Post by Okwes on Jan 26, 2006 14:38:09 GMT -5
Without Reservations: Native American Lesbians Struggle to Find Their
Way
Written by: Diane Anderson-Minshall
www.curvemag.com/Detailed/309.html
Beverly Little Thunder has been issued a death sentence. Not by the
government; by one of her own. Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American*
activist, has sworn to kill the 55-year-old Lakota nurse for
performing the Sun Dance, one of the most important — and grueling —
ceremonies for Plains Indian tribes. Participants dance for four
days, eight hours a day, without food or water, as a ritual of
sacrifice, renewal and strengthening.
The U.S. government outlawed the dance in 1904 as a way to squelch
Indian gatherings, but Little Thunder has danced the Sun Dance since
she was 19 years old. Years ago, at South Dakota's Standing Rock
Reservation, she got a rude awakening: "I was told that women like me
were taken out and shot. I was not permitted to participate in the
ceremonies."
Elderly women pulled Little Thunder aside and suggested she create a
ceremony for her "own kind," saying that if the Lakota people
remembered their traditions they'd be honored to have her dance.
"I felt like they were telling me [to] go somewhere else and have the
ceremony so it's not around here," Little Thunder admits. "I prayed
about it ... and decided that they were right." The lesbian Sun Dance
was born in St. John, Ariz., with 13 Native Americans and 87 other
women participating. It was later moved to women's land in Vermont.
This kind of activism is typical of Little Thunder, who, in 1993,
helped coin the term "two-spirit" (to signify queer Native Americans)
and in 2001 became the first Native American to serve as grand
marshal of a Gay Pride parade. Still, it has not been easy for Little
Thunder to claim her place in lesbian history.
She grew up straddling two worlds. Summers were spent with her
grandmother at North Dakota's Standing Rock Reservation, while
winters found her back in a Los Angeles housing project with her
alcoholic, abusive parents. Little Thunder later bounced from Indian
boarding schools to juvenile hall, to two convents, and to an
orphanage, and finally, at 15, was married. She would eventually
raise five children before coming out as a lesbian.
What a difference those years have made. Little Thunder says her
youngest daughter is an out lesbian who "doesn't have any qualms
about people knowing she's a lesbian. When I was 25, I didn't even
know what the word was."
FORGOTTEN HISTORY
Native lesbians existed long before the first European settlers
stepped onto this continent. Some tribes had special roles for women
who hunted, married women and took part in warfare. Queer Indians
appeared in origin stories — our biblical stories, so to speak —
until Christian missionaries gained influence and many tribes became
dependent on them for money, food and survival. Missionaries did not
understand, or approve of, gender diversity. They called
us "berdache," a demeaning Persian word for boy prostitutes. Within a
generation or two, queers became the jokes of our people, and in many
tribes, women became equally disenfranchised.
Still, not all were disregarded. Years ago, when I had just begun to
research my own bloodline, I read about Kauxuma Nupika, a Kootenai
Indian woman who in 1811 carried a message to fur traders 400 miles
from the Spokane River. She was dressed as a man and was accompanied
by a woman she called her wife. Though whites were concerned about
her masculine appearance, she worked as a guide, courier, warrior and
peacemaker for the next 25 years.
In researching Nupika's legacy, my legacy, the legacy of Native
American two-spirits, I found that tribal elders and reservation
leaders weren't interested in talking about their queer citizens.
While working on this story, I contacted more than 100 tribal council
members, museum curators and PR reps from reservations in Colorado,
Connecticut, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Idaho and California,
and none were willing to comment. Even gay organizations in areas
with high concentrations of Native Americans had nothing to say about
Native American lesbian life.
Native American lesbians, though, were eager to share their stories.
TWO-SPIRIT WOMEN
Yolanda Slivers was only 21 when her family gathered for the Beauty
Way Ceremony. The ritual, a tradition among Slivers' Dine' (Navajo)
people, was to balance all things in her life — family, school, work,
health —and put her on the right path. She admits now that she was
wary.
