for2spirits - Tumblr blog

[for2spirits]

Niizh Manidoowag (2013)

Ryan Young

(c)RM Young Photography

[for2spirits]

A story about being a citizen of your nation and a part of your community and culture.

[for2spirits]

As They Are: Two-Spirit People in the Modern World A Film by Mike Garrido and Tarek Tohme Featuring: Elton Naswood (Navajo), Ben Lucero Wolf (Kiowa) and Richard Eric Dearmore (Paiute) Special Thanks to Evan Hughes, AIDS Project Los Angeles and the Red Circle Project

[for2spirits]

Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance "It gets better" video

[for2spirits]

"That Show" - Two spirit people

[for2spirits]

Our Families: LGBT / Two Spirit Native American stories

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The actress in question is Carmen Moore (Navajo).

Native American Transsexual Actress Stars in New Film

Drunktown’s Finest is a movie about finding hope in the bleakest of circumstances. Director Sydney Freeland grew up in the real Drunktown: Gallup, N.M. Or at least that’s what ABC’s 20/20, the cable newsmagazine that gave her hometown that dreadful moniker in 1990, would have her believe.

[for2spirits]

Holding up Native American Two Spirit people as LGBTQI poster children for gay marriage is problematic on several fronts. It privileges one cause (marriage) over institutional racism, sexual and racist violence, socio-economic disadvantage, health, and other ongoing effects of colonialism. We need to respect the cultural traditions and struggles of other cultures, by becoming more aware of the concept of Otherness and how this frames our understanding of the world. The notion of the Other illustrates how dominant cultures define their own experience as the default human position. Dominant cultures perpetuate colonialist practices by using their own cultural values and traditions to make sense of, and judge, how we view Other cultures. In effect, academics and activists have Othered the Two Spirit people, by inscribing their own politics and interests onto this practice, and not approaching Native American culture from their own historical and social perspectives.

Rethinking Gender and Sexuality: Case Study of the Native American “Two Spirit” People | The Other Sociologist - Analysis of Difference… By Dr Zuleyka Zevallos (via andythenerd)

[for2spirits]

Refreshing my memory on historical and contemporary conceptualizations of 2-Spirit identities and re-reading parts of Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigineous Decolonization. I’m reminded of how foundational this book was in my process of decolonization as a NDN trying to make space for myself within Eurocentric queer identities/scenes/spaces/relationships. Anyways, I just wanted to share this resource in case there are other native queers out there in the tumblrverse who struggle with this shit (and I mean, how could you not).

[for2spirits]

Gi Zah Gin - Ryan Young

My newest creation :) I’m so in love with it!

[for2spirits]

100 Amazing Trans Americans You Should Know

The inaugural Trans 100 List celebrates groundbreaking work being done by trans people across the country.

featuring the ever lovely friend of Two-Spirit Skillshare Toronto,

[for2spirits]

‘Queer’ feels very much in keeping with being Cherokee to me. And ‘gay’ is weighted by a lot of representational burdens. Cherokees as a rule have always been… weird. For our neighbors. So, in the Southeast we’re the only Iroquoian speaking people. We were the people who lived in the mountains. Socially we were similar to Muskogean peoples in a lot of ways, but we were also anomalous in a lot of ways. And anomalies are such a big part of our tradition. I mean, you have Uktena, you have Wild Boy, you have… even Thunder in some aspects is anomalous. These are figures who cross between worlds and represent a lot of different realities. That’s been a Cherokee experience.

Daniel Heath Justice (via fuckcolonialism)

[for2spirits]

It is time to bring ‘sexy back’ to Native studies and quit pretending we are boring and pure and do not think or write about sex. We are alive, we are sexy, and some of us Natives are queer.

Chris Finley

Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature

(via astrojhon)

[for2spirits]

Native fashion designer Tyler Jacobs shows some sweet jingle dance footwork

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The report finds:

• American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender and gender non-conforming people often live in extreme poverty, with 23 percent reporting a household income of less than $10,000 per year. This compares to the rate of 15 percent for transgender people of all races. The rate is about three times the general American Indian and Alaskan Native population rate (8 percent), and nearly six times the general U.S. population rate (4 percent).

• American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender and gender non-conforming people had a very high unemployment rate at 18 percent, well over twice the rate of the general population (7 percent) at the time the survey was fielded.

• American Indian and Alaskan Native respondents who attended school expressing a transgender identity or gender non-conformity reported rates of harassment at 86 percent, physical assault at 51 percent and sexual assault at 21 percent in K-12.

• American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender and gender non-conforming people were affected by HIV in “devastating numbers:” 3.24 percent reported being HIV positive and an additional 8.53 percent reported that they did not know their status.

• Fifty-six percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents reported having attempted suicide compared to 41 percent of all study respondents.

“These findings underscore the importance of recognizing that Two-Spirit, trans and gender non-conforming American Indians and Alaskan Natives are a significant and too-often-marginalized part of LGBT communities, and communities that face substantial and sometimes unique challenges,” said NCTE executive director Mara Keisling. “This research contributes to our long-held belief that policy makers must understand and act on the deep disparities that exist within people of color communities.”

It comes as no surprise that transgender, Two Spirit, and gender nonconforming Natives are subject to some of the worst discrimination of any racial group among trans* people, we’re at the intersection of two massively oppressed groups in this country: Native Americans and Trans People of Color. According to the Department of Justice, 1 in 10 Native Americans has been a victim of a violent crime, double the rate of Black Americans (5 in 100), two-and-a-half times the White population, and four-and-a-half times higher than the Asian American population. They are also found to be the most likely to have been assaulted by a member of another race: 70% of violence against Natives is by non-natives.

There needs to be a serious effort to look beyond the typical (white cis) LGBT issues and to really focus on violence against queer and trans* people of color in general, and queer, trans*, Two Spirit, and gender nonconforming Natives specifically.

This country makes me sick right now.