On June 21, Canada celebrates the heritage, diverse cultures and outstanding achievements of First Nations, Inuit and Métis with National Indigenous Peoples Day.
This is a day for all Canadians to recognize and celebrate the unique heritage, diverse cultures and outstanding contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. In cooperation with Indigenous organizations, the Government of Canada chose June 21, the summer solstice, for National Indigenous Peoples Day.
Let’s celebrate this day with 5 books by and about Indigenous lesbians!
1. Mohawk Trail by Beth Brant
This book gathers poetry, essays, memoir, and fiction by Canadian Indigenous writer Beth Brant. Brant uses these genres to examine various kinds of family: blood parents and children, siblings of like-minded politics, the mother-sister patter that informs lesbian couplings. She is especially wise about the necessity to re-create family in cultures such as her own, which other cultures have tried to eradicate. Each story a song, each song a poem, each poem a story, Mohawk Trail reverberates with the rhythmic strength of courageous and enduring love.
2. Fugitive Colors by Chrystos
Award-winning poetry from Chrystos, atwo-spirit Menominee poet. Her words and images breathe passion and intensity. Chaos reigns and rains down, bringing odd graces, politics and desire. Her words are made sharp enough to cut through the haze and bring the rhythms of urban life to the fore.
3. Along the Journey River: A Mystery by Carole Lafavor
Renee LaRoche lives and works among her fellow Red Earth Ojibwa on the northern plains in Minnesota. When priceless ceremonial artifacts go missing and the tribal chief is found with a bullet in his back, LaRoche investigates. Samantha, her white lover, tries to divert Renee from an increasingly dangerous path of investigation. ‘Suits’ (i.e., the FBI investigators responsible for Indian affairs) come to complicate the case, yet Native American wisdom prevails. First in the Renee LaRoche series (see also, Evil Dead Center, the last book in the series)
4. The Queerness of Native American Literature by Lisa Tatonetti
In The Queerness of Native American Literature, Lisa Tatonetti recovers ties between two simultaneous renaissances of the late twentieth century: queer literature and Native American literature. Throughout, she argues that queerness has been central to Native American literature for decades, showing how queer Native literature and Two-Spirit critiques challenge understandings of both Indigeneity and sexuality.
5. A Two-Spirit Journey – The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby
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 by her teen years she was 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 counselor; 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 her adopted city, Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humor, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.