"My mother told me when I was a child that one of the main reasons
why Natives have begun to turn away from the traditional ceremonial
ways was because as a ceremony participant you had to be willing to
be completely honest with yourself," Slivers recalls. "She said ...
the roadman would be able to see ... everything you are and what you
stand for. I was afraid to find out what my grandfather, the roadman,
would say. I was afraid that he would tell others what he saw. But
that year ... I was tired of pretending and hiding who I really was."
Midway through the ceremony, Slivers' grandfather received a vision
of a chubby white girl — Slivers' partner — who he said was taking
her away from the path of the Navajo. Her mother gasped and began to
cry.
"I was so confused, I couldn't see. It was then that my
grandfather ... said, `Yolanda, I wish I knew more English words, so
that I might tell you what it means to live as a Navajo woman and how
to walk the path of the Navajo woman,'" Slivers recalls. "I was
livid. ... I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing."
When Slivers returned home to California she withdrew from her
partner, cut herself off from her family, stopped attending
ceremonies and stopped talking about God. Six months later, she
realized that it wasn't plausible to be happy and living "in a world
that did not allow me to love who I loved. If balance [is] the Navajo
way of life, then how could living without love be balanced?" she
asks.
I understand Yolanda Slivers. We're both Native American lesbians, or
two-spirits, struggling with homophobia, racism and invisibility.
Slivers, a 24-year-old marketing assistant in San Diego, grew up on
the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Though the Navajo nation is one of
the largest (with more than 300,000 tribal members), much of the
reservation is akin to a third-world country. "No running water, no
electricity, no jobs and no housing," says Slivers, who has not lived
on the reservation since she was in fourth grade. "We moved because
of economics, survival," she recalls. "Too many Indians; not enough
food, money or shelter."
Slivers has blood of the original four Navajo clans running through
her veins. I, on the other hand, am a mixed-race Cherokee-Choctaw.
Raised in rural Idaho by my beloved grandmother — who was related by
adoption, not blood — I did not know much of my cultural heritage
until I was the age Slivers is now.
Teddy Roosevelt said in 1886: "I don't go so far as to think that the
only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of 10 are.
The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average
Indian."
Roosevelt made these comments the same year my great-great-great-
grandmother was born to a Choctaw woman named Dollie Dollarhide.
Unfortunately, back then Roosevelt represented the views of the
average European colonizer. In the early 1800s, the Indian Removal
Act forced thousands of Indians to give up their land and move West —
some at gunpoint, some loaded like cargo into wagons. Many walked the
entire thousand-mile march, which became known as the Trail of Tears,
barefoot.
In California, where I now live, Indian populations plummeted as
zealous miners swarmed into the state. Today the state contains
mostly isolated rancherías, testimony to the fact that most of these
Indians were not relocated so much as exterminated. Some Indians
managed to escape into the swamps or mountains. Some changed their
identity, claiming to be Black Dutch, Black Irish, Spanish, Creole,
Italian. In the Midwest, English Quakers and German Amish adopted
some. Others were classified as black, Negro or mulatto because some
states
didn't have a designation for Indians. Affluent Cherokee women, like
my ancestors, were encouraged to marry white men.
WHO'S THE `REAL' INDIAN?
Donna Luckett's great-great-grandmother escaped into the Smokey
Mountains while the Cherokees were being relocated to
Oklahoma. "[She] lived in fear most of the time and became very
cautious about what she said about her life," Luckett recalls. "The
family tried to blend into the communities, and marriage into the
white community provided some safety for her children."
Living today in Portland, Ore., Luckett is a mixed-race Cherokee
lesbian who works as a vocational counselor to Native Americans.
Raised in a predominantly white family, Luckett admits that she's had
access to education — she has two master's degrees — that most of her
Native clients don't.
Census reports show that the number of people identifying as Native
American is now 4.1 million (or 1.5 percent of the U.S. population) —
which underscores just how complex and diverse Native Americans are
today. For centuries, those who looked white dissociated from Indian
culture; now Native celebrities straddle multiple worlds. Native
director Chris Eyre was adopted by a white family; black actress
Della Reese's mom was Cherokee; blue-eyed, blonde actress Heather
Locklear came out as Lumbee Indian years ago and has since received
the First Americans in the Arts Award (the Native version of the
Oscars).
