Indiana University and the city of Bloomington occupy lands of enduring historical and cultural significance, and that for some was, is, and will always be home, to a number of Indigenous groups, including the Myaamiaki (Miami), Lënape (Delaware), Saawanwa (Shawnee), kiikaapoa (Kickapoo), and Neshnabé/Bodwéwadmik (Potawatomi) peoples. We honor and acknowledge the ancestral and contemporary caretakers of this place, as well as our nonhuman spirits, elders, and guides, offer gratitude for being held and nourished by the land, and recognize the inherent sovereignty and resilience of all Native communities who have survived and still thrive to this day on Turtle Island in spite of the systemic subjugation, dispossession, and genocide that constitute the ongoing reality of settler-colonialism.
We encourage all, settlers and guests alike, to look beyond acknowledgement and engage with local Indigenous communities while also cultivating thoughtful relations of reciprocity with the sacred land you live on, as well as the many vibrant beings with whom you share it.
Further Resources & Reading
If you'd like to learn more about the practice and history of indigenous land acknowledgments, consult the resources below. You can also navigate to our full resource guide.
Preliminary Resources
Guides & Toolkits
Critical Takes
To learn more about the tribes, nations, and communities with ties to this land colonially known as the state of Indiana, check out their websites and consider supporting them in an ongoing way however you can:
Myaamiaki (Miami)
Lënape (Delaware)
Saawanwa (Shawnee)
Kiikaapoa (Kickapoo)
Neshnabé/Bodwéwadmik (Potawatomi)
We're glad you're here! This guide contains information and resources for the transgender and nonbinary communities at Indiana University Bloomington along with resources pertaining to transgender and gender studies. The guide is divided into seven pages: Transitioning at IU Bloomington, Academic Resources, Transgender Media, Ally Resources, Health Services, Legal Services, and Student & Community Organizations. Though this guide is focused on resources in Indiana and the Midwest, we have included some national organizations as well. On this page, you will find spotlights that highlight media by, for, and/or about transgender and nonbinary peoples.
The subject specialist and collection manager for this area is nicholae cline. If you would like to contact them, please use the profile box located on the left-hand side of this page. If you would like to request a purchase for our collections, you can use this form.
Leveraging decades of experience on the frontlines of power, we shift government and society towards a future where we are no less than equal. A4TE was founded in 2024 as the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF), two long-time champions for the trans community, merged together as one organization. Our policy experts, litigators, and community organizers work at all levels of government to ensure trans voices are not only heard, but embraced in rooms where they've long been ignored. As a trans-led nonprofit, we also help our community navigate the realities of law and policy through vital tools, knowledge, and services.
Videogames and gaming in general has often created spaces where people can escape, join a new community, and redefine reality - even if only for a couple hours. As such, videogames have become a wonderful resource for gender diverse and transgender people as they can log in and change how they appear in a world that they control. This feature shares the concept of transgender video game worldmaking and character building as well as spotlighting several games that transgender and gender diverse people created in order to process the stresses and pressures of gender norms in everyday life.
Further Readings
This feature highlights literature & poetics by Queer and/or Transgender Asian creatives. Here you will primarily find contemporary authors, artists, filmmakers, and poets writing from the intersections of LGBTQ+ experience and Asian identities. The number of creatives who hold these identities is vast and just a small section is included here. Explore the tabs to discover fiction, memoirs, poetry, zines, films/shorts, and graphics novels from Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander (QTAPI) creators. In celebration of AAPI Heritage month and beyond, we hope that you explore this guide during the month of May and year-round!
Video: ‘We’re Asians, Gay & Proud’: The Story Behind The Photo | NBC Asian America (2018)
For an introductory look at Queer & Asian voices in North America, check out the anthology featured below .
Next Steps
If you would like to engage more with this month-long celebration, the Libraries have curated a number of interrelated resources and features to continue and deepen the conversation. You'll find these, below:
Video: Malinda Lo, 2021 Young People’s Lit NatBookAward Winner, reads from Last Night at the Telegraph Club | National Book Foundation (2022).
