Spotlight on Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQIA Peoples
This page provides suggested resources (books, video & film, articles & databases) relevant to Two-Spirit Identity and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA) Indigenous Identity.
The term Two-Spirit (2S, 2Spirit, Two Spirit, Twospirited) was coined in 1990 at the Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering in Winnipeg. The term is a pan-Indian, umbrella term used by a number of Indigenous Native Americans to describe Native Peoples who fulfill traditional third-gender or variant-gender roles in their communities and cultures. The term is generally accepted but faces controversy from critics who consider it as reinforcing western notions of binary gender or attempting to erase terms that already exist in traditional communities for gender-variant members.
Acceptance, treatment, status, and rights of LGBTQIA Indigenous peoples and Two-Spirit individuals have varied historically. Contemporary understandings of Two-Spirit identity and what it means to be Indigenous and LGBTQIA vary greatly from tribe to tribe. We hope the resources collected in these pages will help readers gain a nuanced understanding of Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA Indigenous Identity.
Video: Nick Metcalf gives insight into his experiences being a two spirit, and explains why gender fluidity is necessary in today’s world | TEDx (2015).
About the Playlist
This mix features two-spirit and other Indigenous LGBTQIA and nonbinary/transgender artists from across Turtle Island, as well as other parts of the world. A work in progress, we welcome suggestions for artists from these groups for inclusion.
Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.
To learn more about the artists and communities represented in this playlist, check out some of the resources we consulted:
- Great Videos and Music from 8 Indigenous LGBTIA and/or Two Spirit Musicians (Indian Country Today)
- 6 Anthems by Queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous Artists to Pump You Up (WeRNative)
- Decolonial love: These Indigenous artists are taking back the self-love that colonialism stole (CBC)
- Pride Concert: A Queer, Trans, Two-Spirit Indigenous Showcase (video, University of Toronto SGDO)
Further Reading & Resources
- Annotated Bibliography on LGBTQ/TwoSpirit Native Americans and First Nations People (ALA - GLBTRT)
- How Indigenous Communities Can Support Two-Spirit People (Black Girl Dangerous)
- 8 Things You Should Know About Two Spirit People (Indian Country Today)
- Indigenous Identity and the Significance of the Term "Two-Spirit" (them: inqueery)
- 10 Queer Indigenous Artists on Where Their Inspirations Have Led Them (The New York Times Style Magazine)
- Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures (PBS)
Next Steps
If you'd like to learn more about this month-long celebration of Indigenous communities and identity, we've created a guide with list of resources, as well as a playlist featuring Indigenous musicians, on the Media Studies Research Guide. There is also an overview of Indigenous Philosophy on the Philosophy Research Guide.
For more information about the Indigenous communities with ongoing and traditional ties to this land, and how to support Indigenous groups and movements, take a look at our Land Acknowledgment and Local Indigenous Resources guide.
Fiction
Love after the End: an anthology of two-spirit and indigiqueer speculative fiction by ISBN: 9781551528113Publication Date: 2020-10-20This exciting and groundbreaking fiction collection showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories. Here, readers will discover bioengineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, mother ships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492.
Jonny Appleseed by ISBN: 9781551527253Publication Date: 2018-05-15'You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine' is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishises himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the 'rez,' and his former life, to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The next seven days are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages—and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life. Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.
Food and Spirits by ISBN: 0932379923Publication Date: 1991-04-01Eight stories deal with homecoming, endurance, loss, grief, tradition, and survival.
Kiss of the Fur Queen by ISBN: 0806132361Publication Date: 2000-05-01One of Canada’s most celebrated authors and playwrights, Highway mixes humor with difficult subjects in his work ranging from Kiss of the Fur Queen, a coming-of-age novel that follows two Cree boys through residential school to adulthood, to The Rez Sisters, which is full of laughter as well as revelations about life. His essays have also featured in the collections Me Funny and Me Sexy, where he argues that his native language, Cree, is both the funniest and sexiest of all languages. (-Kai Minosh, BGDBlog)
Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time by ISBN: 0993997074Publication Date: 2016-09-30Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time is a collection of indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman undergoing an experimental transition process to young lovers separated through decades and meeting in their own far future. These are stories of machines and magic, love and self-love.
Drowning in Fire by ISBN: 0816521670Publication Date: 2001-09-01Josh Henneha has always been a traveler, drowning in dreams, burning with desires. As a young boy growing up within the Muskogee Creek Nation in rural Oklahoma, Josh experiences a yearning for something he cannot tame. Quiet and skinny and shy, he feels out of place, at once inflamed and ashamed by his attraction to other boys. Driven by a need to understand himself and his history, Josh struggles to reconcile the conflicting voices he hears -- from the messages of sin and scorn of the non-Indian Christian churches his parents attend in order to assimilate, to the powerful stories of his older Creek relatives, which have been the center of his upbringing, memory, and ongoing experience. In his fevered and passionate dreams, Josh catches a glimpse of something that makes the Muskogee Creek world come alive. Lifted by his great-aunt Lucille's tales of her own wild girlhood, Josh learns to fly back through time, to relive his people's history, and uncover a hidden legacy of triumphs and betrayals, ceremonies and secrets he can forge into a new sense of himself. When as a man, Josh rediscovers the boyhood friend who first stirred his desires, he realizes a transcendent love that helps take him even deeper into the Creek world he has explored all along in his imagination. Interweaving past and present, history and story, explicit realism and dreamlike visions, Craig Womack's Drowning in Fire explores a young man's journey to understand his cultural and sexual identity within a framework drawn from the community of his origins. A groundbreaking and provocative coming-of-age story, Drowning in Fire is a vividly realized novel by an impressive literary talent.