When 24-year-old Elle McKay, a mixed-race Cherokee photographer in
Oregon, fills out legal forms, she checks "Caucasian." The Celtic
influence dominates her pale complexion, curly brown hair and light
green eyes. She admits to feeling jealous of her younger brother's
darker skin, thick straight hair and wide brown eyes.
"People look at me as though I'm lying when I tell them I'm part
Native American," she sighs. "I'm proud of my heritage, yet feel
impossibly barred from ever fully experiencing it due to my
whiteness. My brother could choose to live on a reservation and few
people would think twice about why he was there ... [but] I would be
the source of much confusion."
"Indians are largely erased in the larger American context, even in
colored communities," says writer-photographer Reid Gomez. The 31-
year-old lesbian traces her black-Indian ancestry to the Congo,
Zacatecas, Mexico and the Navajo nation. "The entire myth of America —
and the immigrant and African American stories that are a part of
it — largely rest on the idea that Indians no longer exist in this
present moment. The general knowledge of our existence and
contemporary situations is largely erased, ignored, rendered
invisible."
STAKING A CLAIM
Suzanne Bates unwittingly forfeited her rights to the Native world
when a white family adopted her 30 years ago. She's now trying to
connect with her indigenous Metis heritage, but it hasn't been
easy. "I called once for registration and they told me to take a
hike," she recalls. "I really struggle with my identity and place in
Indian Country," she says. "I often feel culturally stunted when
dealing in traditional situations. That feeling of displacement and
exclusion is enormous and far outweighs the success I have in
mainstream society."
Bates, who was afraid of other Natives as a child, began to realize
that she could fully become herself only when she confronted who she
was and where she came from. "It really became apparent that I had
better get going on this journey, because the world was not going to
let me forget that I have brown skin and am therefore distinct." She
has been searching for her biological family for 12 years. But she's
quick to say that what she calls her "cultural repatriation process"
isn't about proving that she's Indian. Now she's an activist of
sorts — helping young people like herself as a First Nations Advisor
with Camosun College in British Columbia.
In fact, many Native American lesbians consider themselves activists,
albeit sometimes in a spiritual, rather than political, sense. For
some, their demonstration is simply coming out — as Native, that is —
to protest the degradation of Native American culture and show the
world we aren't relics of the past. For others, the revolution is as
Indian as it gets. Little Thunder practices medicine at Indian
facilities around the country; Luckett counsels disenfranchised
Natives. All speak unabashedly about their queerness with sometimes
less than receptive straights.
For Chrystos — Native America's most well-known lesbian poet — her
activism is part literature, part in-your-face. A 56-year-old, city-
bred Menominee, Chrystos — like Gomez — gains strength from other
urban queer artists of color. For Chrystos, too, this means
recognizing the similarities between being queer and being of-color.
"The main similarity between being queer and Native for me," admits
Chrystos, "is the amount of hatred ... we have to endure. Some ... is
genocidal but all of it is detrimental to our mental and physical
health, not to mention spiritual health. For both groups, this hatred
is a result of colonization and Christianity — organized religions
intend to alter us to suit themselves, with no understanding that if
we exist we are meant to be here exactly as we are."
Chrystos, whose love-and-lust poems underscore her outspoken
lesbianism, works alongside straight Natives to free imprisoned
Indian activists like Leonard Peltier and Norma Jean Croy. (She does
so while sometimes struggling with the same economic plight her less
famous Native peers experience. For the last two months, she's been
trying to get running water restored to her home.)
S. Wolfe thinks queer Native coalition building is key to finding
legitimization in the larger gay community. Wolfe, a 46-year-old
mixed-race Apache lesbian, is on the board of Bay Area American
Indian Two-Spirits, and has had to deal with criticism about the male-
dominated group — criticism she shrugs off.
