Two Spirits

I believe this is a hugely important historical film and encourage everyone to watch it. It deals with the hate crime against a nadle, or two-spirit Navajo youth.

Two Spirits are transgendered or gay people in Navajo culture. Virtually all native american cultures had their own version of Two Spirits, who were the shamans and keeper of lore.

Because of how history has been told in a dishonest way in our school system, not many people are aware of the connections between the indigenous and the queer struggles in this hemisphere. But I remember while watching the documentary 'Zapatista' on the Chiapas resurrection and struggle in Mexico, that there was deep awareness of the solidarity between the gay and indigenous struggles among Chiapas leaders, who used to tell stories to encourage people to be more tolerant of gays and spoke against homophobia all the time.

Two-spirit persons were both gay, lesbian and transgender, and before the europeans came they used to marry people of the same gender in THIS LAND, OUR LAND, regardless of what the xtian reich might wanna have us believe. They used to be the ceremonial and spiritual leaders and were afforded total and complete normalcy, not as a matter of civil rights or 'tolerance' but as a matter of basic human dignity.

There were several major massacres of two-spirits that were carried out by the whites during the expansion into the 'wild west', including some where dozens of two-spirits were mass murdered out of fear, hatred and panic and for no other reason.

What people need to understand, and the reason why this movie is so gravely important as a historical document, is that the killing of two-spirits represented the destruction of entire living libraries. Since they were the keepers of the culture and traditions, killing them represented the dismanteling of the cultural infrastructure of the native american, comparable to the extinction of the buffalo for some first nation peoples.

Please take the time to watch this movie if and when you can, and please share it with others.