Special Event: We are Everywhere

"We Are Everywhere": Two-Spirit People and the Reclaiming of a Deep Past

Join Professor Greg Smithers to open new insights into histories of gender diversity and sexual fluidity in Native America. In 1990, a small group of Indigenous people left the Third Annual Gathering of Gay and Lesbian Indians in a buoyant mood. They had just concluded a conference in which they had coined a new name for themselves—Two-Spirit—and felt the tide of history turning in their favor. "We are everywhere," one delegate announced jubiliently. But what did it mean to be Two-Spirit? How did this moment, at the height of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, open new insights into histories of gender diversity and sexual fluidity in Indian Country? As we'll see, the 1990 gathering at Winnipeg became a portal into deep time and to vast repositories of historical knowledge once thought irretrievably lost.