[Re]storing Our Stories: Two-Spirit Presence in the Archives

Glitter swirled in my pink lemonade. It quenched my thirst and provided momentary relief as the blazing sun beamed down on top of the WAG-Qaumajuq rooftop on a summer afternoon. This Two-Spirit drag event kicked off the Pride week festivities–pink glitter lemonade being the only acceptable drink on this occasion. Local Honey and Feather Talia, drag artists from Winnipeg’s Two-Spirit drag collective, Bannock Babes, were set to perform.

To say that Bannock Babes are a staple to Indigenous drag in so-called Canada is an understatement—their artistic craft, creative visions, and confidence in their drag practices are unmatched. They paraded around the rooftop’s tables as Two-Spirit Elders and community members clapped and dished out well-deserved tips while The Kaptain kept energies high with a selection of upbeat tunes. Albert McLeod, a founding member of 2Spirit Manitoba Inc., introduced each queen while also sharing teachings about who we are and why our creative expression is so important. They acknowledged early summer as the beginning of Sundance season for our people (which was fitting considering that mine was scheduled for the following weekend) and spoke about how these dancers sacrifice food, water, and daily comforts to dance for the healing of our communities. McLeod drew a connection between drag performers to Sundancers and Pow Wow dancers, who also dance for that good life, by stating, “Two-Spirit drag is ceremony.” It made me realize the significance of Two-Spirit creative expression through performance, such as drag, and its interconnectedness to our ancestral ways of knowing that have been ruptured over time at the hands of colonial occupation. Because Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples have faced and continue to be subjected to disproportionate amounts of gendered violence, I truly believe that many of our teachings have been forced underground or into dormancy as a protective measure. We have been misrepresented in historical documentation, excluded from contemporary discourse, and continue to fight for the validity of our very existence. What are the reparative modalities that will tend to these absences and exclusions?

McCleod also sits on the advisory council for the Two-Spirit Archives housed at the University of Winnipeg Library, which was “established in 2019 to recognize, centre, document, and preserve the legacy of Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ people.”¹ From newsletters, magazines, photographs, posters, art, letters, textiles, video, books, and recorded oral histories, this archive includes representation grounded in community-driven frameworks while also respecting a wide array of Indigenous protocols and traditions. In many ways, it challenges the Western formation of the “archive,” which emerged from the colonial discourses of anthropology and ethnography. The Two-Spirit Archive functions as a reminder of historical portrayals of our community and how we are actively reclaiming our identities with the help of archival initiatives such as these. It also reframes the inner workings of historical archives by housing a wide array of materials, memories, and stories that root Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous voices. In doing so, it advocates for spaces that are for us and made by us. With its collection of visual ephemera, like Pow Wow regalia, safe sex posters, Pride parade memorabilia, and video documentation, this archive validates our creative expression by insisting that our multidimensional art forms and experiences are indispensable and incommensurable with the dominant logic of settler archives.

It is an understatement to say that relationships between Indigenous peoples and collecting institutions have been and continue to be strained. The sheer accumulation of historical documentation of Indigenous peoples has insidious ties to Western colonial supremacy and its assimilative tactics. Archives, anthropology, and ethnohistory all propel Eurocentrism by placing the West as the center of knowledge, innovation, and progress, while pushing non-Europeans to the periphery, deeming them primitive, uncivilized, and stuck in a fleeting past.² Pilfering Indigenous belongings, ceremonial objects, and yes, even the human remains of our relatives, the colonial archive is designed to categorize and simplify our ancestral knowledge(s) to suit its intellectual frameworks and perpetuate Eurocentric ideology and its posturing of superiority. As a result, our ways of knowing have been reduced to romanticized narratives of the “Vanishing Indian”—a group of people soon to become extinct at the hands of colonial, genocidal warfare. Anthropologists and ethnographers clamoured over one another to catch a glimpse (and a memento) of these noble, stoic, yet fleeting peoples for the archives.

We became further disenfranchised once they started displaying our belongings and peoples within their Eurocentric knowledge centers, such as museums, universities, and other collecting institutions, and perpetuated racist stereotypes that flattened our diverse, multidimensional knowledges into cheapened renditions of a primitive past. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Indigenous peoples were classified as objects of research³—the dehumanization of our peoples spurred settler dominance that justified its sanctioned violence against us and our custodial lands at the hands of the settler colonial state.

