T-Girls at the M

This past Saturday was the monthly MN T-Girls event and we did one of my favorite things ever, exploring a new museum!

We visited the Minnesota Museum of American Art (known as the M) in Saint Paul which featured beautiful art in a beautifully repurposed building which are reasons enough to go, but there was also an exhibit titled Queering Indigeneity.

From their website:

Queering Indigeneity is a multi-year, multi-generational project that celebrates the vision and diversity of 2-Spirit, Native queer, gender expansive artists in the Upper Midwest. In seeking out and amplifying voices of Indigenous artists and culture bearers, the M, guided by Penny Kagigebi, hopes to influence the types of artists who are supported, seen, and centered at the museum, and to show both Indigenous and non-Indigenous visitors a more comprehensive and complex story of this region’s art and artists.

There’s a confluence of beautiful potential when 2-Spirit, Native queer, and gender expansive relatives fully embody their gifts. However, disruption lingers in the form of boarding school-infused homophobia and health disparities in Native communities, and in the past has erased this demographic from traditional practices, ceremonies, and stories. 2-Spirit medicine carries tremendous potential for healthy and vibrant Tribal communities. Queering Indigeneity offers one pathway for 2-Spirit cultural reclamation.

I was familiar with 2-Spirit as gender identity, but my goodness I had no idea how much I didn’t know. The differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures when it comes to queer and non-binary people is significant. I think this text from the exhibit really emphasizes that contrast:

How wonderful would it be if every culture celebrated a gender expansive person in the way that some Indigenous tribes do? Can you imagine how it would feel to be considered a gift to a community? To a family?

The exhibit is wonderful and is a reminder how queer folks have always been here and in many ways the world is going backwards when it comes to how we are viewed.

If you can, I encourage you to see the exhibit.

Love, Hannah