Press              PR  Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                CONTACT:   Richard LaFortune

February 14, 2006                                                                            612.267.1682

12 Noon Central Time                                                         

                                                                                                            www.2SPR.org

Native GLBT International Archive Launched in Minnesota

Conserving Indigenous intellectual property & building cultural literacy

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA- February 14-  For more than two decades, Native GLBT communities across North America have organized on the national and international levels.  Today, on Valentines Day 2006, an Indigenous community member, who serves on the advisory board member to one of the top GLBT archive collections in the country, is now the lead donor to a newly established component of the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota Libraries in Minneapolis.  “Hundreds of tribes in this hemisphere, still speaking many hundreds of languages, have always acknowledged the contributions of GLBT people, long before the appearance of Europeans here in our ancient domains,” said Anguksuar (Richard LaFortune), director of Two Spirit Press Room, a national cultural organization that facilitates dialogue among Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions and media.  “We are conserving our own history, and providing a legacy for the coming seven generations.”

Speaking for the University of Minnesota Libraries' Tretter Collection, Jean Nickolaus Tretter, curator and creator of the Tretter Collection (www.trettercollection.org/) says of the most recent addition to the archive,” We are most humbled and honored by this decision of the Two Spirit peoples to archive their materials with us.  We accept this gift in the hope that we can prove worthy of such trust by embracing the wind, water, and earth that the Two-Spirit have entrusted us with.”

LaFortune stated, “We are glad to announce the launching of this component to the Collection, and we are working with other First Nations Two Spirit donors across North America who are preparing to expand the first and only Indigenous GLBT archive collection, to our knowledge, in the hemisphere and the world.”   Native peoples have a sophisticated legacy of inclusion and respect for community members across a spectrum of genders that reflect complex pre-Christian theologies, and traditions, notably absent of homophobia.

The collection documents a nearly 20 year history of grassroots and institutional organizing efforts in this hemisphere.  The collection has scores of historic newsletters produced by Native groups around the continent.  Other items in the collection include countless event and benefit posters, colorful condom package covers that first appeared with tribal designs at the outset of the ongoing HIV pandemic; news clippings that span the continent in community- and mainstream presses since the 1980s; and a unique collection of t-shirts produced for some of the International Two Spirit Gatherings, that have brought together some 2,000 Native people in annual ceremony and celebration, beginning in 1988.

• This is intended as a tool for Two Spirit people, historians and media
• Materials document and portray Indigenous people, by-for-and-about themselves, and demonstrate three-dimensional cultures and cultural revitalization in action
• It is the first archive collection of its kind, and it represents a decade-long process of preparation.  It is a repository of knowledge that will be used in perpetuity for the enrichment of human knowledge, the strengthening of Native communities, and the reduction of homophobic violence and hate directed toward Native people, particularly young people.”

New academic, theological and artistic examinations of world social and cultural traditions clearly show a need for original source materials in this new area of study, cultural revitalization and re-discovery that also dates back many proud eons in human history.

2SPR is supported in part by grants from The Funding Exchange and Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice

2SPR is a Media and Cultural Literacy Project that focuses on cultural and spiritual birthrights of Native GLBT /Two Spirit People and the elimination of hate related violence.  Its work is centered in cultivating accurate portrayals of Native GLBT people in the press, community-building; and leadership of Native women.

[photo insert, from left:  Kris Kiesling, director of the University of Minnesota Libraries Archival Collections, Richard LaFortune, director of Two Spirit Press Room, Jean Nickolaus Tretter, founder and curator, the Tretter Collection.  Photo by Grant Grays]