These colonial adaptations of our knowledge(s) also deflate our expansive, nation-specific concepts of sex, sexuality, gender, intimacy, and kinship systems. By forcing an authoritative stance over Indigenous cultures, Western discourses of anthropology and ethnography have controlled the narrative to disempower Indigenous peoples while condemning our approaches to gender and sexual diversity. The presence of Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples began appearing in archival materials in the early twentieth century, with anthropologists adopting the term berdache to describe them as “sexual and gender ‘deviants,’ notably among gender-transitive males who had sexual and domestic relations with men in tribal societies.”⁴

Yikes. With additional derogatory connotations that I won’t mention (Google it), the term berdache was used as a tool to uplift European declarations of strict gender binaries and heteronormativity while placing masculinity at the center of civil superiority. This created an overarching narrative that Indigenous understandings of gender and sexual diversity were “primitive,” propaganda to justify colonial violence against Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, trans, and queer peoples. Essentially, they encouraged gender-based violence as a morally righteous act. Our ways of life were (and continue to be) outside of Eurocentric, heteropatriarchal orders, and thus were (and continue to be) seen as a direct threat to the Canadian nationalist state.⁵ From the Indian Residential School System to Christian indoctrination of our peoples, from biological warfare in the form of settler diseases to the development of the Indian Act, the Canadian government has attempted to play every genocidal card in order to eliminate Indigenous notions of not only gender, sexuality, intimacy, marriage structures, and family roles, but also of our self-love, desire, and passion. Not only were our dynamic and fluid identities flattened and erased, but they were also hypersexualized, as acts of pleasure for Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples (as well as for women) were met with shame and resistance. Our bodies became fetishized through a white, cisgender, heteropatriarchal gaze—they viewed us and our land as penetrable and conquerable by colonial domination.

As a result, we lost the agency to govern our own lands, nations, and bodies, spurring irreparable physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual damage. With all this said, Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples have always been placed at a disadvantage under the colonial regime with the help of Western knowledge systems and their collecting institutions such as the archive. So, where does this lead us today? How can we represent ourselves in a way that validates our existence?

The Two-Spirit Archive is a significant resource for Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples—it not only provides insight into the lives of those who have, and continue to, fight for rights, but it also shows us that we’ve always been here, and we always will be. With its online collection, public accessibility comes to the forefront. This contrasts many archives that maintain bureaucratic barriers and restrictive access. From oral histories to documentation of significant gatherings, the Two-Spirit Archive is constantly updating its collection to ensure proper reception and accessibility across many mediums. This has led me to think about online platforms, such as social media, as digital archives in and of themselves. They are sites that allow us to tell our own stories, share our own lived experiences, and document our creative journeys. Many Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous drag artists turn to online platforms to display their multidisciplinary practices, such as Dene TikTokker, Chelazon Leroux.

She delves into drag, stand-up comedy, and social media content creation, and is best known for her Auntie character–with Deadly Like Auntie makeup tutorials, Rez ASMR, and her facetious commentary on Chief and Council. Most importantly, she uses her platform to educate and entertain audiences worldwide while acknowledging her responsibility to share her truth as a Two-Spirit performer. At the age of 23, Chelazon competed in season 3 of Canada’s Drag Race, providing widespread representation that encouraged many Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples to consider their own creative practices. Social media has opened an entirely new world of visibility for Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous drag performers who build constellations of diverse and dynamic experiences. In many ways, online platforms can act as archives that house our forms of self-expression, facilitating our self-determination and rejection of colonial strongholds over our autonomy, representation, and multidimensional identities. They are a creative log where our stories, bodies, and ancestral knowledges are honoured and celebrated through diverse approaches to gender and sexuality as Two-Spirit peoples. While this may not be an immediate fix, it is an act of rebellion against Eurocentric archives—sites of repair in a world that attempts to steal our narratives and eradicate our very existence. In this way, we have agency over our expansive creative expressions in response to the generations of absence and misrepresentation of Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous peoples.

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Adrienne Huard (they/them) is an Anishinaabe Two-Spirit performer, curator, writer, Sundancer, and Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba in the Indigenous Studies department. They are a registered member of Couchiching First Nation in Treaty 3 territory, and currently reside in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

1. The University of Winnipeg Archives, Two-Spirit Archives: UWinnipeg – Library (The University of Winnipeg, MB, 2023).
2.  J. M. Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York: The Guilford Press, 1993), 12.
3. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London; New York: Zed Books, 1999), 63.
4. Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley, and Scott Lauria Morgensen, “Introduction” Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature, ed. Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley, and Scott Lauria Morgensen (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011), 11.
5. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 110.