IN MAINSTREAM LGBT CULTURE, a person’s identity is often defined by the act of “coming out” to family, friends, and others. Many Native Americans who identify as Two-Spirit see it differently. Cree Two-Spirit scholar Alex Wilson describes the Two-Spirit journey as one of “coming in,” a reframing that shifts the focus from public disclosure to a return—a reclaiming of one’s place within family, community, culture, and land.
“Two-Spirit” is a contemporary term used by Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada. It denotes an Indigenous LGBT person and embraces traditional cultural identities outside the Western-based binaries of gender and sexuality, ones that existed prior to colonization. Anishinaabe Elder Myra Laramee received the term in a dream and proposed it in 1990 at the Third Annual Inter-Tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in Winnipeg, Canada. Since its introduction, the Two-Spirit concept has become a community organizing tool and a pathway for Indigenous LGBT people to return to their tribal communities.
Prior to the arrival of European settlers in North America, many Native American communities recognized and embraced multiple genders and fluid roles, and many still do. Plural genders like those acknowledged by Native American communities are mirrored in cultures worldwide, such as the Zapotec muxe in Mexico, the Bugis bissu in Indonesia, and the hijra in South Asia. The idea that more than two genders exist is deeply rooted in history, including within the lands now known as the United States.
Colonization systematically disrupted traditions honoring gender and sexual diversity and imposed rigid Western norms, sought to dismantle Indigenous kinship systems, and enacted cultural erasure through mechanisms such as Christian boarding schools, bans on ceremonial practices, land dispossession, and widespread violence. Settler colonialism in North America operated on the imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny, a doctrine that held that it was the God-given right of the United States to overspread the continent from coast to coast, and that justified the theft of Indigenous lands and the perpetration of genocide. Gender was also weaponized in this process. Cree Métis Two-Spirit Elder Albert McLeod has said that gender too was one such “tool of colonization,” pointing to the assimilationist agenda of the more than 300 federally backed Christian residential schools established across the U.S. and Canada.
At these institutions, Native children were forcibly separated from their families, stripped of cultural expressions such as braided hair, and compelled to adopt rigid, binary gender norms unfamiliar to their communities. The schools functioned as engines of indoctrination, erasing traditions and reshaping Indigenous identities for generations. Human remains of more than 1,000 people, mostly Native students, have been found at three residential schools in Canada. Despite this, investigations into the legacies of these residential schools remain glaringly absent in the U.S.—a country often more comfortable erasing Native histories than confronting them.
The Two-Spirit concept of “coming in” rather than “coming out” resonates deeply for me. As a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, I grew up with stories of removal, of collective trauma, and of resilience. My family’s history traces back to the Trail of Tears, when our ancestors were forcibly displaced from our traditional homelands in the Southeast. I had relatives in federal Indian boarding schools. Yet despite this deep connection to our story, I knew almost nothing about Two-Spirit identities while growing up. The term itself was first articulated only seven years before I was born, and I encountered it much later, during a program for American Indian social workers. As a gay Chickasaw citizen, I felt an immediate sense of affirmation.
A defining “coming in” moment for me came in 2024 at the 37th International Two-Spirit Gathering, when I was invited to help coordinate the community resource fair with the All Nations Two-Spirit Society. By then, I was a graduate student in New England, far from home. The chance to return to Oklahoma—a place layered with both nostalgia and complexity—felt like a divine calling. The gathering took place at the same grounds where I had attended a United Methodist Church (UMC) camp every summer as a youth, a space where being LGBT was discouraged. Returning to that canyon as part of a historic Two-Spirit event carried a certain irony. Some of my favorite counselors and fellow campers from that time are now openly queer, a reminder of how much society has changed and that the UMC in recent years has taken progressive strides toward LGBT affirmation.
As a Chickasaw first-generation student from a town of 450 in the desolate Oklahoma panhandle, I felt estranged from my community for many reasons that other young gay boys do. Though I had a natural curiosity as vast as the Great Plains, I was taught from an early age that this curiosity was dangerous. I still remember the tears running down my cheeks as I read bell hooks’ essay “Theory as a Liberatory Practice.” In it, hooks writes: “Living in childhood without a sense of home, I found a place of sanctuary in ‘theorizing,’ in making sense out of what was happening.” I knew that sense of being a stranger without a sense of home. As a youth, I found refuge in Canyon Camp, a place where I could step outside the smallness of my hometown and feel a little less like an outsider, finding connection among peers from other small towns. Though it was not necessarily an LGBT-affirming space, it was “queer” in the ways it allowed us to express emotions and engage in truth-telling outside the towns where we were raised.
As a self-described “emo” kid—complete with Hot Topic bracelets, floppy Justin Bieber hair, and Silly Bandz—I experienced the canyon as both oasis and sanctuary, offering emotional and spiritual grounding during a time when home life was tough, feelings ran high, and identities felt fragile. Returning there later in life, I carried with me the memory of that younger self who had once sought safety and belonging in the canyon’s embrace. Now I was meeting the space with new layers of life perspectives and tools that I’d acquired after many years of travel, a doctoral program, and extensive therapy.
