It is with great excitement that we launch the Miskwaabiimag 2-Spirits Health Journal. For many years Indigenous health in general, and 2-Spirited and Indigi-queer health specifically, has been under-served, under-resourced, and underappreciated by research and healthcare sectors. As 2-Spirited Peoples on Turtle Island reassert their sovereignty over their own wellbeing, this journal symbolizes one way in which systemic and community healing is taking shape.
Our objective is to create a safer scholarly space for the dissemination of Indigenous research by, with, and for 2-Spirited and Indigi-queer Peoples across Turtle Island and the world, honouring and uplifting 2-Spirited identity. To meet this objective, the journal's operations are carried out by an academic Indigi-queer Editorial Board and guided by the living knowledge of a 2-Spirited Community Advisory Board.
This journal was created for several key reasons. First, to acknowledge that 2-Spirited, Indigi-queer identity is unique, with specific strengths and challenges not adequately addressed by undifferentiated Indigenous or LGBTQ health systems. Second, to affirm the rights of 2Spirited and Indigi-queer Peoples as distinct peoples to address their own health and wellbeing. Finally, to establish a culturally safe space for the perspectives of 2-Spirited communities, researchers, youths, and Elders, grounded in intersectionality and the rigors of academic knowledge translation.
Since the onset of colonization, 2-Spirited and Indigi-queer Peoples have endured racist, homophobic and gender-based discrimination from both of their broader communities, doubly victimized by the missionization of Christianity and colonial governance on and off-reserve. For generations, colonial trauma has impacted 2-Spirited Peoples through cultural genocide and assimilation, forcibly supplanting the precolonial norms where gender and sexual diversity were not merely accepted but honoured as sacred. The legacy of this erasure manifests today in health disparities distinctive to 2-Spirited and Indigi-queer Peoples. This journal is a place to expose and deconstruct the mechanisms that perpetuate these harms by publishing research that reinforces identity, improves health policy, and reduces barriers to wellbeing.
As traditional Indigenous values hold 2-Spirited Peoples as sacred, an explicit venue for sharing knowledge with, by, and for 2-Spirited, Indigi-queer Peoples is essential. An intersectional framework is critical to understanding 2-Spirit and Indigi-queer health, as the confluence of gender, sexuality, and cultural identity generates compounding forms of systemic discrimination. This compounded effect appears today in healthcare settings through biased treatment, inadequate care, and systemic erasure, leading to a pervading mistrust of biomedical and western health services. It is the humble mission of this journal to provide a sanctuary for addressing 2-Spirited and Indigi-queer health through an intersectional approach steeped in 2Spirited knowledge and Indigenous governance structures.
Housed at the Ontario-based organization, the 2-Spirited Peoples of the 1st Nations, this journal was conceived to provide an outlet for a plethora of internal research and community knowledge sharing. We look forward to elevating research by, with, and for our Peoples across the many communities on Turtle Island. It is in love, kindness, and spirit that this journal commences its journey.
In solidarity,
Keith McCrady
Executive Director, 2-Spirited Peoples of the 1st Nations
Suzanne L. Stewart
Editor in Chief, Miskwaabiimag 2-Spirits Health Journal