are the queer alphabet i call it the rainbow mafia what is it the rainbow mafia that’s at the rainbow mafia

1:02:38

is that in and why we’re seeing uh right across turtle island that two spirit

1:02:43

people are asking that respectfully that we remain separate for several different

1:02:48

reasons and one of the biggest reasons for me is that

1:02:53

our identities as two-spirit people has nothing in our communities has nothing to do with who

1:03:01

we have sex with it’s about our roles and responsibilities in the community and those things that we are we have to

1:03:08

innately bring back into the community and share with the community that makes us significantly different plus the fact

1:03:16

that we’re the only group in canada that yet still uh governed by the most racist

1:03:21

and discriminatory piece of legislation known as the indian act and for many many other reasons but

1:03:29

i that’s always been a frustrating thing for me is that at that young age when my brother said you were different chunk

1:03:36

that’s when the community and family should have nurtured that two-spirit being and that but it’s that impact of

1:03:44

colonialization it’s the impact of various organized religions that stop

1:03:50

these things from happening in our community our communities had ceremonies for the two spirit people as well that’s

1:03:57

why i have my basket and bow here is because the basket and bow was one of those ceremonies that we would have in

1:04:03

our many indigenous communities so you would have this big dried shrub fence

1:04:08

with an eastern and a western door and a basket in a bowl would be placed in there

1:04:14

and the young children whom community would suspect to be to spirit would go

1:04:20

out there and it had been assumed that if you were a male and you picked up the basket that

1:04:27

you were two spirit and that if you were female and you picked up the bow you would pick uh you would be two spirit i

1:04:34

like to think that had our community my community been functioning this um

1:04:39

ancient ceremony that i would have picked up and i would went in and picked them up both of them

1:04:45

because i was thinking i would i would want them all oh i want this yeah that that’s what i would have done

1:04:52

picked them both up absolutely um i when i whenever i think of ceremony

1:04:58

i i’ve always felt at the edge of a lot of things i and when i shame is a really

1:05:04

big word in my life and there was a lot of shame around being indigenous

1:05:10

which wasn’t always marketed as shame uh you know i was very proudly indigenous and i i’d say it openly

1:05:16

especially because i didn’t always feel indigenous i have a white mother and so a big white family on that side

1:05:23

and i definitely remember hearing comments like oh you’re not even that indian or like don’t talk that way you

1:05:29

sound uneducated and these little things that still kind of come to my mind and still make it

1:05:35

really hard and i know when i when i hear someone say something like oh you’re too white to be indian too to one

1:05:41

of my friends it just this rage boils up inside me like oh my god i can’t stand

1:05:46

hearing those things and it and so it’s one of these many things that uh makes me feel like i’m at

1:05:51

the edge of these communities that i’m always just kind of sitting there looking in at people who can participate

1:05:57

in ceremony and people with these beautiful regalias and for me drum circles have always been the

1:06:03

hardest it’s something i’ve always been attracted to the drum i’ve always loved drum i’ve always looked with envy uh

1:06:08

upon people that are invited to those drum circles and as i grew up i didn’t have a lot of chances to engage

1:06:14

in the ceremony as much as i kind of hungered desperately for them and and as i became an adult

1:06:20

they i still kind of sat at the edges because they were men’s drum circles or they were women’s hand drum circles and

1:06:26

i didn’t feel comfortable i felt like i was invading those spaces um and so i i had a bit of a not great

1:06:33

experience with the community member who who had said some disparaging things about especially young two-spirit folk

1:06:38

and and how they didn’t know who that who they were or what that meant or or anything like that and it left me kind

1:06:44

of rattled and i i was kind of walking away and this other community member must have seen my face uh because he

1:06:50

just scooped he put an arm right around my shoulder he pulled me in he says don’t listen to that when you come to our drum circle it doesn’t matter who

1:06:56

you are and he plot me down in a drum circle that was him and a couple of elders and these kind of big men that

1:07:03

you know i’ve always been kind of felt uncomfortable around and they didn’t care they it didn’t matter that i was two spirit one came by and he took a

1:07:09

little feather and he stuck it in my hat and they they taught me to drum and we sang together and it was it was just

1:07:15

incredible and it’s one of those things that uh like i said with two spirit kind of clicked into place with me is those

1:07:22

people in the middle because i’ve always felt like i’ve been in the middle of a bunch of things so whether that’s being

1:07:27

indigenous and non-indigenous whether that’s kind of being queer but but keeping it hidden whether

1:07:33

that’s being between these different families is i’ve always kind of felt like a middle person just kind of

1:07:39

sitting there in between all these things but not really belonging to any of them and so that two-spirit umbrella of

1:07:45

someone being between communities but bringing them together uh seemed uh optimistic it seemed really hopeful of

1:07:51

like oh that’s how i can make this work i don’t have to feel like i don’t belong to either i can instead say i belong to

1:07:58

both and i’m going to make that work and that’s something that i’ve been really chasing for i’ve been trying to replace that that theme of shame that

1:08:05

has kind of chased me through my life uh with a theme of optimism of bringing things together uh and it’s felt really

1:08:12

nice uh embracing that i have a nishnab a win word for you and

1:08:17

i’ll tell it to you later yo um yeah

1:08:22

i that feeling of in-betweenness is the word um that it that’s what it means

1:08:29

basically and it was it was a word that i learned through somebody else but i’ll give it to you in private later

1:08:35

but um uh yeah that that feeling of

1:08:40

being on the edge and being in between worlds that has definitely been my experience

1:08:46

because being a white passing person being a straight passing person neither you know the biphobia that exists in the