"Do gay groups skew male? Yes. There are more of them and they get
more funding for our group," she admits. It doesn't, she says, affect
the politics of BAAITS — one of a handful of queer Native groups in
the country. For her, the group helps her find solidarity, strength
in being a butch Indian d**e — validation that didn't come from her
family. "Our parents ... told us to keep our brownness quiet."
The city-bred Wolfe now wants to help other Indians and raise lesbian
visibility on the reservation — by going back to teach.
"When I visit the rez, I am an outsider ... so I get treated with
some suspicion. Although there is a tradition of acceptance of gays
by tribes, it is now an embarrassment or something best left unsaid.
So I defer to their desire to have me be quiet about being a d**e,
but it is obvious I am and I will answer anyone who asks me about
it."
Of course, film and television, say some of these women, bring queer
Native issues to the forefront quicker than years of protests. Last
summer, Sherman Alexie's film The Business of Fancydancing — about an
assimilated gay man's return to his reservation — gave some d**es a
mirror they sorely needed, and it made straight Indians finally talk
about our issues.
"I pay attention to the stories of the least powerful group in the
country: gay Native women," says Alexie. "We all feel lonely and
isolated. Perhaps my work helps lesbian Native women feel less alone
in the world."
Feeling less alone in the world is, in fact, a common goal. Though we
haven't found clear-cut solutions to broad problems like racism and
homophobia, we two-spirit women are banking on our outsider status —
among gays, among Indians — to forge a new place at the table.
Sometimes that means a lot of fighting, says Little Thunder, but they
can always rely on each other. Indigenous queers in the United States
and Canada have developed an intensely loyal bond — something that's
apparent at the annual conventions. "That's the only time we can come
together and sit and talk and joke and laugh," says Little
Thunder. "There's a sense of humor in the Native American community
that I don't find anywhere else. There's a sense of safety there."
*I use "Native American" and "American Indian," and "Native"
and "Indian," interchangeably, though many activists believe that
only one or the other is accurate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
This story was produced under the George Washington Williams
Fellowship for Journalists of Color, a project sponsored by the
Independent Press Association.
Way
Written by: Diane Anderson-Minshall
www.curvemag.com/Detailed/309.html
Beverly Little Thunder has been issued a death sentence. Not by the
government; by one of her own. Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American*
activist, has sworn to kill the 55-year-old Lakota nurse for
performing the Sun Dance, one of the most important — and grueling —
ceremonies for Plains Indian tribes. Participants dance for four
days, eight hours a day, without food or water, as a ritual of
sacrifice, renewal and strengthening.
The U.S. government outlawed the dance in 1904 as a way to squelch
Indian gatherings, but Little Thunder has danced the Sun Dance since
she was 19 years old. Years ago, at South Dakota's Standing Rock
Reservation, she got a rude awakening: "I was told that women like me
were taken out and shot. I was not permitted to participate in the
ceremonies."
Elderly women pulled Little Thunder aside and suggested she create a
ceremony for her "own kind," saying that if the Lakota people
remembered their traditions they'd be honored to have her dance.
"I felt like they were telling me [to] go somewhere else and have the
ceremony so it's not around here," Little Thunder admits. "I prayed
about it ... and decided that they were right." The lesbian Sun Dance
was born in St. John, Ariz., with 13 Native Americans and 87 other
women participating. It was later moved to women's land in Vermont.
This kind of activism is typical of Little Thunder, who, in 1993,
helped coin the term "two-spirit" (to signify queer Native Americans)
and in 2001 became the first Native American to serve as grand
marshal of a Gay Pride parade. Still, it has not been easy for Little
Thunder to claim her place in lesbian history.
She grew up straddling two worlds. Summers were spent with her
grandmother at North Dakota's Standing Rock Reservation, while
winters found her back in a Los Angeles housing project with her
alcoholic, abusive parents. Little Thunder later bounced from Indian
boarding schools to juvenile hall, to two convents, and to an
orphanage, and finally, at 15, was married. She would eventually
raise five children before coming out as a lesbian.
