GLR November-December 2025

whether at stomp dances or pride events. Faithlyn carried that bridge into the streets as she marched in the Oklahoma City Pride parade in 2024 as part of the First Americans contingent and helped stage the first Two-Spirit performance hour at OKC Pride in 2025. Faithlyn also recently launched the Inchunwa Project to recover Southeastern traditional tattooing practices. When I met her at the gathering, she wore those tattoos with ra diant pride, her spirit the brightest in the room. Chickasaw Two-Spirit activist Trent Williams pointed out that reclaiming cultural traditions and gender expansiveness are deeply intertwined in the Chickasaw resurgence. “It’s hard not to notice that a disproportionate number of Chickasaws involved in language revitalization and incho’wa [traditional tattooing] are Two-Spirit. ... In my own experience, the energy for reclaiming a more expansive vision of gender has bled over into these other traditions.” For Trent, this work is not only about individual identity but also about collective healing and cultural continuity. Language, in particular, stands at the center of his activism. “For me, language is the most crucial plank of the larger plat form of reclaiming our traditions,” he said. “Our term for femi nine males, hattak iklanna’ , can be translated as ‘in-the-middle person,’ or ‘part-way person.’” While he always knew that fem inine males had distinct social roles in Chickasaw and other Southeastern tribal communities before missionaries arrived, it wasn’t until adulthood that Trent realized how profoundly the meaning of hattak iklanna’ resonated with his own life. “It was a revelation for me to learn ... that the meaning of this term matched my own experience of gender, my own lifelong

in-betweenness.” Trent’s story illuminates how the reclamation of language and cultural practices is inseparable from broader movements of Indigenous activism: recovering not just words and traditions, but also the expansive visions of gender and identity that those words and traditions carried. But not everyone is fully com fortable with Shilombish Toklo‘ , Trent admitted. By stressing the “in-between” nature of this person, “the term obscures our traditional sense of humans as two-spirited beings.” On the other hand, Chickasaw Two-Spirit drag performer Landa (Miko) Lakes objects to applying the term Shilombish Toklo‘ to any one group: “I use it to identify myself as Indigenous and having a spiritual soul. ... In that thinking, we all have two spir its.” Her reflection hit on a harder truth: Our Chickasaw tradi tions were reshaped early by missionary influence. Boarding schools and church doctrine erased much of the cultural knowl edge around gender and sexuality. As Landa said: “We haven’t had a traditional medicine man since 1953.” Landa’s great-grandfather was a Presbyterian minister who preached in Chickasaw churches. When he died, he left a steamer trunk filled with Choctaw Bibles, hymns, and pam phlets dating back to the time when tribes were pushing for an “Indian State” in Oklahoma. In one sermon, Landa found a story about a stomp dance leader being criticized for living with a man as his wife—proof that acceptance, however contested, once existed. Still, there is momentum. “Two-Spirit Chickasaw organizing can really give strength to those that come after us,” Landa said. “We enrich the culture by being part of it.”

WHERE THE PULSE LIVES BY JOHN LOUGHERY

“ Where the Pulse Lives is an entertaining and moving memoir. Loughery gives us splendid glimpses of New York from the inside . . . and a rich portrait of that crucial group of activists, the gay men and lesbians of ACT UP.” —Charles Kaiser, Th e Washington Post “Loughery, a smart historian, gives a wonderful historical romp through a young man’s gay odyssey.” —Walter Holland

AVAILABLE A

November–December 2025

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