Video: Samra Habib on the complexities of being Ahmadi Muslim and queer | The Walrus Talks (2019)
Video: Chrysanthemum Tran reads "I Don't Even Like Sports" | Ours Poetica (2022). See more of her work here.
Documentary: But I Love The Zine | KQED Truly CA featuring Jeffrey Cheung (Unity Press), V. Vale (Re/Search), Tiny Splendor, and Jess Wu (Mixed Rice Zine) (2019)
For more zines/small press/self-published content, check out the following links:
Mixed Rice Zines is a small diy press run by artist J Wu, featuring a mixture of voices in celebrating QTBIPOC resilience. Their zines invite queer and trans artists of color to send in writing, photography, comics, poetry, interviews, illustration and more.
View some of these zines for free on their website!
From the website: A "new weekly long-format webzine featuring stories and perspectives from yours truly, ~the Queer Asian community~. We invite you into the clubhouse: share your thoughts, discover art, make new friends, and experience a kind of soft love that you could previously only equate with a platter of freshly cut fruit. All Queer, Trans, APISWAD (Asian/ Pacific Islander/ Southwest Asian/ Desi) identifying folx are welcome here—but please, leave your shoes at the door!"
Trans Man Walking (2017-2019) by Andi Santagata is currently on hiatus but you can read past episodes for free online.
Tropic Zine is a forum for critical engagement with contemporary culture that seeks connections between Hawaiʻi and the tropical diaspora worldwide. Imagine the publication as a dynamic web of relations, simultaneously drawn together and repelled by experiences of place. It prioritizes independent, self-aware, queer, hybrid, engaged, contemporary voices who define culture on their own terms through new editorial projects and collaborations. Tropic Zine produces one print publication a year, which follows no set format or timeline, and publishes digital features on e-Tropic.
Canto Cutie is a juried art and literature zine that publishes the work of Cantonese artists and writers around the world. Founded in 2019 by Katherine Leung, it is edited by Tsz Kam and translated by G. The Cantonese diaspora has roots in Hong Kong, Southern China, Taiwan, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam Concentrations of Cantonese speakers can be found in every English-speaking country. Canto Cutie zines are available for purchase and to view for free online.
Dominique Duong is an illustrator and comic artist working in London, UK. Since her career began, her work has been published by SelfMadeHero, Discord Comics and Limit Break Comics, among others. She’s one of Broken Frontier’s Six Small Press Creators to Watch of 2020 and her comic The Dog & The Cat was nominated for an Ignatz Award. She’s worked on editorial and book illustration, theatre set designs, concept art, story-boarding and comics. Explore her webcomics here. Image from The Dog and the Cat, a short Ignatz Award-nominated queer fantasy romance comic based on the myth of the Cat and the Chinese Zodiac.
Sarula Bao is a Chinese American illustrator and graphic novelist based in Brooklyn. She graduated from RISD’s illustration department in 2016 and has since published a graphic novel, Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution and currently works as a comics instructor and freelance illustrator. You can explore some of her comics on her website. Left image: "To all the White Girls I've loved before." Right image: from "Thnks fr th mmrs"
Video: MariNaomi, Cartoonist/Community Organizer | XOXO Festival (2018)
Access options to the films and shorts below are either linked or noted in their description. See the following list for additional resources, lists, articles, and film festivals!
Video: "it's a girl!" short film by trâm anh nguyễn. (3 min). "It’s a Girl! is a self-portrait drawn from a Southeast Asian trans male perspective." (2020)
Video: Desi Queer with Rahul Mehta, SJ Sindu & Sreshtha Sen | AAWWTV (2017)
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is devoted to creating, publishing, developing and disseminating creative writing by Asian Americans, and to providing an alternative literary arts space at the intersection of migration, race, and social justice. Since our founding in 1991, we have been dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. At a time when migrants, women, people of color, Muslims, and LGBTQ people are specifically targeted, we offer a new countercultural public space in which to imagine a more just future. Explore The Margins digital magazine, The Margins Fellowship, and upcoming events.