1:08:53

queer community and you know homophobia that exists everywhere else it’s like okay

1:08:59

great um and yeah i’m i’m the person that everybody says the things

1:09:06

the racist things the homophobic things i’ve heard them all because they think i’m a i’m white or they think i’m

1:09:12

straight and so i hear all of the things and so um

1:09:18

yeah just and i feel like those people then come to you afterwards and say things like oh but i would i would never

1:09:24

feel that way i would never say those things it’s like of course you don’t remember it it was just a tuesday to you

1:09:29

but that stuck with me i remember watching those words come out of your mouth and now you’re coming to me and

1:09:35

saying that it doesn’t matter you know it’s all love it’s like really is it though because what are you gonna go and

1:09:40

say to those people that you now feel i’m not a part of anymore when you feel safe in those little circles when you’re

1:09:45

alone and what do you say to your friends that you think aren’t queer but maybe you’re just still in the closet

1:09:50

and you’re saying these things too and driving them deeper or you’re knocking at our door at

1:09:56

midnight yeah exactly and what’s frustrating as well when we’re fighting these big

1:10:02

systems and particularly our own people is that we know historically that two-spirit people have held these

1:10:10

very significant roles and that it had always been believed and

1:10:15

to murray sinclair senator mary sinclair summed it very clearly when he said that

1:10:21

indigenous communities have always believed that when two spirit people conduct ceremonies or even when two

1:10:27

spirit people are in ceremonies that those ceremonies are much more spiritual

1:10:34

than they have ever been and a very recent maday when which is

1:10:39

anishinaabe group madeawan elder had said that two spirit people don’t even

1:10:45

realize how spiritually powerful they are and that’s because we’re just in the

1:10:50

last 10 to 15 years we’re picking up our bundles we’re gathering our wisdom and our knowledge and we’re reclaiming our

1:10:57

spaces within our communities because we know the impact that colonization we

1:11:02

know the impact that racism discrimination we know the impact that sexism has had within our

1:11:10

communities and we can’t sit back quietly and wait for our knight and

1:11:16

shining armor to come because he’s not coming nobody’s coming so we have to do it

1:11:21

ourselves and so we have to initiate these uncomfortable conversations we have to challenge our own elders and

1:11:29

spiritual keepers and our knowledge keepers and everybody else and remind them that

1:11:35

we’re a part of this history too and that we come from ancient societies where we don’t get to pick and choose

1:11:42

what is part of our community and what is not i remember back home in my community years ago that um there was a

1:11:51

one of the most spiritual of all ceremonies for the initial albay people is what’s called the shay content

1:11:56

ceremony and i remember the shaken tent ceremony coming back to southwestern ontario

1:12:02

after many many years and the communities in southwestern ontario haven’t been so heavily

1:12:09

influenced by christianity that when the shake intense ceremony came back into our

1:12:14

communities immediately this most sacred ceremony became a form

1:12:20

of witchcraft and that nobody should ever go to the shaken tent ceremony

1:12:26

because it’s witchcraft well i’ve been hearing that stuff my own my entire life in our community my parents were

1:12:33

witches because they used to run to powwow back home in my community so i come from this long line of witches i

1:12:40

guess because i keep on doing the work and enforcing the work but that’s the

1:12:45

kind of crap that we’re faced with in our communities those are the kind of belief systems that are still somewhat

1:12:51

exist in our community this year though we’re seeing a change and we’re seeing a change because people like myself and my

1:12:59

relatives here are standing up and saying we’re not taking your homophobia anymore

1:13:05

and you’re going to honor us in our spaces because we’re not moving so we’re demanding things like that there be

1:13:12

honor songs for two spirit people in our ceremonies and at our powwows and welcome to spirit people back so that we

1:13:19

don’t ever have to feel shame our alienation from our communities and so that we’re fulfilling

1:13:27

our roles and responsibilities by coming back into the circles reclaiming our

1:13:32

spaces so that our ceremonies are once again as spiritual as they need to be

1:13:37

and should be do we want to take a second and talk about our upcoming powwow i don’t think we’ve mentioned it absolutely do it yes so we’ve got an

1:13:44

upcoming powwow over up at battlefield park uh on june 24th 25th and 26th 24th

1:13:50

there’s going to be an educational conference um which is you have to buy tickets for that but it’s going to be a bunch of speakers and elders speaking

1:13:56

about things like this uh less of a queer bent to it but still very kind of important things uh in conversations

1:14:02

about traditional roles and and also being a modern indigenous person uh and then on the 25th and 26th is the actual

1:14:08

power itself uh where there’s going to be an honor staff and and we’re going to be right up the front there um so you’ll

1:14:15

see us up out there bringing the staff and dancing and there’ll be all sorts of other stuff going on uh so don’t forget

1:14:20

about that and that’s it this is very this is historical for hamilton powwow because what i had just talked about

1:14:26

that my relative laura and i had gone through at the powwow and so now they’re going to

1:14:32

uh welcome us back in to the circle they’re going to do an honor song for

1:14:37

two spirit people this stuff although it’s important for me and i know it’s important for the

1:14:43

relatives it’s going to be so important for the hundreds of little indigenous kids who are there and are going to see

1:14:49

this happen so that they can be like me when i was that little kid who watched that guy do

1:14:54

the fancy shawl at the power and they’ll come back and they’ll be able to the other thing

1:15:00

that’s really exciting about our proud the three of us we’re just acting i get so excited talking about this but the

1:15:06

three of us were at the first two spirit power in toronto that they had a couple weeks ago and it was amazing

1:15:14

it was so amazing because it was 2 000 plus indigenous queer people and our allies