Rough Paradise by ISBN: 9781927443620Publication Date: 2014-05-31Born with an Intersex condition in a rough, working-class city, the harassment and hate Terry Tomey experiences for being bi-gendered and Two-Spirit drives them to the brink of suicide -- yet they are saved by the love and acceptance of Darla. The two incur the wrath of their families and their community as they fall in love and graphically explore their queer sexuality. Forcefully separated, they spend the next twenty years trying to find each other and to uncover the real truth as to why they were kept apart.
Poetry
Feed by ISBN: 9781947793576Publication Date: 2019-11-05Feed is the fourth book in the Teebs tetralogy. It's an epistolary recipe for the main character, a poem of nourishment, and a jaunty walk through New York's High Line park, with the lines, stanzas, paragraphs, dialogue, and registers approximating the park's cultivated gardens of wildness. Among its questions, Feed asks what's the difference between being alone and being lonely? Can you ever really be friends with an ex? How do you make perfect mac & cheese? Feed is an ode of reconciliation to the wild inconsistencies of a northeast spring, a frustrating season of back-and-forth, of thaw and blizzard, but with a faith that even amidst the mess, it knows where it's going.
Fire Power by ISBN: 088974047XPublication Date: 1995-09-01Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others. When we speak our "Fire Power", we join a long & honored line of warriors against injustice. Each of us is born with innate power & purpose, a sacred direction for which we have been created. Our task is to find the place where we belong & do our work there.
This Wound Is a World by ISBN: 9781452962238Publication Date: 2019-09-03"i am one of those hopeless romantics who wants every blowjob to be transformative." Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut poetry collection, This Wound Is a World, is "a prayer against breaking," writes trans Anishinaabe and Métis poet Gwen Benaway. "By way of an expansive poetic grace, Belcourt merges a soft beauty with the hardness of colonization to shape a love song that dances Indigenous bodies back into being. This book is what we've been waiting for." Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound Is a World is an invitation to "cut a hole in the sky / to world inside." Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder their sadness and pain without giving up on the future. His poems upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where "everyone is at least a little gay." Presented here with several additional poems, this prize-winning collection pursues fresh directions for queer and decolonial theory as it opens uncharted paths for Indigenous poetry in North America. It is theory that sings, poetry that marshals experience in the service of a larger critique of the coloniality of the present and the tyranny of sexual and racial norms.
My Woman Card Is Anti-Native, and Other Two-Spirit Truths by ISBN: 9781729873472Publication Date: 2018-12-02"My Woman Card is anti-Native & Other Two-Spirit Truths" is a book of free verse poems, haikus and sonnets inspired by a conversation with the Legendary Venus Selenite, by the author's love for classical theatre, by her connection to her community, and by her experiences navigating eurocentrism in medicine & social life.
Holy Wild by ISBN: 9781771664394Publication Date: 2018-09-01In her third collection of poetry, Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans women in expansive lyric poems. She holds up the Indigenous trans body as a site of struggle, liberation, and beauty. A confessional poet, Benaway narrates her sexual and romantic intimacies with partners as well as her work to navigate the daily burden of transphobia and violence. She examines the intersections of Indigenous and trans experience through autobiographical poems and continues to speak to the legacy of abuse, violence, and colonial erasure that defines Canada. Her sparse lines, interwoven with English and Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), illustrate the wonder and power of Indigenous trans womanhood in motion. Holy Wild is not an easy book, as Benaway refuses to give any simple answers, but it is a profoundly vibrant and beautiful work filled with a transcendent grace.
Witness, I Am by ISBN: 9780889713239Publication Date: 2016-10-01Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada's most recognized poets. The first part of the book, "Dangerous Sound," contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. "Muskrat Woman," the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section of the book, "Ghost Dance," raids the autobiographical so often found in Scofield's poetry, weaving the personal and universal into a tapestry of sharp poetic luminosity. From "Killer," Scofield eerily slices the dreadful in with the exquisite: "I could, this day of proficient blooms, / take your fingers, / tie them down one by one. This one for the runaway, / this one for the joker, / this one for the sass-talker, / this one for the judge, / this one for the jury. / Oh, I could kill you."
