Photostory: Faculty of Native studies hosts Indigenous Peoples and Pride celebration

For the third year, people gathered to celebrate Indigenous History Month and Pride Month at the U of A.

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On June 19, the faculty of Native studies hosted a celebration of Indigenous Peoples and Pride. The celebration included drag performances, jigging, hoop dancing, and throat singing. There were also tables of resources and vendors.

Kathy Hamlin opened and closed the celebration with a prayer. Hamlin is an Auntie from Peace River whose works advocating for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. She also teaches traditional knowledge to Indigenous Peoples and organizations that want to better understand Indigenous culture.

Hamlin is 67 and said that she didn’t come into her own as a bisexual woman until she was 64.

She said she didn’t come out, rather it was coming into that realization. Looking back, everything else in her life made sense.

“During the AIDS crisis and everything before and in between, how I was always the token straight person and I took a lot of beatings alongside my queer friends.”

“That’s one of the first things that the churches suppressed about us, our sexuality, not just as queer folks, but in general,” Hamlin said.

Ella Thompson, a Metis, Two-Spirit person, spoke before the performances. Thompson also works as the lead of Indigenous reconciliation at the University of Alberta Students’ Union (UASU).

“Being Metis and being Two-Spirit are both integral parts of my identity and both inform how I move through my life,” Thompson said. “My own Two-Spirited identity is a reflection of how my culture and my gender and sexuality are deeply intertwined.”

They spoke about the history of the term Two-Spirit. Thompson said it’s a modern term and there’s “a plethora of nation-specific terms for an abundance of expansive genders and sexualities.”

Many of these terms were lost to colonization and assimilation policies, Thompson said. Albert McLeod and Elder Myra Laramee coined the term Two-Spirit in Thompson’s hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1990 at the third annual Intertribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference.

“As an Indigenous person with deep roots in Winnipeg, this term holds a special place in my heart,” Thompson said. “I use this term and carry it with pride because my great uncle could not.”

“So when I call myself Two-Spirit and embrace both my Indigeneity and queerness, I am doing it both to represent my identity, but also to honour the legacy of my uncle and my other ancestors.”