What a difference those years have made. Little Thunder says her
youngest daughter is an out lesbian who "doesn't have any qualms
about people knowing she's a lesbian. When I was 25, I didn't even
know what the word was."
FORGOTTEN HISTORY
Native lesbians existed long before the first European settlers
stepped onto this continent. Some tribes had special roles for women
who hunted, married women and took part in warfare. Queer Indians
appeared in origin stories — our biblical stories, so to speak —
until Christian missionaries gained influence and many tribes became
dependent on them for money, food and survival. Missionaries did not
understand, or approve of, gender diversity. They called
us "berdache," a demeaning Persian word for boy prostitutes. Within a
generation or two, queers became the jokes of our people, and in many
tribes, women became equally disenfranchised.
Still, not all were disregarded. Years ago, when I had just begun to
research my own bloodline, I read about Kauxuma Nupika, a Kootenai
Indian woman who in 1811 carried a message to fur traders 400 miles
from the Spokane River. She was dressed as a man and was accompanied
by a woman she called her wife. Though whites were concerned about
her masculine appearance, she worked as a guide, courier, warrior and
peacemaker for the next 25 years.
In researching Nupika's legacy, my legacy, the legacy of Native
American two-spirits, I found that tribal elders and reservation
leaders weren't interested in talking about their queer citizens.
While working on this story, I contacted more than 100 tribal council
members, museum curators and PR reps from reservations in Colorado,
Connecticut, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Idaho and California,
and none were willing to comment. Even gay organizations in areas
with high concentrations of Native Americans had nothing to say about
Native American lesbian life.
Native American lesbians, though, were eager to share their stories.
TWO-SPIRIT WOMEN
Yolanda Slivers was only 21 when her family gathered for the Beauty
Way Ceremony. The ritual, a tradition among Slivers' Dine' (Navajo)
people, was to balance all things in her life — family, school, work,
health —and put her on the right path. She admits now that she was
wary.
"My mother told me when I was a child that one of the main reasons
why Natives have begun to turn away from the traditional ceremonial
ways was because as a ceremony participant you had to be willing to
be completely honest with yourself," Slivers recalls. "She said ...
the roadman would be able to see ... everything you are and what you
stand for. I was afraid to find out what my grandfather, the roadman,
would say. I was afraid that he would tell others what he saw. But
that year ... I was tired of pretending and hiding who I really was."
Midway through the ceremony, Slivers' grandfather received a vision
of a chubby white girl — Slivers' partner — who he said was taking
her away from the path of the Navajo. Her mother gasped and began to
cry.
"I was so confused, I couldn't see. It was then that my
grandfather ... said, `Yolanda, I wish I knew more English words, so
that I might tell you what it means to live as a Navajo woman and how
to walk the path of the Navajo woman,'" Slivers recalls. "I was
livid. ... I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing."
When Slivers returned home to California she withdrew from her
partner, cut herself off from her family, stopped attending
ceremonies and stopped talking about God. Six months later, she
realized that it wasn't plausible to be happy and living "in a world
that did not allow me to love who I loved. If balance [is] the Navajo
way of life, then how could living without love be balanced?" she
asks.
I understand Yolanda Slivers. We're both Native American lesbians, or
two-spirits, struggling with homophobia, racism and invisibility.
Slivers, a 24-year-old marketing assistant in San Diego, grew up on
the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Though the Navajo nation is one of
the largest (with more than 300,000 tribal members), much of the
reservation is akin to a third-world country. "No running water, no
electricity, no jobs and no housing," says Slivers, who has not lived
on the reservation since she was in fourth grade. "We moved because
of economics, survival," she recalls. "Too many Indians; not enough
food, money or shelter."
Slivers has blood of the original four Navajo clans running through
her veins. I, on the other hand, am a mixed-race Cherokee-Choctaw.
Raised in rural Idaho by my beloved grandmother — who was related by
adoption, not blood — I did not know much of my cultural heritage
until I was the age Slivers is now.
Teddy Roosevelt said in 1886: "I don't go so far as to think that the
only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of 10 are.