1:15:22

at this pow wow where we didn’t see any of the homophobia where we didn’t have to experience any of the shaman

1:15:29

where if you were a man who dressed like a woman or a woman dressed like a man or dressed however the hell you want to be

1:15:36

that was okay and if you wanted to dance backwards it was okay i think the most beautiful part of the whole day were the

1:15:43

opening words and i know that laura had talked about some protocols at the beginning

1:15:48

and i think part of the most beautiful part was the opening to this powwow

1:15:53

where they talked about we have many different nations at this powwow

1:16:00

and everybody’s coming with their own protocols take this opportunity

1:16:06

to meet people to greet people learn their protocols and exchange

1:16:12

protocols but do not force them on anybody else because that’s not welcome here and that’s what needs to happen at

1:16:18

our spaces is that everybody has their own protocols their own way of doing

1:16:23

things uh for instance i know anishinaabe people we go clockwise sometimes hono dashone people go

1:16:30

counterclockwise that’s okay just leave us alone to do what we need to do so

1:16:35

that we’re doing our own ceremonies isaac murdoch said one of the most important things that has had such an

1:16:41

influence on me over the years isaac murdoch said indigenous people we often forget that even when we’re just

1:16:48

on the land or by the water we’re in ceremony and we need to acknowledge that

1:16:54

relationship that’s happening spiritually but for having run into my relatives here and every other queer

1:17:01

indigenous person all over north america because they came from all over because it’s not it wasn’t common to have these

1:17:08

two spirit specific spaces and that we could really just be who we are i’ve been staring longingly at the san

1:17:15

francisco two-spirit powwow going oh we’re definitely gonna go

1:17:20

february next year i’m totally going yeah well i might just join you but it’s been on my bucket list for a

1:17:26

long time but yeah so to finally have it here like that was incredible like beautiful i

1:17:32

grew up as like when i was a teenager i was a powwow dancer i danced fancy shawl and jingle and like there were times

1:17:38

where i’d look at those grass dance outfits and go

1:17:44

i wonder you know just like the wheels were turning wheels were super turning and

1:17:49

like but you know that was just like the unthinkable right so um it was just amazing to be able to see

1:17:55

um each you know dance being done however and not

1:18:01

done by the binary of gender and oh my gosh and like the women’s drum singing

1:18:07

okay so when i saw those men’s traditions traditional dancers dancing to the women’s drum

1:18:12

like tears flew out of my face like that was just it was it was incredible

1:18:18

it was so healing to see what’s possible when all of those

1:18:23

false binaries are just gone because that’s not that’s not who we are no

1:18:29

absolutely and and to clarify that um because of misogyny and because of

1:18:35

influence of colonialism and the roles and responsibilities of and

1:18:42

roles of respect and honor of women and two-spirit people in our communities there became this myth

1:18:48

that women should not ever be at a big drum and so at this pow the lead drum the

1:18:54

home drum was indigenous women on the big drum and it was just so the energy

1:18:59

was absolutely beautiful i just i’m still living in and just surviving from the energy of that

1:19:06

power and now looking forward to everything else that’s happening because now we’re seeing two spirit powwows and

1:19:12

gatherings happening all over the place there’s one happening i think this weekend no the same weekend as a powwow

1:19:19

here there’s a two-spirit power happening in chittagong i think it’s called it’s way up there right yeah

1:19:25

way up north which i never thought would be happening in our communities in the north yeah and and we’re seeing things

1:19:32

like historical things like what’s happening in in hamilton and it’s because we we’re we’re coming

1:19:38

back in reclaiming our space and we’re reminding our communities that we’re still here but this is the constant

1:19:45

fight that we’re having against um colonization fighting things like constructs

1:19:52

the constructs of family and they might think that might not be important for indigenous people but constructs of

1:19:57

family are so incredibly important when you look at things like policies like bereavement leave

1:20:05

right so you use somebody else’s construct a family and you don’t recognize my first cousin as my sibling

1:20:12

i cannot pay time off to grieve and why do you want to even force me to come

1:20:18

back to work when i’m grieving luckily i work in an environment where that entire

1:20:24

system has changed so that they recognize not only that indigenous people have different constructs of family that but

1:20:31

many other people who have migrated and call canada home

1:20:37

have had to build new families and so that construct the family doesn’t work for everybody so i’m very

1:20:43

appreciative that i work at the legal clinic in the end they really do understand and see that

1:20:49

one family construct doesn’t work for everybody but i think what what we’re talking about is the big role

1:20:56

that colonization has played on indigenous people and and specifically

1:21:01

has threatened the existence of two spirit people and it may have been at some

1:21:07

point in time that we you may not have seen us that doesn’t

1:21:13

mean that we went extinct it just means that we were how well hidden and that our roles and responsibilities

1:21:21

and everything else that comes with all of our bundles our bundles aren’t just

1:21:26

the things that you see but they’re the teachings that we pick up along the way all of those things

1:21:32

were not lost it’s just we had to hide them until we reached a point like where we

1:21:38

are today where we are starting to feel a little safer within our own skin we’re

1:21:44

understanding now our roles and responsibilities in our communities

1:21:49

we’re reclaiming them and we’re trying to make a better existence for two spirit people

1:21:56

and trying to change some of these constructs so that they better reflect um who we are as indigenous people

1:22:04

and so with me um i’m also watching the time and i

1:22:11

really wanted to to share with folks my personal experience of having

1:22:17

a federal indian day school survivor and how that construct of school and education