Prayers for My 17th Chromosome by ISBN: 9781943977420Publication Date: 2017-11-14"Amir Rabiyah is a magician who has tasted salt of the creation story's sea. The cleaving of human to spirit found in Prayers for My 17th Chromosome is a blood tangle that will kiss your cells till you sweat / constellations. Rabiyah reminds their reader that to exist in between boxes of national belongings, migrations, queer kinships, and disability is not to swallow war. Rather, in these verses, complications find respite in one another, [becoming] the endless, / the source, / the horizon / awakening." - Rajiv Mohabir, author of The Cowherd's Son and The Taxidermist's Cut
Full-Metal Indigiqueer by ISBN: 9781772011876Publication Date: 2017-11-28This poetry collections focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer Trickster character named Zoa who brings together the organic (the protozoan) and the technologic (the binaric) in order to re-beautify and re-member queer Indigeneity. This Trickster is a Two-Spirit / Indigiqueer invention that resurges in the apocalypse to haunt, atrophy, and to reclaim. Following oral tradition (à la Iktomi, Nanaboozho, Wovoka), Zoa infects, invades, and becomes a virus to canonical and popular works in order to re-centre Two-Spirit livelihoods. Zoa world-builds a fourth-dimension, lives in the cyber space, and survives in NDN-time - they have learned to sing the skin back onto their bodies and remain #woke at the end of the world. "Do not read me as a vanished ndn," they ask, "read me as a ghastly one." It is a project of resurgence for Two-Spirit / Indigiqueer folk who have been ghosted in policy, page, tradition, and hi/story - the very lives of Two-Spirit / Indigiqueer youth are rarely mentioned (and even dispossessed in our very mandates for reconciliation), our lives are precarious but they too are precious. We find ourselves made spectral in settler and neocolonial Indigenous nationalisms - if reconciliation is a means of "burying the hatchet," Zoa seeks to unearth the bones buried with those hatched scalps and perform a séance to ghost dance Indigiqueerness into existence. Zoa world-destroys in order to world-build a new space - they care little for reconciliation but rather aim to reterroritorialize space in literature, pop culture, and oral storytelling. The space made is a post-apocalyptic hub of sex and decolonization - a world where making love is akin to making live.
Nature Poem by ISBN: 9781941040638Publication Date: 2017-05-09Nature Poem follows Teebs--a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet--who can't bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He'd slap a tree across the face. He'd rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he'd rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he's adamant -- bratty, even -- about his distaste for the word "natural," over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the "natural world," he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice.
Drama
Two-Spirit Acts by ISBN: 9781770911840Publication Date: 2014-04-15With a refreshing spin, the plays touch on topics of desire, identity, and community as they humorously tackle the colonial misunderstandings of Indigenous people. From a female trickster story centred on erotic lesbian tales to the farcical story about a new nation of Indigenous people called the Nation of Mischief, this collection creates a space to explore what it means to be queer and Indigenous.
Essays
A History of My Brief Body by ISBN: 9781937512934Publication Date: 2020-07-14Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.
Living the Spirit: a gay American Indian anthology by ISBN: 0312018991Publication Date: 1988-08-01A groundbreaking collection of essays and stories by, about, and selected by gay American Indians from over twenty North American tribes.
she walks for days inside a thousand eyes (a two-spirit story) by ISBN: 9780888013262Publication Date: 2008In she walks for days inside a thousand eyes (a two spirit story), Sharron Proulx-Turner combines poetry and history to delve into the little-known lives of two-spirit women. Regarded with both wonder and fear when first encountered by the West, First Nations women living with masculine and feminine principles in the same body had important roles to play in society, as healers and visionaries, before they were suppressed during the colonial invasion. She walks for days inside a thousand eyes (a two-spirit story) creatively juxtaposes first-person narratives and traditional stories with the voices of contemporary two-spirit women, voices taken from nature and the teachings of Water, Air, Fire and Mother Earth. The author restores the reputation of two-spirit woman that had been long under attack from Western culture as she re-appropriates the lives of these individuals from the writings of Western anthropologists and missionaries.
Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature by ISBN: 9780816502424Publication Date: 2011-10-01Two-Spirit people, identified by many different tribally specific names and standings within their communities, have been living, loving, and creating art since time immemorial. It wasn't until the 1970s, however, that contemporary queer Native literature gained any public notice. Even now, only a handful of books address it specifically, most notably the 1988 collection Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Since that book's publication twenty-three years ago, there has not been another collection published that focuses explicitly on the writing and art of Indigenous Two-Spirit and Queer people. This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of identities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the work of established writers and talented new voices, this anthology spans genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essay) and themes (memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship, family, love, and loss) and represents a watershed moment in Native American and Indigenous literatures, Queer studies, and the intersections between the two. Collaboratively, the pieces in Sovereign Erotics demonstrate not only the radical diversity among the voices of today's Indigenous GLBTQ2 writers but also the beauty, strength, and resilience of Indigenous GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century.
Memoirs
Bad Indians by ISBN: 9781597142014Publication Date: 2013-01-01This beautiful and devastating book -- part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir -- should be required reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
Forty-Three Septembers by ISBN: 1563410370Publication Date: 1993-12-01A collection of autobiographical essays about identity, the author's family, growing up and growing older, and related topics.