The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average
Indian."
Roosevelt made these comments the same year my great-great-great-
grandmother was born to a Choctaw woman named Dollie Dollarhide.
Unfortunately, back then Roosevelt represented the views of the
average European colonizer. In the early 1800s, the Indian Removal
Act forced thousands of Indians to give up their land and move West —
some at gunpoint, some loaded like cargo into wagons. Many walked the
entire thousand-mile march, which became known as the Trail of Tears,
barefoot.
In California, where I now live, Indian populations plummeted as
zealous miners swarmed into the state. Today the state contains
mostly isolated rancherías, testimony to the fact that most of these
Indians were not relocated so much as exterminated. Some Indians
managed to escape into the swamps or mountains. Some changed their
identity, claiming to be Black Dutch, Black Irish, Spanish, Creole,
Italian. In the Midwest, English Quakers and German Amish adopted
some. Others were classified as black, Negro or mulatto because some
states
didn't have a designation for Indians. Affluent Cherokee women, like
my ancestors, were encouraged to marry white men.
WHO'S THE `REAL' INDIAN?
Donna Luckett's great-great-grandmother escaped into the Smokey
Mountains while the Cherokees were being relocated to
Oklahoma. "[She] lived in fear most of the time and became very
cautious about what she said about her life," Luckett recalls. "The
family tried to blend into the communities, and marriage into the
white community provided some safety for her children."
Living today in Portland, Ore., Luckett is a mixed-race Cherokee
lesbian who works as a vocational counselor to Native Americans.
Raised in a predominantly white family, Luckett admits that she's had
access to education — she has two master's degrees — that most of her
Native clients don't.
Census reports show that the number of people identifying as Native
American is now 4.1 million (or 1.5 percent of the U.S. population) —
which underscores just how complex and diverse Native Americans are
today. For centuries, those who looked white dissociated from Indian
culture; now Native celebrities straddle multiple worlds. Native
director Chris Eyre was adopted by a white family; black actress
Della Reese's mom was Cherokee; blue-eyed, blonde actress Heather
Locklear came out as Lumbee Indian years ago and has since received
the First Americans in the Arts Award (the Native version of the
Oscars).
When 24-year-old Elle McKay, a mixed-race Cherokee photographer in
Oregon, fills out legal forms, she checks "Caucasian." The Celtic
influence dominates her pale complexion, curly brown hair and light
green eyes. She admits to feeling jealous of her younger brother's
darker skin, thick straight hair and wide brown eyes.
"People look at me as though I'm lying when I tell them I'm part
Native American," she sighs. "I'm proud of my heritage, yet feel
impossibly barred from ever fully experiencing it due to my
whiteness. My brother could choose to live on a reservation and few
people would think twice about why he was there ... [but] I would be
the source of much confusion."
"Indians are largely erased in the larger American context, even in
colored communities," says writer-photographer Reid Gomez. The 31-
year-old lesbian traces her black-Indian ancestry to the Congo,
Zacatecas, Mexico and the Navajo nation. "The entire myth of America —
and the immigrant and African American stories that are a part of
it — largely rest on the idea that Indians no longer exist in this
present moment. The general knowledge of our existence and
contemporary situations is largely erased, ignored, rendered
invisible."
STAKING A CLAIM
Suzanne Bates unwittingly forfeited her rights to the Native world
when a white family adopted her 30 years ago. She's now trying to
connect with her indigenous Metis heritage, but it hasn't been
easy. "I called once for registration and they told me to take a
hike," she recalls. "I really struggle with my identity and place in
Indian Country," she says. "I often feel culturally stunted when
dealing in traditional situations. That feeling of displacement and
exclusion is enormous and far outweighs the success I have in
mainstream society."
Bates, who was afraid of other Natives as a child, began to realize
that she could fully become herself only when she confronted who she
was and where she came from. "It really became apparent that I had
better get going on this journey, because the world was not going to
let me forget that I have brown skin and am therefore distinct." She
has been searching for her biological family for 12 years. But she's
quick to say that what she calls her "cultural repatriation process"
isn't about proving that she's Indian. Now she's an activist of
sorts — helping young people like herself as a First Nations Advisor
with Camosun College in British Columbia.
