TWO SPIRITS director, Lydia Nibley was honored to be featured in the University of Southern California’s Visions and Voices initiative at a day-long event featuring films and a discussion to examine the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.

More info here

PBS has submitted TWO SPIRITS for consideration for the Peabody award. It’s an honor to be in such fine company. We’ll keep you posted.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy and anti-defamation organization, announced today the nominees for its 23^rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards and TWO SPIRITS was among them!

By recognizing and honoring media for outstanding images of the LGBT community, the GLAAD Media Awards serve as a benchmark for the media industry and complement GLAAD’s work to bring LGBT images and stories to Americans.

The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives.

“As media continue to tell new stories about LGBT people and families, a majority of Americans now support full equality of LGBT Americans,” said Mike Thompson, GLAAD’s Acting President.  “This year’s nominees enlighten and entertain, while spotlighting the diversity of our community. Audiences expect to see their own worlds reflected in media, and today more than ever, those include the lives of LGBT people. Viewers know that LGBT characters and stories are simply natural extensions of, and glimpses into, their own experiences from across America.”

A complete list of GLAAD Media Awards nominees is available at www.glaad.org/mediaaawards.

Here’s a very thoughtful interview from the RadioWest program heard nationally on Sirius XM Public Radio. Share this in-depth conversation and enjoy a discussion that is redefining gender and sexuality for many people.

When people know, they do care

A prominent philanthropist once turned away our modest funding request saying, “No one knows, and no one cares,” as his response to Fred’s story and the message of the Native Two-Spirit tradition. But now that TWO SPIRITS has aired with such great success on PBS, many people do KNOW and do CARE. Now we can change even more hearts and minds.

Many of you have asked us (some demanded even) to work harder to get the film placed in more colleges and universities, communities of faith, and in the hands of more nonprofit organizations.

Contribute to this campaign so that more TWO SPIRITS DVD’s can be distributed to libraries, nonprofit organizations for use in their programs, tribal organizations, colleges and universities. We’ve got a long list of organizations standing by to receive copies provided by viewers. Thank you for expanding the reach of the film in this important way.

PBS stations that chose to air TWO SPIRITS covered about 90% of the country, but that leaves roughly 10 percent where the film is needed most and hasn’t been seen. We’re working quickly to raise $10,000 to target outreach and education efforts to place TWO SPIRITS where it can do great good.

Please help make this happen–a few dollars go a long way

After breaking all records for audience engagement in the history of PBS-Independent Lens, TWO SPIRITS  received the Audience Award as the highest-rated film of the 2010-11 season by online voting and other measures of audience support!

Thousands of meaningful conversations emerged online as the film was screened 1,495 times across 140 stations from June 14-29th, 2011.

Over 150 nonprofit partner organizations participated in special screenings attended by over 50,000 people in 100 cities nationwide. In nineteen days 5,000 people commented on the film and over 2 million read about it on Facebook.

Thanks to all who supported by watching, voting and spreading the word about TWO SPIRITS!

More Articles:

Independent Lens blog:  Audience Award Winner Two Spirits Was a Community Effort

indieWIRE blog: Two Spirits Receives the Audience Award from PBS-Independent Lens

Please share your stories, ideas and comments here. We’d love to hear how Two Spirits has touched your life.

Melissa Thompson wrote:

I received (my two copies) in the mail, watched it within 15 minutes and cried my heart out. Beautifully done but so, so sad. When will we as humans realize we are all one, and respect eachother?? I doesn’t feel right to say thank you …but thank you for sharing him/her with us, in that way “Fred’s spirit will continue to soar”.

Lenny Hayes wrote:

A beautiful and tragic story……. Quite educating on the meaning of being Two-Spirited. I am a proud Dakota Two-Spirit of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. Our voices are being told through this story. Thank You so much for making this film!

Brey wrote:

People are scared of the unfamiliar, not normal. I can speak from a female point of view. I am 41 right now, and have accepted who I am, but for years struggling with a small town mid-west upbringing. My mother was very supportive of me being me, which was an extreme “tomboy” to the point of being mistaken as a boy quite often in my pre-teen years. However society and other very influential people in my life were not.