1:22:24

and what role it played in my life in the the role that it played in many

1:22:29

two-spirit people’s lives indian day school was kind of the

1:22:34

response to the government after residential schools after 60 scoop

1:22:41

the government still wanted to assimilate and kill the indian within the child

1:22:47

and there was all this pressure on the government and the churches about

1:22:52

canadian indian residents they didn’t want to get rid of that control they didn’t want to get rid of

1:22:59

the hope that they were going to be able to kill the indian and a child so they thought that rather than taking

1:23:05

the kids and bringing them to schools off to reserve we’ll put schools on a reserve and we’ll make the kids go there

1:23:12

and that’s what we know as federal indian day school still run by the government still run by the church

1:23:19

still only giving you a very narrow perspective so in those schools

1:23:24

they only came with two genders as well and they fostered organized religion and

1:23:30

christian values around women not having a strong voice are having positions within the

1:23:36

community but also very much engaged themselves in fostered and

1:23:43

nurtured beliefs around homophobia so those stories about

1:23:50

so in my community when i went to federal indian day school

1:23:55

sorry this

1:24:01

for the is of time that it might take for me to tell you this story i’m not apologizing for what i’m feeling

1:24:11

so in federal indian day schools things happened like they would send down a

1:24:16

dentist to do dental work on in children but they didn’t give you anesthetic so when they were pulling out your teeth

1:24:23

and taking out your fillings you felt it and because they were run by the church

1:24:31

um it was it wasn’t there was an element of

1:24:37

homophobia that you could always feel around you and i remember

1:24:44

one day going to school and i was already as my brother said i

1:24:50

was that different kid growing up i wanted to do the little boy stuff but i wanted to do the little girl stuff

1:24:57

and they had always hired this token indian to work in the

1:25:02

residential school or in the federal indian day school and the token indian at our school was a woman who would come

1:25:08

in and she was supposed to be teaching us a language but we never learned much language from her she was a very strong

1:25:16

christian woman in the community and very well known christian woman in the community

1:25:23

and because she was christian she fostered and nurtured homophobic views

1:25:29

so i remember one day out on a playground sitting on one of

1:25:35

the concrete that they had those concrete dividers that they put at the end of a

1:25:40

parking space i was sitting on one of those and a lot of kids in the school were calling me

1:25:45

calling me fairy and teasing me

1:25:50

and i remember looking up and seeing the teacher who was a representative from

1:25:55

the church and from the government and this

1:26:01

tokenized indian resource teacher looking at me as the kids were picking

1:26:06

on me and calling these homophobic names and they just stood there and smiled and

1:26:12

didn’t stop those kids from doing that

1:26:17

federal indian day school did not provide me with the safer space that i require to

1:26:24

be a young person growing up they did not provide any indigenous

1:26:29

children with an opportunity to learn about our whale life let alone for me to learn about who i am

1:26:36

as a two-spirited nishnabe oh you’re a great person and because they didn’t do anything

1:26:43

the older kids at the other school watched as these younger kids picked on me

1:26:51

and so that became this kind of element of normalcy that it was okay to pick on

1:26:57

the little in school and so one day not and nobody was going

1:27:03

to be punished for it and one day shortly after that day

1:27:09

some of the older boys took me behind the school

1:27:16

and they ripped me and while one of the boys

1:27:23

had me in a headlock and was holding me bent down the other one was violating me

1:27:30

aggressively but i think what was more and has been more troublesome for me

1:27:38

was in that pain and that feeling of helplessness

1:27:43

i looked and i saw this little indian boy look around the corner and he saw what was happening and he ran

1:27:50

he didn’t even try to help me and

1:27:56

that made it really difficult for me to identify is to spirit because

1:28:03

that homophobia in our communities equated to pain

1:28:09

it would equate rape it would mean

1:28:15

that if i come out of the closet all of these things were going to happen to me

1:28:21

all over again and those institutions canadian indian residential schools and federal indian

1:28:28

day schools were responsible for providing safe space for indigenous kids

1:28:33

and they did not do that they were spaces that fostered and nurtured a horrible

1:28:41

aspects about humanities there are no humanities rather they were spaces that

1:28:48

disease ran rampant and it was okay to use indigenous children

1:28:54

as test subjects as well for different diseases and

1:28:59

because of that that’s the impact of colonization on two spirit people

1:29:05

and so when you try to come out in your community as a two-spirit person and you have this whole legacy of harm that has

1:29:12

happened it makes it very difficult and it makes you start to question

1:29:19

whether or not this is a role that you want to take on

1:29:24

and if this is the journey that you want to have and

1:29:30

if this is the battle that you’re willing to take and it’s a tough battle

1:29:37

because we’re constantly working against and struggling against our own people now

1:29:42

so all of those values and systems that colonizers brought to our community our

1:29:48

own people have absorbed at different levels and now we’re fighting our own people

1:29:54

who have absorbed those values and now after all that has passed

1:30:01

and i am who i am now i’m that person where i don’t give a i’m this age and i’ve made it this far i

1:30:10

have a voice and i’m going to continue to use my voice and i’m going to continue to do whatever i need to have

1:30:17

to do to make sure that indigenous voices are heard and that two spirit voices are

1:30:23

heard that indigenous people have safer space and that two spirit people have

1:30:29

safer space because of gary that fancy child dancer he is the one

1:30:35

who’s always in the back of my mind because he was the only role model that

1:30:41

i had even though i sat back in the audience and i heard all the horrible things

1:30:46

that people would say about gary all the homophobia and the violence that was projected

1:30:52

onto gary he was still a role model for me because he was doing something

1:30:57

extremely spiritual against all the homophobia he was the

1:31:02

person in my community who’s doing the work that we’re doing in

1:31:08

our communities now for me and we’re going to be the people in our communities that those