One Bead at a Time by ISBN: 9781771332651Publication Date: 2016-06-25One Bead at a Time is the oral memoir of Beverly Little Thunder, a two-spirit Lakota Elder from Standing Rock, who has lived most of her life in service to Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in vast areas of both the United States and Canada. Transcribed and edited by two-spirit writer Sharron Proulx-Turner, Little Thunder's narrative is told verbatim, her melodious voice and keen sense of humour almost audible overtop of the text on the page. Early in her story, Little Thunder recounts a dream from her early adulthood, "I stared at these lily pads for the longest time and I decided that there was one part of the pond that had lots of lily pads and no frogs. I said, 'I want to go there because there's lots of lily pads but no frogs and I like creating community.'" And create community she does. Little Thunder established the first and today, the only all-women's Sundance in the world, securing a land base in the Green Mountains of Vermont for future generations of Indigenous women's ceremony. She was active in the A.I.M. movement and she continues to practice and promote political and spiritual awareness for Indigenous women around the world. A truly remarkable visionary.
Thunder Through My Veins by ISBN: 9780385692748Publication Date: 2019-09-10Born into a Metis family of Cree, Scottish, English and French descent but never told of his heritage, Gregory Scofield knew he was different. His father disappeared after he was born, and at five he was separated from his mother and sent to live with strangers and extended family. Only his love for his sensitive but battered mother and his Aunty Georgina, a neighbor who befriended him, kept him alive. This is Gregory's traumatic, tender and hopeful story of his fight to rediscover and accept himself in the face of a heritage with diametrically opposed backgrounds.
A Two-Spirit Journey by ISBN: 9780887558122Publication Date: 2016-04-22A compelling, harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story of resilience and self-discovery."A Two-Spirit Journey" is Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism. As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and in her teen years became alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay. Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humour, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.
Featured Videos
Video: Author and Indigenous elder Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit identities | Out Saskatoon (2018)
Documentaries
2 Spirits: Native Lesbians and Gay Men by Call Number: StreamingPublication Date: 19942-Spirited people (Native lesbians and Gay men) from the Bay Area share their experience of overlapping gender, ethnic and cultural identities as they explore and define their visions of utopia.- Two Spirits');" />Two Spirits byCall Number: Wells Library - Media Services - DVDsPublication Date: 2009Examines the role of two-spirit people in the Navajo culture in the context of the story of a gay youth named Fred Martinez. Martinez was a nádleehí or a male-bodied person with a feminine essence, who was murdered in a hate crime at the age of sixteen. Discusses the traditional Native American perspective on gender and sexuality and the need for a balanced interrelationship between the feminine and masculine.
Two Spirits by Call Number: StreamingPublication Date: 2007Joey Criddle, a Native American gay man, recounts the story of how he underwent a transformation from a closeted Pentecostalist in Mississippi to the co-director of the Two Spirit Society of Denver.
Byron Chief-Moon: Grey Horse Rider by Call Number: StreamingPublication Date: 2007Byron Chief-Moon, Grey Horse Rider: Father of three, successful TV actor and artist and proud member of the First Nations two-spirited gay community, Byron Chief-Moon is a fascinating mesh of dynamic personae. But when he dances alone in the forest, the complexity of the real world washes away, and we can see his spiritual self take hold. Interviews combine with mesmerizing footage of his performances to capture the essence of this cutting-edge artist who founded the Coyote Arts Percussive Performance Association. By melding the history and art of his Canadian Blackfoot Confederacy tribe with issues of contemporary life, Chief-Moon's work makes profound statements about identity and tradition.- Water Flowing Together');" />Water Flowing Together byCall Number: StreamingPublication Date: 2008Offers an intimate portrait of a remarkable dancer, Jock Soto, who retired from the New York City Ballet at age forty, after a twenty-four-year career. Soto's journey as an openly gay man of Navajo Indian and Puerto Rican descent provides a rare glimpse into the life of a dancer and the disparate worlds which shaped this important artist. Soto was asked to join the New York City Ballet by George Balanchine at sixteen after first studying at the affiliated School of American Ballet on a full scholarship.
Kumu Hina by Call Number: StreamingPublication Date: 2013Imagine a world where a little boy can grow up to be the woman of his dreams, and a young girl can rise to become a leader among men. Welcome to Kumu Hina's Hawai'i. During a momentous year in her life in modern Honolulu, Hina Wong-Kalu, a native Hawaiian māhū, or transgender, teacher uses traditional culture to inspire a student to claim her place as leader of the school's all-male hula troupe. But despite her success as a teacher, Hina longs for love and a committed relationship. Will her marriage to a headstrong Tongan man fulfill her dreams? An incredible docu-drama that unfolds like a narrative film, KUMU HINA reveals a side of Hawai'i rarely seen on screen.