My opinion is that a lot of that confusion in school led to many many fights when I was young. Girls couldn’t figure out why boys liked me even though I dressed like them and not all girly… I could do wood and metal shop as well as any of the boys. To this day my children know that I have more of a male personality than a female, and they are good with it.

Winnie Mabee wrote:

I just saw this film in Columbia, Missouri. It was great. If you get the chance to see it or have the opportunity to use it in your classroom, DO IT!!! It was truly moving and definitely educates people about what is going on as far as hate crimes and educates about genders and two spirits.

Eva-Genevieve Scarborough wrote:

We showed the film at our Church a few months ago and it was very well received – several people told me it opened their eyes on the subject. I have watched the movie myself several times because much of it strikes a chord with my own feelings and experiences as a transgender/two-spirit woman.

Christie Walter wrote:

As a two spirited Wolastoqiyik Maliseet person: I want to say Woliwon (thank-you) for the experience of witnessing that video. Peace

Two-Spirit by Mariposa Villaluna

When I was little, I always knew my biological father was different than other dads. I used to tell my childhood friends, “My Dad acts like your Mom.” I remember the times when he would realize he would seem more feminine and then try to ‘buck up’ and act more masculine. I thought it was always funny, and didn’t really understand it when I was little. I remember telling him, “Dad, I like it more when you are like a girl instead of you trying to be a boy.”

When I got older, I started to learn what the word gay meant. I started to ponder if my dad really had two spirits. I thought he did, but I didn’t understand how could he be married to my mom if he was. To me, it was no secret that my Dad never loved my mom the way I saw other two people love each other. I even remember finding an old picture of my parents kissing, and was so surprised to find out that they actually ever kissed.

Eventually my parents divorced, and I never wanted that to happen. I finally thought, well maybe they both can be happy since they don’t have each other. My mother found happiness without him, and remarried. My biological father found hate, became abusive, and a new wife whom he never kissed either.

My biological father would talk about how gay people are evil and sinful, and how they were going to hell. I thought it was weird how he always talked bad about gay people, and I knew he was gay. In my teenager circle, gay guys were the coolest guys, and I always came to them for advice. Finally, I thought I am going to confront him about being gay. I told him, “I think that God loves gay people as much as anyone else. God doesn’t hate gay people.” He was so furious that I said this, and began to scream and beat me in different ways. He finally admitted, “I used to be gay.” He still couldn’t say “I am gay.” He started to disown me after this, and eventually I was returned custody back to my mom.

I grew up with a Biological father who was taught by a society to hate himself for who he is. He learned that hate so well that he hurt his child physically, mentally, and spiritually. I still think if I had a father who loved himself, how would I have turned out? Would I still have him in my life? Could he heal himself and be free so could we have a relationship again?

I took these questions with me when I went to see the movie Two-Spirits, a movie about a Dine’ nádleehí (someone who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits) named Fred Martinez Jr. who was brutally killed about an hour from where I live. Traditionally in his culture, being two-spirit is seen as a balance and a gift. A gift my father never embraced, and was taught to be ashamed of. Martinez was sixteen, and one of the youngest hate-crime victims and was killed in Cortez, CO.

I have traveled to the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation many different times, which is next to Cortez, CO. I remember having a conversation with one of the tribal citizens over there. He would tell me, “I don’t go to Cortez. Every time I go there get in a fight, they are so racist there.” With talking to other people on the reservation, he was not the only one who thought this. It seemed as if the folks I talked to when straight to Wal-mart when entering Cortez and then right back to the reservation. I think about Fred, not only was he Native but also openly a two-spirit and was never ashamed of whom he was meant to be.

Fred Martinez left to go to a rodeo carnival and five days later was found dead. He was beaten to death. A human being who had so much love, caring, and laughter and gave it to the world was killed. That boy felt no guilt and bragged about his death. This hate upon Native Americans, lesbian, gay, two-spirit, transgender, and intersex peoples happen too often and is accepted by mainstream society. I work with kids where I hope to share a message of love and peace, where they can discuss their feelings and break down prejudices so it would never lead to the hurt of another human being.