Kaya Press is a group of dedicated writers, artists, readers, and lovers of books working together to publish the most challenging, thoughtful, and provocative literature being produced throughout the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas. We believe that people’s lives can be changed by literature that pushes us past expectations and out of our comfort zone. We believe in the contagious potential of creativity combined with the means of production. Founded in 1994, Kaya Press has established itself as the premier publisher of cutting-edge Asian and Pacific Islander diasporic writers in the United States. Our diverse list of titles includes experimental poetry, noir fiction, film memoir, avant-garde art, performance pieces, “lost” novels, and everything in between. Check out Milkteeth Books, the intern-run chapbook imprint of Kaya Press
Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. Kundiman creates a space where Asian Americans can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the ever changing diaspora. We see the arts as a tool of empowerment, of education and liberation, of addressing proactively the legacy we will leave the future. In the 2000s, poets Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi envisioned a space that would facilitate the creation of new work, foster mentoring relationships, and address the challenges facing Asian American writers. Out of those discussions, Kundiman presented its inaugural Workshop Retreat for poets at The University of Virginia in 2004. The Retreat has taken place annually since then, welcoming over 250 fellows and 50 acclaimed faculty members, and is now hosted by Fordham College at Rose Hill.
The National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) empowers LGBTQ+ Asians and Pacific Islanders through movement capacity building, policy advocacy, and representation. Founded in 2005 as a federation of dozens of small, volunteer-run groups across the country, NQAPIA is embedded in generations- and centuries-old traditions of resistance, resilience, and community-making among LGBTQ+ Asians and Pacific Islanders.
The Queer Asian Social Club started out as The Gaysian Project. In 2018, I developed a panel for a queer fandom convention to explore Queer Asian Representation in the Media. We are now the Queer Asian Social Club focusing on sharing and celebrating stories of individuals and activists in our community through our weekly web-zine DIS-ORIENT, our instagram page, and our podcast the Queer Asian Podcast Club! While our name is changing, the core of who we remains the same. We are a collective that is focused on using visibility to empower community for queer and trans-APISWAD folks.
unerased book club: community through Asian American literature. A project of Rising Voices. Join unerased May book club where they will be reading Almost American Girl by Robin Ha.
Asian Pride Project celebrates the journeys, triumphs and struggles of LGBTQ individuals and our Asian and Pacific Islander (API) families and communities. We seek to capture these stories by using the arts – film, video, photography and the written word – as a medium for social justice and advocacy in the LGBTQ realm.
How Uniting Queer Asians Through Nightlife Became a Global Movement: From Bubble T in New York City to Worship in Sydney, Arthur Tam looks at the nightlife spaces that are uplifting and unifying the queer Asian diaspora all over the world
How Bubble_T is Shaping the Asian LGBTQ Community’s Future
Meet the Photographer Taking Intimate Portraits of Queer Asian Nightlife in NYC by Leila Ettachfini. "Photographer Aki Kame focuses on lifestyle portraiture by day, but at night they head to parties like NYC's Bubble T to capture their friends and community."
Nancy is a critically-acclaimed podcast featuring queer stories and conversations, and hosted by two best friends, neither of whom are named Nancy. It’s a podcast about how we define ourselves, and the journey it takes to get there. Hosted by Tobin Low and Kathy Tu. Nancy is no longer in production but you can listen to their archive of episodes for free here.
Yellow Glitter with Steven Wakabayashi is a podcast on mindfulness through the eyes & soul of queer Asian perspectives. Every episode, my guests and I share with you what’s on our minds on topics around racial identity, queerness, activism, and life. Come join our conversation. Listen here!
Gaysian by Geoffrey Gaurano is a show that celebrates, educates, and raises awareness about the gay and Asian lived experience through interviews with AAPI or gaysian scholars, activists, and creatives. Subscribe on Spotify for new episodes every other Tuesday.
In recognition of Women's* History Month in March, we have curated a selection of materials and resources from our collections to honor the contributions of transgender women across the arts, from fiction and poetry, to feature films and documentaries, to podcasts. We have also put together a sampling of important transgender studies texts, to help ground an understanding of transgender identity and embodiment.