1:31:14

little five-year-old kids are looking at that’s the impact that we have

1:31:20

and and thank you for listening to that story that’s the the first time that i’ve ever

1:31:26

told that story out in public and right now i’ve

1:31:32

struggled with that federal indian day school stuff because it’s one of the popular claims right now that’s

1:31:39

happening and i’ve not

1:31:44

i’ve not engaged in the process of the class action suit because i’ve been busy

1:31:50

part of what i’ve done is i’ve helped hundreds of other federal indian day school survivors put together and

1:31:57

participate in the class action suit and walking on that journey with all of

1:32:03

them has led me to this point tonight that i’m able to talk about that story of how

1:32:08

it affected me and and that’s really important so thank you so much for affording me the

1:32:14

opportunity to share that with you that’s that was a real tough one

1:32:21

um because that leads right to the core of my identity as a two-spirit person

1:32:28

and so having to fight like all the roles and responsibilities that we have as two-spirit people

1:32:33

they’re so beautiful they’re so wonderful one of our roles and responsibilities and i think this is

1:32:39

so incredible when people in our community when couples were going to have children they

1:32:44

come to us and ask for us to give names to their children those are the kind of

1:32:49

respected roles and responsibilities that we have we can carry

1:32:55

the masculine and feminine ceremonies it was 20 years ago now that i was gifted a

1:33:00

traditional anishinaabe a traditional indigenous woman’s water ceremony was

1:33:06

given to me by an elder an indigenous anishinaabe

1:33:11

quiet woman she gave me that ceremony so now that’s part of my responsibility to

1:33:17

teach other people to spirit or young women are women that ceremony and

1:33:23

it’s so beautiful that we’re able to engage all of those realities in our

1:33:29

identity as two spirit people i’m gonna stop talking first no

1:33:35

me glitch um we watch lyndon

1:33:42

for sharing that story with us and

1:33:48

i’m just with you and rage you know my grandfather was a survivor of

1:33:55

residential school so um

1:34:02

yeah i don’t really know what else to say um

1:34:07

i just i just feel so incredibly honored and um

1:34:13

lucky that i was born now and that i could share space with both of you and do this work

1:34:20

you know for those little ones growing up you know i keep thinking about all those little kids at the powwow when we were

1:34:27

there and just thinking about how much better it can be for them it doesn’t need to be

1:34:32

so hard you know so thank you lyndon for surviving

1:34:39

everything and being here today because i wouldn’t be here without you

1:34:45

you’ve been a huge part of my journey and so i’m so grateful that you’re here

1:34:53

i don’t think i’ve told you this yet um but when i first came down to hamilton

1:34:58

and i i kind of floated this this trial around of being two-spirit um

1:35:04

i told yvonne merkel i talked to her and she said have you met lyndon

1:35:13

and i hadn’t at that point um i just and i i was working on that guide

1:35:18

and i was working on with the with that organization there and um she said go talk to lyndon uh and so

1:35:26

i i found an excuse um something at the legal clinic i needed to take pictures or something uh and i

1:35:32

sent you an email and i remember just feeling thrilled to know that there was this two-spirit person that was so

1:35:39

successful he was working with the legal clinic and it didn’t have to be the story of

1:35:44

tragedy it was someone who was doing well and i really i really looked up to you

1:35:51

and i do i still do and uh i don’t think i ever told you

1:35:56

that um and now you’re hearing all my tragic stories

1:36:02

but well thank you but i mean we don’t i i don’t do this stuff alone you know there’s there’s strength

1:36:09

strength in like that feeling that we had when we were at the two-spirit powwow this is

1:36:14

change that we’re all making together and i i love that there’s three

1:36:19

generations uh that are represented here both with all different journeys

1:36:25

that our experiences although we’ve all experienced a lot of the same stuff

1:36:31

we each experienced something different based on time era in space and

1:36:38

where we were at that time because i i know that i i used to run

1:36:44

i used to go hang out in london ontario all the time because it was like an hour away hour and 15 minutes from my reserve

1:36:51

but london ontario was an extremely racist place and it was not a safe space

1:36:57

to be either indigenous mainly or queer and then i found that 15 minutes on the

1:37:04

other side of the border to detroit wow man that’s the place where i hung home because

1:37:10

being indigenous and being queer it was safer for me to hang out in detroit than

1:37:15

it was in london ontario and in hamilton here i’ve not really ever felt

1:37:22

endangered for being queer like i felt being in danger for being

1:37:27

indigenous here i’ve never really felt threatened being queer her until

1:37:35

pride a couple years ago that i experienced that violence that pride there and that was

1:37:40

crazy to witness and see i’d never seen well i have seen violence i mean i’ve

1:37:47

stood in the face of with the army rifles in my face from the upper wash crisis

1:37:52

and also at oka but this was a whole different level of violence because there were so many

1:37:58

people just standing around and watching it happen and that was frightful and and

1:38:04

so i think we all have those experience of trauma

1:38:10

and those that trauma just i don’t know makes us stronger and makes us push forward

1:38:17

it shouldn’t have to though we shouldn’t have to shouldn’t have to no i don’t remember the scholar who said

1:38:23

it but i hear it all the time now is i’m so tired of being resilient right that’s that’s quoted as being the like

1:38:29

indigenous people are resilient and it’s it’s something that for a long time i was really proud of of like yeah

1:38:36

that’s right we’re tough it doesn’t matter what you throw at us we’re fine and i think about kitchen table

1:38:41

resistance as a term that i heard and i just loved it these these aunties that

1:38:46

are just keeping things in secret uh thank you very much

1:38:53

i’m tired of waiting my wiping my snot on my finger anybody want to shake my hand afterwards