In fact, many Native American lesbians consider themselves activists,
albeit sometimes in a spiritual, rather than political, sense. For
some, their demonstration is simply coming out — as Native, that is —
to protest the degradation of Native American culture and show the
world we aren't relics of the past. For others, the revolution is as
Indian as it gets. Little Thunder practices medicine at Indian
facilities around the country; Luckett counsels disenfranchised
Natives. All speak unabashedly about their queerness with sometimes
less than receptive straights.
For Chrystos — Native America's most well-known lesbian poet — her
activism is part literature, part in-your-face. A 56-year-old, city-
bred Menominee, Chrystos — like Gomez — gains strength from other
urban queer artists of color. For Chrystos, too, this means
recognizing the similarities between being queer and being of-color.
"The main similarity between being queer and Native for me," admits
Chrystos, "is the amount of hatred ... we have to endure. Some ... is
genocidal but all of it is detrimental to our mental and physical
health, not to mention spiritual health. For both groups, this hatred
is a result of colonization and Christianity — organized religions
intend to alter us to suit themselves, with no understanding that if
we exist we are meant to be here exactly as we are."
Chrystos, whose love-and-lust poems underscore her outspoken
lesbianism, works alongside straight Natives to free imprisoned
Indian activists like Leonard Peltier and Norma Jean Croy. (She does
so while sometimes struggling with the same economic plight her less
famous Native peers experience. For the last two months, she's been
trying to get running water restored to her home.)
S. Wolfe thinks queer Native coalition building is key to finding
legitimization in the larger gay community. Wolfe, a 46-year-old
mixed-race Apache lesbian, is on the board of Bay Area American
Indian Two-Spirits, and has had to deal with criticism about the male-
dominated group — criticism she shrugs off.
"Do gay groups skew male? Yes. There are more of them and they get
more funding for our group," she admits. It doesn't, she says, affect
the politics of BAAITS — one of a handful of queer Native groups in
the country. For her, the group helps her find solidarity, strength
in being a butch Indian d**e — validation that didn't come from her
family. "Our parents ... told us to keep our brownness quiet."
The city-bred Wolfe now wants to help other Indians and raise lesbian
visibility on the reservation — by going back to teach.
"When I visit the rez, I am an outsider ... so I get treated with
some suspicion. Although there is a tradition of acceptance of gays
by tribes, it is now an embarrassment or something best left unsaid.
So I defer to their desire to have me be quiet about being a d**e,
but it is obvious I am and I will answer anyone who asks me about
it."
Of course, film and television, say some of these women, bring queer
Native issues to the forefront quicker than years of protests. Last
summer, Sherman Alexie's film The Business of Fancydancing — about an
assimilated gay man's return to his reservation — gave some d**es a
mirror they sorely needed, and it made straight Indians finally talk
about our issues.
"I pay attention to the stories of the least powerful group in the
country: gay Native women," says Alexie. "We all feel lonely and
isolated. Perhaps my work helps lesbian Native women feel less alone
in the world."
Feeling less alone in the world is, in fact, a common goal. Though we
haven't found clear-cut solutions to broad problems like racism and
homophobia, we two-spirit women are banking on our outsider status —
among gays, among Indians — to forge a new place at the table.
Sometimes that means a lot of fighting, says Little Thunder, but they
can always rely on each other. Indigenous queers in the United States
and Canada have developed an intensely loyal bond — something that's
apparent at the annual conventions. "That's the only time we can come
together and sit and talk and joke and laugh," says Little
Thunder. "There's a sense of humor in the Native American community
that I don't find anywhere else. There's a sense of safety there."
*I use "Native American" and "American Indian," and "Native"
and "Indian," interchangeably, though many activists believe that
only one or the other is accurate.
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This story was produced under the George Washington Williams
Fellowship for Journalists of Color, a project sponsored by the
Independent Press Association.