Being Thunder by Publication Date: 2021Sherenté, a Two Spirit Genderqueer teenager from Rhode Island's Narragansett tribe performs in dance competitions at annual regional powwows of New England tribes. There is no formal rule which prohibits Two Spirit Genderqueer people from competing in a category different from their birth gender. Wearing female fancy shawl regalia, Sherenté dances with joy and beauty. Behind the scenes, tribal leaders manipulate Sherenté's scores or disqualify them outright because of their belief in traditional binary gender roles. Blindsided by ongoing dishonesty and deception, Sherenté continues to perform in spite of insensitive behavior by tribal leaders and others in their community. Sherenté's enduring courage and self-respect are met with an outpouring of support from family, powwow attendees, and fellow competitors.
Two Spirits');" />
Water Flowing Together');" />Feature Films
The business of fancydancing by Call Number: Wells Library - Media Services - DVDsPublication Date: 2002Former Spokane Reservation best friends, Seymour and Aristotle have taken different paths when they are brought together for the funeral of an old friend. Both went off to college; one is now a successful poet, the other returned home embittered. Tensions and resentments flare as they meet again.- Johnny Greyeyes');" />Johnny Greyeyes byCall Number: Auxiliary Library Facility - Media ItemPublication Date: 2000Johnny Greyeyes is a powerful story of a Native American woman struggling to maintain strength, love and spirit. Since the shooting death of her father, Johnny has spent most of her life in prison. There, she forms a new family and falls in love with her cellmate Lana.
Drunktown's Finest by
Publication Date: 2015Three young Native Americans -- an adopted Christian girl, a rebellious father-to-be, and a promiscuous transsexual -- strive to escape the hardships of life on an Indian reservation.- Wildhood');" />Wildhood byPublication Date: 2021In a rural east-coast trailer park, Link lives with his toxic father and younger half-brother Travis. When Link discovers his Mi’kmaw mother could still be alive, it lights a flame and they make a run for a better life. On the road they meet Pasmay, a pow wow dancer drawn to Link. As the boys journey across Mi’kma’ki, Link finds community, identity, and love in the land where he belongs.
Johnny Greyeyes');" />
Wildhood');" />Short Films
- "I Still Believe" - Short film by Raven Davis about love, hope and wonder.
- "It's Not Your Fault" - Short movie by Raven Davis about the violence of online comments made towards Indigenous people, specifically Indigenous Women, children and 2 Spirit people. Bringing attention to the negligence of online/social media outlets allowing hate speech in Canada.
- Kent Monkman Studios - compilation of short films on YouTube from Kent Monkman (also known as Miss Chief Eagle Testickle), a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry working in a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance and installation.
- "Mars-Womb-Man" - short film by James Diamond. Man from Venus (super 8, 4 min, 1998) meets Mars Womb-Man. She's an answer without a question and he a question without answer. A sustainable foreground emerges only when they forge paths. A motion portrait where opposites distract and the peripheral rule is born.
- "Meskanahk (My Path)" - 'Meskanahk' is a video narrative of a young 'half-breed' man's journey off a Cree reserve. This video highlights the motivations that progressed his journey and the questions, regrets and fears raised on his path from childhood to adulthood. 'Meskanahk' chronicles the plight of this young man's fears of being in situations where he was always labeled as an: 'other', and how this had propelled him to run from situation to situation. In the end, when this young man stops running, he wonders if his parents hate him for having run away.
- The Misadventures of Pussy Boy - series of animated shorts by Alec Butler, featuring Alick, a trans/2spirit/intersex teen, going on various misadventures.
- Thirza Cuthand - collection of short films by queer transgender Plains Cree artist TJ Cuthand.
- Two-Spirit & Queer (NFB) - Collection of films by Indigenous two-spirit and queer filmmakers, from the National Film Board of Canada.
- Tits on a Bull - short film by Tim Worrall. Set in a Maori women's rugby team, Tits on a Bull follows Phoenix, the young star player, as she struggles to choose between her longtime friendship with aging coach Rusty or her new relationship with lesbian team-captain, Mel.
Other Online Videos
- 21st International Two Spirit Gathering Powwow - footage is of the Grand Entry of the 21 International Two-Spirit Gathering held at Aspen Lodge in Estes Park Colorado, for the Two-Spirit Society of Denver.
- As They Are: Two-Spirit People in the Modern World - 20 minute film by Mike Garrido and Tarek Tohme featuring Elton Naswood (Navajo), Ben Lucero Wolf (Kiowa), and Richard Eric Dearmore (Paiute).
- C2C: Two Spirit and Queer People of Colour Conference - C2C: Two Spirit & Queer People of Colour Call to Conversation with LGBT & Allies" met from Friday, October 20 to Sunday, October 22, 2017 at The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba. C2C was hosted by the University of Winnipeg (UW) in partnership with Two-Spirit People of Manitoba and QTPOC Winnipeg.
- The Candy Show - The Candy Show is a National variety TV series featuring the Aboriginal Comedian Candy Palmater and her music guest and a Performing artist on each episode.
- Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit identities - Author and Indigenous elder Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit identities.