At Canyon Camp, I ran the full emotional marathon: I wept, I belly-laughed, I remembered. I sat in my first sweat lodge, led by the legendary Beverly Little Thunder, Lakota Two-Spirit elder and author of the memoir One Bead at a Time. I healed. And, most importantly, I came in. What struck me most at the gathering was connecting with other Chickasaw Two-Spirits who were further along in their own coming-in journeys—a reminder that I was not walking this path alone.
One revelation hit especially close to home. I learned that in recent years Chickasaw LGBT youth in Byng, Oklahoma, had worked with our traditional language teachers to revitalize a phrase in our language, Shilombish Toklo‘, which loosely translates to “two spirits.” Suddenly, the younger version of myself—the awkward counselor wearing long, plaid cargo shorts at Canyon Camp—felt tethered to this new language marker. Curious, I set out to understand what it meant.
Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), a Chickasaw linguist, artist, and cultural historian, explained that Shilombish Toklo‘ is a contemporary term that has been used to reflect Chickasaw Two-Spirit identity: “We are in the business of translating similar items into our language, so we did.” The tribe recently launched a full-time, two-year Chickasaw language immersion program designed to create fluent speakers and support language revitalization efforts. Hinson explained that while the term itself may not have a “historical precedent,” it resonates with younger Chickasaws who pushed for its creation, asking for cultural engagement and safer spaces—often online—to talk about LGBT issues. Based on data from a 2024 survey by the Trevor Project, 46 percent of LGBT youth in Oklahoma had seriously considered suicide in the previous year. For transgender and nonbinary youth, this number was 52 percent.
Faithlyn (Taloa) Seawright, a second-language learner, artist, and culture bearer, put it plainly: “Chickasaw people as a whole are still learning and embracing the term Two-Spirit.” She added that it’s been a bridge to connect with other tribes, whether at stomp dances or pride events. Faithlyn carried that bridge into the streets as she marched in the Oklahoma City Pride parade in 2024 as part of the First Americans contingent and helped stage the first Two-Spirit performance hour at OKC Pride in 2025. Faithlyn also recently launched the Inchunwa Project to recover Southeastern traditional tattooing practices. When I met her at the gathering, she wore those tattoos with radiant pride, her spirit the brightest in the room.
Chickasaw Two-Spirit activist Trent Williams pointed out that reclaiming cultural traditions and gender expansiveness are deeply intertwined in the Chickasaw resurgence. “It’s hard not to notice that a disproportionate number of Chickasaws involved in language revitalization and incho’wa [traditional tattooing]are Two-Spirit. … In my own experience, the energy for reclaiming a more expansive vision of gender has bled over into these other traditions.” For Trent, this work is not only about individual identity but also about collective healing and cultural continuity.
Language, in particular, stands at the center of his activism. “For me, language is the most crucial plank of the larger platform of reclaiming our traditions,” he said. “Our term for feminine males, hattak iklanna’, can be translated as ‘in-the-middle person,’ or ‘part-way person.’” While he always knew that feminine males had distinct social roles in Chickasaw and other Southeastern tribal communities before missionaries arrived, it wasn’t until adulthood that Trent realized how profoundly the meaning of hattak iklanna’ resonated with his own life. “It was a revelation for me to learn … that the meaning of this term matched my own experience of gender, my own lifelong in-betweenness.”
Trent’s story illuminates how the reclamation of language and cultural practices is inseparable from broader movements of Indigenous activism: recovering not just words and traditions, but also the expansive visions of gender and identity that those words and traditions carried. But not everyone is fully comfortable with Shilombish Toklo‘, Trent admitted. By stressing the “in-between” nature of this person, “the term obscures our traditional sense of humans as two-spirited beings.” On the other hand, Chickasaw Two-Spirit drag performer Landa (Miko) Lakes objects to applying the term Shilombish Toklo‘ to any one group: “I use it to identify myself as Indigenous and having a spiritual soul. … In that thinking, we all have two spirits.” Her reflection hit on a harder truth: Our Chickasaw traditions were reshaped early by missionary influence. Boarding schools and church doctrine erased much of the cultural knowledge around gender and sexuality. As Landa said: “We haven’t had a traditional medicine man since 1953.”
Landa’s great-grandfather was a Presbyterian minister who preached in Chickasaw churches. When he died, he left a steamer trunk filled with Choctaw Bibles, hymns, and pamphlets dating back to the time when tribes were pushing for an “Indian State” in Oklahoma. In one sermon, Landa found a story about a stomp dance leader being criticized for living with a man as his wife—proof that acceptance, however contested, once existed. Still, there is momentum. “Two-Spirit Chickasaw organizing can really give strength to those that come after us,” Landa said. “We enrich the culture by being part of it.”
Chase Bryer, a doctoral candidate at Brown University School of Public Health, is a gerontological social worker and host of the Small Town Queers Pod podcast. He dedicates this article to Beverly Little Thunder, who died on July 18th.