1:39:00

but yeah and just all these everyone has

1:39:05

horror stories and it’s all just like oh you’re so resilient you’re so tough to get through this and

1:39:12

it’s just so shitty to be that that’s your defining trait yeah and that’s what

1:39:17

everybody knows is that tragedy um and i’m just so tired of being

1:39:25

resilient the other thing that always i remembered one day

1:39:30

there was a gentleman showed up at my house a non-indigenous man showed up at my house

1:39:35

he was standing at the end of my laneway and he was freaking me out so i went outside and i said uh

1:39:42

who the hell are you doing can i help you said oh my grandfather built this house this is in hamilton here so i was

1:39:49

excited to meet him so i wanted to ask him questions about the origins of the house and it’s is the

1:39:55

house all unique is it what it was and yes it was like the kitchen everything’s all original

1:40:02

and then he asked me he said are you indigenous i said yes and you own this home

1:40:11

yes good for you like what the hell does that mean like an indigenous person

1:40:17

can’t own a home that’s what it felt like and sometimes that’s what it feels like uh when your

1:40:24

two spirit and relatives say something similar to you like like tristan and laura my relatives had talked about

1:40:30

tonight you get a lot of that kind of crap which i okay i’ll still love you if

1:40:36

you’re you’re queer my thing has always been you don’t have to love me i don’t care

1:40:43

but you have to respect me and if you can’t respect me there’s no place in my

1:40:48

life for you that’s simple that’s how it’s that simple for me and i i try to teach my nieces and

1:40:55

nephews that too you don’t have to expect everybody to love you but if they can’t respect you

1:41:01

get rid of them

1:41:08

any questions out there i’m looking at the time yes

1:41:20

but i guess my question is what is the distinction between somebody

1:41:25

with a single spirit and two spiritedness and what does the concept of spirit itself

1:41:34

okay so um the english words to spirit um were a

1:41:39

direct translation of the anishinaabemoan concept of nishman adok which meant

1:41:44

two spirits um of like and that and again this is not a binary it’s like a spectrum of

1:41:52

masculine and feminine energy and so it exists again on a spectrum and it’s

1:41:58

continuous and reaches through space and time and

1:42:04

so it’s very so it’s very unique to each person and

1:42:09

so each person is going to have their own spirit expression

1:42:16

and so it’s just this concept that exists it really exists in all of us but in

1:42:22

two-spirit people it’s pronounced so i guess does that kind of explain

1:42:28

what you were getting at when i was a kid when i was like 15 or 16 i was in the car with a relative

1:42:35

and they that’s the first time i heard the the term two spirit and i heard it in the same conversation with the term

1:42:40

pradash and a couple other ones of and it was really really condensed they it was basically if

1:42:48

you’re two spirit it means you’re a gay indian that was what they were concerned and they really focused on

1:42:53

um honestly kind of a misogynistic idea of what it meant to be queer right it meant that you’re a little bit of a

1:42:58

woman right that was or if you were a two-spirit woman that means you’re a little bit of a man is kind of what they

1:43:04

were trying to drive home and it’s part of why i didn’t really identify as two-spirit as the teenager and it wasn’t until i came down here in the south and

1:43:11

met a bunch of a bunch of queer indigenous folk some of whom identified as as two spirits some

1:43:17

who didn’t and i realized how umbrella the term is it you can’t nail it down it’s impossible

1:43:22

especially because it’s not a term that originates in any of our

1:43:28

language or any of our culture the term two spirit either comes from winnipeg or sometimes they say in

1:43:34

america and it’s only like what 20 years old it’s really just kind of a way to it’s almost

1:43:41

a pan-indigenous word and usually when things are pan-indigenous i i shy away from them but this one felt very right

1:43:47

because it was a way of saying you’re indigenous and you’re queer whatever that means and it’s okay uh

1:43:54

whether that’s gender fluidity or sexual orientation and that’s a big part of what really brought it for me is because

1:44:00

i didn’t know i knew that i was queer and i knew that i was indigenous and i didn’t know how those things interacted

1:44:06

and i’m still figuring it out and that’s why i like two-spirit is it gives me a bunch of room where i can just say i’m

1:44:13

two-spirit and that’s enough nobody really needs to know more and i don’t

1:44:18

need to have more of an answer than that because it doesn’t matter it’s just kind of this umbrella that that fits us all

1:44:24

and has enough room for all of us so it is hard to kneel down it’s like

1:44:29

when canada before canada became a bilingual country

1:44:34

indigenous people stood up and said hey remember us over here the original caretakers to land here

1:44:42

what about us so then the federal government said okay well choose one indigenous language

1:44:49

and we will make it more than a bilingual country well that’s ridiculous because we have so many hundreds of

1:44:55

different indigenous languages here we could not do that so canada went on to become a bilingual country

1:45:03

not acknowledging the indigenous languages here that we have in 1984 1985 and the united states and

1:45:12

canada are still fighting indigenous people in canada and the united states are still fighting about who coined the

1:45:18

term to spirit it was very much the same thing members of the queer community were asking

1:45:25

indigenous people what do you call yourselves well as i had mentioned in

1:45:30

many of our communities we have identified in some of communities 15 to 17

1:45:36

different genders that help describe who we are as indigenous queer our spirit people

1:45:44

so we couldn’t just pick one term so two spirit became the term that’s recognized

1:45:50

because what we could all agree upon is that to identify as to spirit you have to

1:45:57

have this balance in this harmony and accept the fact that you have a masculine being and a