My biological father never learned to love himself for who he fully was, but Fred did and it cost him his life. Fred I hope you are receiving my digital smoke signal in the spirit world and I want you to know that I honor you for who you are. I hope this article in some way honors your legacy and maybe that you became a martyr for the protection of other two-spirits, like my closeted biological father.

Two-Spirits will open your mind to a world that Fred walked, in being Native and two-spirited. It will make you laugh, cry, and wish for a better world. Hopefully, that wishing will turn into action and make you think about the world Fred walked in, so there will never be another death committed by hate.

– by Mariposa Villaluna, Republished by POOR Magazine/PNN Network

With your help we can reach millions

Making the film TWO SPIRITS began when I sat with Fred’s mother at his grave and she poured out her heart to me.

The experience transformed me from someone who had very little awareness, to someone who fully embraces gender diversity, because I see how much it adds to all of our lives.The tragic story of a mother’s loss of her child to a brutal murder has challenged us to answer the question she raised, “Why are people killed for being who they are?” And learning that there was a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female, and that there is a place of honor in many Native American cultures for people across a spectrum of sexuality and gender expression, has been a gift. Read more »

Many people who have seen TWO SPIRITS want to learn more about the important historical figure We’wha (WAY-wah).

In 1886 Washington, D.C. was emerging as the metropolitan capital of a growing nation. The trauma of the Civil War was past; industrialization and urbanization were in full swing. In the West, the last Indian tribes had been defeated. America had achieved its so-called “manifest destiny.” Now it was beginning to face the consequences of rapid growth and settlement. In Washington, a new generation of young professionals was eager to tackle these problems, especially the exploration of the West and its resources, including understanding more about its vanishing native people. Prominent among these were the anthropologists Matilda Coxe Stevenson, one of America’s first women scientists, and her rival, Frank Hamilton Cushing, an eccentric young man fascinated with native people since his childhood.

Four years earlier Cushing had brought a delegation of Zuni Indians on a much-publicized tour of the eastern United States. Stevenson decided she had to keep up, and so early that year she brought a remarkable cultural ambassador to the nation’s capital.

The Zuni “princess” We’wha (WAY-wah), as the local papers dubbed her, was an instant celebrity. Throughout the spring of 1886, she mingled with politicians, government officials, politicians, and the local elite. She befriended the speaker of the house and called on his wife. She demonstrated Zuni weaving on the Mall and worked with anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution. She even appeared in a charity event at the National Theatre before an audience of senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and the president. Finally, in early June, she paid a personal call on President Cleveland himself.

At six feet, the Zuni “princess” was one of the tallest and, according to Stevenson, strongest members of her tribe. No one in Washington doubted that the visitor from Zuni was a woman, but, in fact, We’wha was born a man. We’wha grew up as an individual who combined male and female traits in a socially-recognized third gender role. Two-spirit people often held honored and influential positions. We’wha was an accomplished potter and weaver, and a recognized expert in Zuni religion. That such an individual could become a representative for the Zuni tribe underscores the degree to which individual differences in gender and sexuality were accepted at the time. In most tribes the ability to combine male and female skills and qualities was not viewed as a liability but as a gift. It came as no surprise to the Zunis that We’wha would travel thousands of miles, overcoming the obstacles of language and culture, to live and mingle with the leaders of a powerful nation. Someone like We’wha was expected to be extraordinary.

Read more in the book The Zuni Man-Woman by Will Roscoe, recipient of the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society of Applied Anthropology, and a Lambda Literary Award for nonfiction.

The American Library Association (ALA) has recognized TWO SPIRITS in its 2011 list of Notable Videos for Adults, a list of 15 outstanding films released on video within the past two years that make a significant contribution. Other films on the list include: Food, Inc., The Art Of The Steal, Garbage Dreams, and We Live In Public.