- Our Families: LGBT / Two Spirit Native American Stories - We all go through some of the same struggles: we struggle to access healthy food, quality education, and affordable healthcare. These struggles affect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) families of color in very unique ways. This Our Families video features Native LGBT/Two Spirit families sharing their personal stories of struggle, acceptance, and family.
- Queer Profiles: Alec Butler (Cathexis LGBTQ Oral History) - In this fascinating interview, award-winning filmmaker, playwright and 2spirit/trans/intersex activist Alec Butler shares his story of growing up queer in Cape Breton and being drawn to art as a way of getting through decades of questioning his identity and gender.
- Two Spirit (Injunuity) - Two Spirit: A person of First Nations or Native American descent possessing both a male and female spirit. An umbrella term used to describe the fluidity of First Nations/Native American gender identity and sexuality with respect to traditional tribal roles. Featuring: Mica Valdez (Mexica), Nazbah Tom (Navajo/Diné), Arlando Teller (Navajo/Diné), Charlie Ballard (Anishinaabe, Sac & fox), Esther Lucero (Navajo/Diné).
- Two Spirit People - An overview of historical and contemporary Native American concepts of gender, sexuality and sexual orientation. This documentary explores the berdache tradition in Native American culture, in which individuals who embody feminine and masculine qualities act as a conduit between the physical and spiritual world, and because of this are placed in positions of power within the community.
Streaming Resources
- Ethnographic Video Online
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Access to classic and contemporary documentaries, previously unpublished footage from anthropologists and ethnographers working in the field, and some feature films. Includes searchable transcripts.
- Kanopy Streaming Video
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Kanopy Streaming Video gathers streaming videos from a variety of producers and makes them available to students. Faculty and instructors may request titles for purchase by the Libraries via the Kanopy Streaming Video site. Priority access will be given to faculty and instructors for class use.
Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQIA Drag Artists
Lady Shug Lady Shug, also known as Ky Victor is a 30-something nonbinary queer who uses the pronouns she, her, they, and them. A “proud three-quarters indigenous person of the Diné — Navajo — tribe,” Victor says they were born into the Kinłichii’nii (Red House) and Bit’ahnii (Folded Arms) clans and grew up int he four corners area of New Mexico.
Landa Lakes Originally from Oklahoma but based in San Francisco, Landa Lake’s career spans decades and platforms, although her name is mostly linked to the two-spirit drag community. Between participating in both American Indian and Gay and Lesbian student organizations in college as a youth and acting as a mentor to younger drag performers, two-spirit Chickasaw drag queen and community organizer Landa always played a massive part in the LGBTQ2S+ community and continues to. In addition to serving as a board member of Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS), a community-based volunteer organization offering culturally relevant activities for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Native Americans of the Bay Area, she’s been a judge on drag pageants. She has utilized drag to raise funds and awareness for communities. Currently, she and her drag troupe Brush Arbor Gurlz perform nationwide to educate others about Native politics and issues.
Sage Chanell Sage Channell (Shawnee) is the co-founder of the Oklahoma City Two Spirit Society, former Ms. International Two Spirit, and one hell of a shell shaker who has done a lot of work to build acceptance of two spirits at ceremonial grounds in Oklahoma.
Buffalo Barbie Travis ‘Buffalo Barbie’ Goldtooth switches gender depending on the context. She has typically identified as male when working in construction jobs and as female in her life outside of work. After Buffalo Barbie’s coming out was met with severe community backlash, her grandmother gave her the confidence to continue life as a transgender individual: “Don’t let anyone else tell you how to be!” Buffalo Barbie’s experiences are mirrored by those of Michelle Sherman. “When I came out to my family, they kicked me out,” she tells me, “but my grandma told them that this was a normal part of Navajo culture.”
Ilona Verley Ilona Verley is a drag artist and one of the Season 1 contestants of Canada's Drag Race. She is the first Indigenous, Two-Spirit and LA-Based queen to appear on Canada's Drag Race.
Ella Lamoureax Lamoureux has been doing drag for more than a decade and is a fixture — and trailblazer — in Kelowna’s vibrant drag scene. Recently, she was propelled into the national spotlight by appearing on the OutTV drag competition show Call Me Mother. Without drag, Lamoureux said she can’t imagine life being nearly as colourful.
Riel Deadly Riel Deadly is a tastawiyiniwak (two-spirit) mixed otipemisiwak (Cree-Metis person). He started doing drag after his Elder encouraged him to find ways to celebrate his masculinity. Riel is an active bi/pansexual recruiter, enticing everyone to fall in love with him by dual-wielding his masculine and feminine wiles.
Academic Texts
Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory by ISBN: 9780816533640Publication Date: 2016-04-01In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles. Asegi, which translates as "strange," is also used by some Cherokees as a term similar to "queer." For author Qwo-Li Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee history in order to listen for those stories rendered "strange" by colonial heteropatriarchy. As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future. The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Asegi Stories derive from activist, artistic, and intellectual genealogies, referred to as "dissent lines" by Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Driskill intertwines Cherokee and other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots activisms, queer and Trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native studies, and decolonial politics. Drawing from oral histories and archival documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered Two-Spirit critiques, Driskill contributes to the larger intertribal movements for social justice.