1:46:04

feminine being so that that’s probably the easiest way

1:46:10

that i can try to help you understand that

1:46:27

we do actually believe that everybody has a masculine and feminine spirit we do believe that but some people only

1:46:34

identify with a masculine spirit or a feminine spirit where’s two spirit will

1:46:39

identify with both spirits with both entities yeah

1:46:45

yeah any other questions yes

1:46:54

and can i swap out accordingly

1:47:03

thank you so much for your talk and thank you so much for sharing it was very moving and

1:47:10

it really touched us i was uh wondering if you could talk a little bit about the staff that you created uh for your

1:47:17

powwow uh the the the reason for the staff and kind of just wanted to get a

1:47:22

visual of what that looked like yeah okay um

1:47:29

so um let’s see where do i begin so lyndon contacted me first about the

1:47:35

staff he was like laura we gotta make the staff and i’m like okay

1:47:41

so it just so happened actually though um so the staff is like a huge

1:47:47

um wooden staff it’s huge it’s probably one of the larger ones

1:47:53

i’ve ever seen actually and

1:47:59

i just automatically as soon as he asked me to help make it i was like

1:48:04

oh my gosh like i started to cry because um i had a friend of mine that um gave me a huge

1:48:12

box of eagle feathers now these eagle feathers

1:48:18

i was like stunned because she she got them from a photographer who a

1:48:24

you know white photographer man who was just out taking pictures in this one area that had an eagle’s nest

1:48:31

very close by and every time he would go there there would be all of these feathers dropped on the ground and so he

1:48:37

had been collecting them over the course of years and then met my friend

1:48:42

and heard about the significance of eagle feathers to indigenous people

1:48:48

he was like all right can you please see that these feathers get to where they need to go

1:48:54

and so then she shows up at my doorstep one day with this giant box of eagle feathers and i’m like

1:49:03

like so typical of a two-spirit person like of course that’s what’s going to happen is they’re going to come to my

1:49:08

door and i have to figure out what’s going to happen with them so when lyndon said

1:49:13

eagle staff time i’m like there it is so

1:49:18

um i attached um so many of these eagle feathers uh the

1:49:24

rest of them i gave to students because i was working with students at the time too and i gave a bunch away

1:49:30

to students who were graduating so the majority of those ego feathers went on to the staff

1:49:35

and [Music] and so

1:49:40

i’m not privy to give any teachings about all of that but um

1:49:46

in addition to the feathers there is uh i made a rainbow cluster of feathers

1:49:52

at the very top to kind of you know throw gate up

1:49:57

exactly to gay it up i’m like how could we not have rainbow feathers

1:50:03

so did we did that and then um [Music]

1:50:08

my memory is failing me on the it did it was a horn yeah so the very interesting

1:50:13

process because different two-spirit people had different things we had been carrying

1:50:18

around forever and not knowing what the purpose was this was the purpose

1:50:25

most ego staffs have one antler on it that i have seen in along my journey

1:50:31

i had been gifted many years ago that i had been carrying around for probably 30 years two antlers

1:50:37

and it made sense to me when we started talking about this eagle staff that we

1:50:42

were representing masculine and feminine two spirit people and so it had to have

1:50:47

two antlers and then another two spirit person had all the leather and buck skin

1:50:53

that was required in fur that was needed to also kind of clear it up and make it

1:50:58

really pretty it just came together and laura is correct it is the biggest largest eagle staff i have seen anywhere

1:51:05

huge it’s massive it won’t even fit in the back of my truck it’s but

1:51:10

it it’s kind of i feel like this so eagle staffs are what indigenous communities

1:51:16

have always used because flags are not our concept right flags are a foreign construct

1:51:24

we’ve adopted them now throughout many years we have come to develop and make our own flags but our communities had

1:51:32

these ego staffs that would represent the nation or the community or a group

1:51:38

of people for instance indigenous women have their own ego staffs

1:51:44

so this ego staff i feel like uh oh and then one two spirit person had the uh

1:51:50

this enormous staff that was like a piece of driftwood that came up on the water she picked it up

1:51:57

and she’d been carrying that around so that became the staff and it just feels like

1:52:05

as in to me it felt that walking into the power the first time in hamilton

1:52:10

here with that eagle staff it’s heavy as it’s really heavy but it’s

1:52:16

it also because we’re reclaiming the space it lets

1:52:22

people see we’re here we’ve we’re reclaiming our space and you

1:52:27

can tell by our great big fat bastard staff [Laughter]

1:52:35

but it’s just amazing to to see how people when they look at this eagle

1:52:40

staff they’ve just never seen one so large before and but it it really does when you’re a

1:52:47

two-spirit person and you know that’s the two-spirit ego stop there’s a real strong heavy sense of

1:52:53

pride from being in its presence because it dominates all other

1:52:59

staffs but it’s like it’s it’s like a statement so yes so the ego staff is representative of the two-spirit people

1:53:06

because all indigenous groups our communities and nations have an ego staff that identify who they are so we

1:53:13

needed to have one on our own

1:53:20

are there any last i think yes

1:53:30

okay i’m sorry my stalker have him removed please

1:53:38

he shows up everywhere i am security [Laughter]

1:53:44

any other questions

1:53:50

we’ll give you the last question thank you is this the closer is good

1:53:56

all right um you mentioned uh some unfortunate circumstances during

1:54:02

pride were you referring to pride toronto or uh pride hamilton or some other uh

1:54:08

that was pride in hamilton 2019 well we could also talk about pride in toronto

1:54:13

though yep i was there too both engaged indigenous people in a very very poor

1:54:20

fashion yeah in the sense that the people coordinating the event did something

1:54:25

poorly or more of a public reaction well i think with what happened

1:54:32

what so what happened with hamilton’s pride

1:54:39

is that there were just so many things that happened that were really disrespectful

