Join us for the symposium, “Indigiqueer, Trans*, and Two-Spirit Relations and Worldmaking,” on Friday, October 10 at 10:00am – 4:30pm in the Founders’ Room at the James West Alumni Center.
This gathering is open to everyone: students, scholars, and community members. Breakfast snacks and lunch will be served.
Register here to attend.
Please write Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne (moehahne@ucla.edu) with any questions about the event.
This symposium brings together visual artists, writers, scholars, and knowledge keepers to contemplate how Indigiqueer, trans*, and Two-Spirit arts and critical scholarship enact kinship relations and practice decolonial worldmaking across time and space. The gathering will feature lectures from artists and scholars and include roundtable discussions and communal-oriented spaces for thinking collaboratively about gender-expansive aesthetics, kinscapes, ecology, care, and story across Turtle Island and beyond. This event is generously supported by a grant from the TEN:TACLES Initiative (Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment and Service) as well as supported by the UCLA American Indian Studies Center, the UCLA Canadian Studies Program, and the UCLA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Studies Program.
Event Schedule
10am-10:30am
Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne: brief welcome
Dr. L. Frank: will offer a blessing and an opening talk
10:30am-11am
Gabriel Estrada: “Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions (U Arizona Press, 2026)”
11am-11:30am
Brandi Bird: “Pitiful: Anti-Resilience in Indigenous Girlhood”
11:30am-12pm
Souksavanh T. Keovorabouth: “Indigenous Queer Cities of Care and Resiliency”
12pm-1pm
Lunch in the “Founders’ Room”
1pm-1:25pm
Roundtable conversation (#1) with invited speakers, reflections and comments from attendees
1:30pm-2pm
Coyote Park: “Queer Ecologies and Self-Determination Through Photography (A history of 2Spirit, Indigequeer, and Queer Native Visual Media)”
2pm-2:30pm
E. Ornelas: “Writing New (Hi)Stories: Reclaiming 2S & Indigiqueer Boarding School Experiences”
2:30pm-3pm
Smokii Sumac: “‘From the first moment I saw you’: Reflections on Two-Spirit Roles, Relations, and Responsibilities from a Ktunaxa Poet”
10 min break
3:10pm-3:30pm
Roundtable conversation (#2) with invited speakers, reflections and comments from attendees
3:30pm-4pm
Small group conversations among all in attendance (contemplating Indigiqueer + 2S relations, worldings, and beyond)
4pm-4:30pm
Sharing thoughts from our smaller conversations, closing thoughts, and thank you
About the speakers:
Brandi Bird (they/them) is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam peoples (Burnaby, B.C). Their debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh (Anansi, 2023) won an Indigenous Voices Award and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert, Raymond Souster and Governor General’s awards. They are currently completing an MFA at the University of British Columbia and they foster cats in order to learn to let go.
Gabriel S. Estrada (ze/zir) is a professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl texts. A Caxcan/Xicanx genderqueer author, ze published over twenty works on Indigenous LGBTQI+/Two-Spirit film and literature.
Dr. L. Frank
L. Frank (they, them, pó) is the nom d’arte of L. Frank Manriquez, a Tonget/Acjachemem/Rarámuri two-spirited artist, writer, tribal scholar, decolonizationist, native canoe maker/revivalist, and indigenous language activist. Pó has been involved with Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and Tongva Taraxat Paxaaavxa Conservancy and serves on the board of The Cultural Conservancy. Pó lives and works in Santa Rosa, California. Pó’s art has been exhibited widely in California, in many cities of the US, various other countries, and has been featured in various publications. In 2023, pó received a Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of San Francisco.
Souksavanh T. Keovorabouth, Diné, PhD (They/She) is Diné and Second-Generation Laotian, Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit and an Assistant Professor at Northern Arizona University in Women and Gender Studies and Applied Indigenous Studies. She is originally from Chinle, Arizona on Dinétah (Navajo Nation) but born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona due to displacement, relocation, and removal tactics. Their research focus is primarily on Indigenous Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Studies, Gender construction, urban diaspora, Indigenous masculinities, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives.
Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne (they/she) is a Southern Tsistsistas and Hinono’ei person who lives and works on Tongva homelands and waters. They are assistant professor of English at UCLA, where they are an affiliate faculty with the American Indian Studies Center (AISC) and a member of the AISC and LGBTQ Studies Program faculty advisory committees. Ho’esta’s current teaching and writing consider ecology, wonder, and gender-expansive aesthetics in Indigenous expressive cultures.
E. Ornelas (they/them) is a Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth College. E. is Chicanx and white as well as a reconnecting Native, descended from a survivor of the Sherman Institute – a Native boarding school in Riverside, California. E. studies community-based, abolitionist-informed responses to gendered, racialized, and colonial violence in Black feminist and Indigenous feminist speculative fiction. When not on campus, E. can be found baking, making music, and watching Star Trek.
Coyote Park (he/they) is a mixed race Indigenous Yurok, Karuk, German, and Korean Two-Spirit photographer and poet raised on the island of O’ahu in the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Park received his BFA from Parsons in Photography, has attended international art residencies, and holds a certification in queer curating. His photographic work has been shown in the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the Finnish Museum of Photography, the Museum of Sex, and most recently in the traveling exhibition “Body Freedom For Everybody” spanning over 15 cities.
Smokii Sumac (they/he) is a Ktunaxa two spirit poet, emerging playwright, painter and Cultural Youth Worker. He has released two poetry collections and is working on a spoken word album forthcoming in early 2026. Smokii lives in ʔamakʔis Ktunaxa with his husband, their cats, chicken, and a “big ole rez dog” named Kootenay Lou.