As an introduction to this feature, we have also created a playlist of music by transwomen and other artists who explore and embody femininity outside of cisnormative conceptions of gender. In this extensive, genre-spanning mix, you'll find a variety of musical styles and sounds, including hip hop, electronic, ambient, heavy metal, and punk, among others. To learn more about this, feel free to explore some of the resources we used to make the playlist:
*Note: Trans women are women. For the purposes of this feature, we have chosen to center feminine expression and embodiment, and so include contributions from artists and scholars who identify as women, whether cisgender or transgender, as well as nonbinary and genderqueer individuals who are femme, femme-of-center, or who identify with or perform femininity in some way. For more on these concepts, check out this article from the ACLU ("Trans Women are Women") or explore some of the resources from this feature on "The Metaphysics of Gender" from the Philosophy Research Guide.
As with many of these national commemorations, one month is never enough to fully honor and celebrate the history and culture of marginalized communities, let alone heal the legacies (and ongoing reality) of harm and systemic oppression they've experienced. We recognize that resisting and rejecting (trans)misogyny and cisheteropatriarchy cannot be manifested simply through resource lists and guides, however important and well-intentioned, and that justice and liberation for women, expansively defined, and all who challenge and live outside of binary gender is the work of generations. We are, nevertheless, committed to doing what we can to work towards a different, more equitable and caring future.
If you'd like to engage more deeply with Women's History Month, units across the Libraries have created a number of interrelated resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of this commemoration. You'll find those, below:
Able to play on: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, itch.io, Steam, Epic Games Store
Able to play on: itch.io
Able to play on: itch.io
Able to play on: PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Steam
Coming soon to play on: Steam
Able to play on: freegames.org
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).
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:
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.
Video: Author and Indigenous elder Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit identities | Out Saskatoon (2018)
Access to classic and contemporary documentaries, previously unpublished footage from anthropologists and ethnographers working in the field, and some feature films. Includes searchable transcripts.
Access is for Volumes 1-4.
Ethnographic Video Online, Vols. I and II: Foundational Films
Includes classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent.
Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. III: Indigenous Voices
Includes films by indigenous filmmakers. Emphasis is on the human effects of climate change, sustainability, indigenous and local ways of interpreting history, cultural change, and traditional knowledge and storytelling.
Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. IV: Festivals and Archives
Includes titles by contemporary visual anthropologists. Also contains the full catalog of anthropology films from Berkeley Media, formerly known as the University of California’s Extension Center for Media.
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.
Hames-García, M. (2013). What's After Queer Theory? Queer Ethnic and Indigenous Studies. Feminist Studies 39(2), 384-404.
Robinson, M. (2020). Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity. Journal of Homosexuality, 67(12), 1675–1690.
Robinson, M. (2017). Two-Spirit and Bisexual People: Different Umbrella, Same Rain. Journal of Bisexuality, 17(1), 7–29.
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.
Lang, S. (2016). Native American men-women, lesbians, two-spirits: Contemporary and historical perspectives. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 20(3/4), 299–323.
Kongerslev, M. (2018). Dance to the Two-Spirit. Mythologizations of the Queer Native. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 27(4).
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.
*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
Indigenous Aboriginal Native First Nations Race POC (people of color) BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color)
|
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 |
Provides full-text coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles for most academic disciplines.
This multi-disciplinary database provides full-text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
Bibliographic database of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles from international alternative, radical, and leftist periodicals.
Focus is on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, Indigenous Peoples, LGBT, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
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.
Includes access to five modules: LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 1; LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 2; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France Digital Archive.
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.
This resource covers a wide range of topics including acculturation, archaeology, education, Ethnohistory, and economic development, folklore, the gaming industry, missions, mythology, religion, and tribal governments.
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.
Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.
Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, and gender identity.
Gender Studies Database provides indexing and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship. It offers over a million records from scholarly and popular publications, including journals, books, conference papers and theses.
Full text database with a focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas.
GenderWatch is a full text database of nearly 400 periodicals and other publications that focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, and special reports.
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.
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.
The LGBTQ+ Library provides lending services to the entire community; anyone can register to become a patron with a photo ID.
Index citations and selected full-text literature in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies
Includes a variety of scholarly, popular and regional resources, journals, books, magazines and more.
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.
Selection of resources freely available online
Lists of recommended titles from online sources