1:54:44

for indigenous people and i think the first thing that happened was this was a point in time what year was

1:54:51

that laura 2019 2019 where indigenous people started to fight

1:54:57

against pipelines and oil lines and they had asked the two-spirit person to come and open up

1:55:06

the the entire pride and when the two-spirit person got up

1:55:11

there to open up pride they gave the two-spirit person nestle bottled water which of course we

1:55:19

know nestle one of our communities close by has been fighting nestle and the government for

1:55:24

the extraction of their clean water and then off to the right was td bank

1:55:31

and td bank is one of the major contributors to pipelines so that that started the whole

1:55:38

enormous disrespect for indigenous people but for two spirit people

1:55:44

and then just the violence that happened um was was disrespectful to

1:55:50

everybody not just two spirit people but it put everybody at a

1:55:56

um a really compromised unsafe space and my biggest

1:56:02

beef about that is as as an indigenous queer person as

1:56:08

indigenous people we’re used to trauma we’ve seen this kind of violence we’ve

1:56:13

had it in our face since our existence at this pride there were so many people

1:56:20

there who witnessed this violence and nobody has done a damn thing to address their trauma so we have so many queer

1:56:28

relatives and their allies roaming around this city and in other spaces

1:56:34

who witness this trauma but nobody’s done anything to reach out to them and say how can i help you deal

1:56:41

with this trauma that’s what really bothers me and then on top of that there’s also the response of the hamilton police who essentially made a

1:56:48

statement saying if you don’t want to set pride then you don’t get our protection either and so when physical violence broke out

1:56:54

they distanced themselves they stood by and watched yeah and in toronto pride

1:57:03

here’s what happened in toronto part so this is the year i can’t remember the year but this was a year where there was

1:57:10

chaos engaging members our relatives from the black community so black lives

1:57:16

matter we’re at toronto pride and they shut down toronto pride i don’t know what year

1:57:22

that was i can’t remember right behind them were two-spirited people the first nation

1:57:29

ontario aboriginal hiv aids strategy who had indigenous youth young indigenous

1:57:34

people with them and members who shut down toronto pride

1:57:40

were coercing the indigenous youth who youth who had no idea what was going on yeah we had no

1:57:46

idea what was going on and put them in a place of unsafety they put us to the front

1:57:52

they demanded us go to the front they said two spirits to the front native to the front to the front

1:57:58

to the front of what like their they were stopping the parade which i agree with

1:58:05

100 i agree with stopping the parade i don’t have an issue with what they did i have an issue with how they did it

1:58:10

because they did it without talking to us they did it without our consent and they did it

1:58:16

putting us a operation human shield knowing how police are going to respond

1:58:21

especially to people of color especially to queer people of color to put a bunch of indigenous queer youth who don’t know

1:58:27

what’s going on and not even not even queer uh indigenous queer youth so from my

1:58:34

community allies young children under the age of 16 who were allies to

1:58:39

indigenous queer were best there three hours to participate and support

1:58:45

queer people in general they were the ones who were being lured

1:58:50

in and they were the ones who were being asked to stand around members who had stopped

1:58:58

the pride and quickly indigenous adults there realized what was going on and they ran over and and

1:59:05

first call out called out to people who stopped pride and said this is disrespectful you put our youth at harm

1:59:11

here and move the youth out of there so with both those prides but that was also a

1:59:17

year that pride had not consulted with in toronto had not consulted with the

1:59:22

indigenous community both were just very problematic now some

1:59:27

of that has shifted and changed two-spirit pow-wow that happened the first one in toronto in part was uh

1:59:35

happened as a result of pride toronto collaborating with the indigenous queer

1:59:41

saying how can we help you and rather than saying that okay well let’s have a big party and get drunk and high and pmp

1:59:48

hey do you pmp um indigenous response was that’s not part of who we are

1:59:54

we’re not about partying and carrying on and all that kind of crap we’re about ceremony

2:00:00

and we want to powwow so toronto pride uh had supported in part helped the

2:00:06

two-spirit powwow that had happened

2:00:12

it’s 907 and i know people have places to go i know everybody’s dying to get outside in that humidity

2:00:20

i’m just going to uh say thank you all three uh tristan laurie

2:00:26

um lyndon natasha yeah um i do

2:00:31

every speakers of truth i’m i’m floored at the end of it i the

2:00:38

the courage the me learning once again that

2:00:43

vulnerability has nothing to do with weakness and uh your open-heartedness your ability to

2:00:48

bring such uh uh truth to this public forum is nothing

2:00:54

short of staggering so i have such deep respect for everything that you’ve done here tonight and uh

2:01:00

yeah i just i have no more words i thank you all for coming let’s give them a big

2:01:05

sign of our appreciation

2:01:13

i did want to point out too that when tor opened up with the land in territorial acknowledgement it means

2:01:20

something to me as an indigenous person to be able to listen to somebody do a territorial

2:01:26

acknowledgement and add the whole all the history that he added on to that acknowledgement without reading it that

2:01:34

means something because in my mind that shows real reconciliation at work and in

2:01:40

somebody who’s made a commitment to making reconciliation a priority so

2:01:45

chimaguens for that good job on the language too

2:01:50

i i wish i could tell you the the terror that i feel every time i do it in this

2:01:56

context i say well thank you all for joining us tonight thank you everyone who’s who’s

2:02:01

with us online uh please come to the next speakers of truth thank you

2:02:18

i just got like so many messages from people who watched online and so the three of us were awesome

2:02:28

you guys are awesome

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