Indigenous Alien
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A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder
by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer
University of Manitoba Press. 264 pages, $27.95

RACISM, sexism, and homophobia prevent most indigenous “two-spirit” Canadians from reaching their full potential. Actually, cisgendered, heterosexual, and male indigenous Canadians don’t fare much better.

Canada, like the U.S., has a shameful history of colonizing and systematically decimating its native population. Ma-Nee Chacaby, born in 1950, apparently escaped the forced assimilation of the residential school system, but her childhood in an isolated Anishinaabeg (indigenous) community in northern Ontario is described as far from idyllic, especially after the death of her beloved grandmother.