Erotics of Sovereignty: queer native writing in the era of self-determination by ISBN: 9780816677825Publication Date: 2012-04-18In 1970 the Nixon administration inaugurated a new era in federal Indian policy. No more would the U.S. government seek to deny and displace Native peoples or dismantle Native governments; from now on federal policy would promote "the Indian's sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community." In The Erotics of Sovereignty, Mark Rifkin offers a telling perspective on what such a policy of self-determination has meant and looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. Rifkin focuses on four Native writers -- Qwo-Li Driskill (Cherokee), Deborah Miranda (Esselen), Greg Sarris (Graton Rachería), and Chrystos (Menominee) -- approaching their fiction and poetry as forms of political theory. Rifkin shows how the work of these queer or two-spirit Native writers affirms the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty. In this way, we come to see how their work contests the homophobic, sexist, and exclusivist policies and attitudes of tribal communities as well as those of the nation-state.
Queer Indigenous Studies: critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature by ISBN: 9780816529070Publication Date: 2011-03-15"This book is an imagining." So begins this collection examining critical, Indigenous-centered approaches to understanding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) lives and communities and the creative implications of queer theory in Native studies. This book is not so much a manifesto as it is a dialogue -- a "writing in conversation" -- among a luminous group of scholar-activists revisiting the history of gay and lesbian studies in Indigenous communities while forging a path for Indigenouscentered theories and methodologies. The bold opening to Queer Indigenous Studies invites new dialogues in Native American and Indigenous studies about the directions and implications of queer Indigenous studies. The collection notably engages Indigenous GLBTQ2 movements as alliances that also call for allies beyond their bounds, which the co-editors and contributors model by crossing their varied identities, including Native, trans, straight, non-Native, feminist, Two-Spirit, mixed blood, and queer, to name just a few.
Spaces Between Us: queer settler colonialism and indigenous decolonization by ISBN: 9780816656325Publication Date: 2011-11-17We are all caught up in one another, Scott Lauria Morgensen asserts, we who live in settler societies, and our interrelationships inform all that these societies touch. Native people live in relation to all non-Natives amid the ongoing power relations of settler colonialism, despite never losing inherent claims to sovereignty as indigenous peoples. Explaining how relational distinctions of "Native" and "settler" define the status of being "queer," Spaces between Us argues that modern queer subjects emerged among Natives and non-Natives by engaging the meaningful difference indigeneity makes within a settler society. Morgensen's analysis exposes white settler colonialism as a primary condition for the development of modern queer politics in the United States. Bringing together historical and ethnographic cases, he shows how U.S. queer projects became non-Native and normatively white by comparatively examining the historical activism and critical theory of Native queer and Two-Spirit people. Presenting a "biopolitics of settler colonialism" -- in which the imagined disappearance of indigeneity and sustained subjugation of all racialized peoples ensures a progressive future for white settlers -- Spaces between Us newly demonstrates the interdependence of nation, race, gender, and sexuality and offers opportunities for resistance in the United States.
Becoming Two-Spirit: gay identity and social acceptance in Indian country by ISBN: 0803271263Publication Date: 2006-10-01The Two-Spirit man occupies a singular place in Native American culture, balancing the male and the female spirit even as he tries to blend gay and Native identity. The accompanying ambiguities of gender and culture come into vivid relief in the powerful and poignant Becoming Two-Spirit, the first book to take an in-depth look at contemporary American Indian gender diversity. Drawing on a wealth of observations from interviews, oral histories, and meetings and ceremonies, Brian Joseph Gilley provides an intimate view of how Two-Spirit men in Colorado and Oklahoma struggle to redefine themselves and their communities. The Two-Spirit men who appear in Gilley's book speak frankly of homophobia within their communities, a persistent prejudice that is largely misunderstood or misrepresented by outsiders. Gilley gives detailed accounts of the ways in which these men modify gay and Native identity as a means of dealing with their alienation from tribal communities and families. With these compromises, he suggests, they construct an identity that challenges their alienation while at the same time situating themselves within contemporary notions of American Indian identity. He also shows how their creativity is reflected in the communities they build with one another, the development of their own social practices, and a national network of individuals linked in their search for self and social acceptance.
Identities and Place: changing labels and intersectional communities of LGBTQ and two-spirit people in the United States by ISBN: 9781789204797Publication Date: 2019-11-01With a focus on historic sites, this volume explores the recent history of non-heteronormative Americans from the early twentieth century onward and the places associated with these communities. Authors explore how queer identities are connected with specific places: places where people gather, socialize, protest, mourn, and celebrate. The focus is deeper look at how sexually variant and gender non-conforming Americans constructed identity, created communities, and fought to have rights recognized by the government. Each chapter is accompanied by prompts and activities that invite readers to think critically and immerse themselves in the subject matter while working collaboratively with others.
Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco's Two-Spirit Community by ISBN: 9780295998503Publication Date: 2016-06-01The first book to examine the correlation between mixed-race identity and HIV/AIDS among Native American gay men and transgendered people, Indian Blood provides an analysis of the emerging and often contested LGBTQ "two-spirit" identification as it relates to public health and mixed-race identity. Prior to contact with European settlers, most Native American tribes held their two-spirit members in high esteem, even considering them spiritually advanced. However, after contact - and religious conversion - attitudes changed and social and cultural support networks were ruptured. This discrimination led to a breakdown in traditional values, beliefs, and practices, which in turn pushed many two-spirit members to participate in high-risk behaviors. The result is a disproportionate number of two-spirit members who currently test positive for HIV. Using surveys, focus groups, and community discussions to examine the experiences of HIV-positive members of San Francisco's two-spirit community, Indian Blood provides an innovative approach to understanding how colonization continues to affect American Indian communities and opens a series of crucial dialogues in the fields of Native American studies, public health, queer studies, and critical mixed-race studies.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal, & sovereignty in Native America by ISBN: 9780807003466Publication Date: 2022-04-26A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí'skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism's written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed--and Indigenous resistance is core to this story.
The Spirit and the Flesh: sexual diversity in American Indian culture by ISBN: 0807046159Publication Date: 1992-04-01Walter L. Williams's excellent research has produced one of the most extensive studies of the berdache culture among Native Americans. Unlike the larger American society, Native Americans historically have respected, and in many tribal nations venerated, homosexuals. Williams explains the berdache as a custom, its social roles, and the berdache history, including its introduction to the European concept of sin and intolerance of sexual diversity. The word berdache applies almost exclusively to males, mainly because historical records only relate dealings with aboriginal males, but Williams also includes a chapter on female sexual diversity, using the word amazon to describe these often warrior-like women.
Selected Scholarly Articles
- Driskill, Q-L. (2011). Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1), 69-92.
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Hames-García, M. (2013). What's After Queer Theory? Queer Ethnic and Indigenous Studies. Feminist Studies 39(2), 384-404.
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Robinson, M. (2020). Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity. Journal of Homosexuality, 67(12), 1675–1690.
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Robinson, M. (2017). Two-Spirit and Bisexual People: Different Umbrella, Same Rain. Journal of Bisexuality, 17(1), 7–29.
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Morgensen, S. L. (2011). Unsettling Queer Politics: What Can Non-Natives Learn from Two-Spirit Organizing? In Q.-L. Driskill, C. Finley, B. J. Gilley, & S. L. Morgensen (Eds.), Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature, 132–152.
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Lang, S. (2016). Native American men-women, lesbians, two-spirits: Contemporary and historical perspectives. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 20(3/4), 299–323.
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Kongerslev, M. (2018). Dance to the Two-Spirit. Mythologizations of the Queer Native. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 27(4).
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Greensmith, C., & Giwa, S. (2013). Challenging Settler Colonialism in Contemporary Queer Politics: Settler Homonationalism, Pride Toronto, and Two-Spirit Subjectivities. American Indian Culture & Research Journal, 37(2), 129–148.
Suggested Keywords for database searches relating to Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous* identity:
*while there is some overlap and commonalities in understandings of gender and sexuality across groups, when doing research relevant to Indigenous identities, it is always best practice to search using the names of individual tribes, nations, and communities when possible
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Indigenous Aboriginal Native First Nations Race POC (people of color) BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color)
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Queer Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Identity Sexuality Sexual Orientation Two-spirit (sometimes "two spirit", "two spirited" or "two-spirited") LGBT LGBTQ LGBTQ2S |
Gender Studies Gender Colonial(ism) Decolonial(ism) Decolonizing |
Relevant Databases
- Academic Search (EBSCO)
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Provides full-text coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles for most academic disciplines.
- Alternative Press Index
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Bibliographic database of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles from international alternative, radical, and leftist periodicals.
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender
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Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
- Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America
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Bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous culture, history, and life in North America. Includes more than 350,000 citations for newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, reviews, and trade publications from the United States and Canada with expanded content from Great Britain and Australia.
- Gender: Identity and Social Change
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Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
- Gender Studies Database
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Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, and gender identity.
- GenderWatch
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Full text database with a focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas.
- Indigenous Peoples of North America
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Covers the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada. The archive includes monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals and photographs. Includes access to Part I and Part II: The Indian Rights Association, 1882-1986. - LGBTQ+ Library Catalog
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The LGBTQ+ Library Catalog contains materials pertaining to asexual, bisexual, gay, intersex, lesbian, transgender, and queer issues. These resources include books, videos, CDs, and periodicals. This collection is intended to be a resource for both research and entertainment. - LGBTQ+ Source
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Index citations and selected full-text literature in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies - LGBT Thought and Culture
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LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
Online Resources
Selection of resources freely available online
- Queer Indigenous Poetics (ANMLY)
Lists of Resources & Readings
Lists of recommended titles from online sources
- Queer Native Pride 2022 (Letterboxd)