Addendum to Episode 96: FIERCE
Monday, July 20

Laura: Hi friends, this is Laura. This is a little audio addendum to episode 96: FIERCE. This podcast has been, from the beginning, a journey of learning how to reach out to others instead of hunkering down, how to change and grow even as this world changes faster than we can keep up with it. 

The conversations I’ve had over the past four months have inspired and challenged me, and this was never truer than in my conversations with the thirteen incredible authors of FIERCE: Essays by and About Dauntless Women. FIERCE is a marvelous book, and I hope you’ll check it out for yourself.

After the FIERCE episodes went live, it came to my attention that we’d made an error that needed to be corrected. I’ll let Edissa Nicolás-Huntsman tell you more.

Edissa: There are instances where I have misrepresented their gender pronoun in my speaking, and I wish to apologize to Taté Walker, and also to correct that going forward--that Taté goes by “they” and “them.” And so please excuse any of those errors in my speaking, and please count them as lack of skill on my part. And I will try to do better. 

Laura: When Taté and I spoke, I asked Taté to tell me more about what it means to be Two Spirit. Here’s what Taté had to say:

Taté: It's a major part of my identity. So I think if you ask five different Natives what Two Spirit is, you'll get five different answers, and each are as accurate as the next. In my understanding of Two Spirit, the term of course comes from--it was created, really--in 1990, by a large group. It comes from an Anishinaabe term, which I cannot pronounce, but it essentially recognizes that there are more--there's more than one way to view gender. And it's not on a line. It's more of, like, say orbiting, right? It can change, it can flex, it can flow. And that's sort of the basics of that. I should also note here that Two Spirit is not a term for people who are not Indigenous. It's not something--I would never be able to call myself Jewish, for instance, because that's not my culture or people. Two Spirit, therefore, is not for anyone who's not Indigenous.

But I've come to grow in my Two Spirit-ness, in speaking with folks like of my own family and other Two Spirits who have--how do you say?--have had impact to a great degree on their communities because of their Two Spiritedness. It has become a responsibility versus just another adjective to add to my biography, right? It's not just Queer. It's a responsibility and accountability model that pushes me to give back, right? I have used this as my foundation when it comes to activism, when it comes to mothering, when it comes to just speaking with other people. Two Spirit is medicine. And in Lakota, “Winyan Witko” is what a lot of Lakota people of, say, feminine energies, would call themselves. “Winyan Witko” meaning “crazy woman.” “Witko” is the crazy part. And crazy, of course, is just sort of the closest English term that we can come up with, but it's so colonized. It's not a mental health term. It's a brave term--a bravery term. It's someone who could see beyond, someone who wasn't limited in the scope of their perceptions, and could just really encompass, say, again, like the solar systemic, cosmic realities and possibilities, if you will, that are always around us, right? It forces you to be humble because there's always more than one answer. And I really liked that. 

I spent 15, yeah, 15--oh gosh, more than 15--years as a journalist now, freelance and also working at daily newspapers. And, you know, storytelling is in my bones and in my ancestral memory. And Two Spirit just really provides, like, the energy that makes those stories worth telling, but also worth remembering, so other people tell them later. And I think there's a power in that . . . that isn't mine, of course, but it's just inherent within the medicine that is Two Spirit and Winyan Witko.

And I just can't even begin to describe just--not only how great it is to have that, but also just, like, Spiderman--you know, (with great ability) comes great responsibility. But it is. And I, they, encourage, you know, young Indigenous people who would consider themselves Queer, you know, and as they come to terms with, you know, if they want to identify as Two Spirit, because of course not all Queer Indigenous people are Two Spirit and not all Two Spirit are, you know, say trans or gay or bisexual, whatever it is. Right. And so giving them that responsibility with being Two Spirit I think is a great way to, you know, give them purpose. And again, helping them see themselves in a future for their communities. And I can't say more about it than that, I guess. But it's, it's, it's beautiful. And I am honored to have that. 

Laura: I want to thank Edissa for initiating this apology to Taté with tremendous humility, and I want to thank Taté for bringing us into deeper understanding. Edissa and Taté are modeling for me how to have conversations that can help us approach our differences with curiosity, and how to understand and support each other better. Thanks for listening and being on this journey with me.