Gay pride event celebrates aboriginal culture

SASKATOON – There will be a strong aboriginal component at this week’s gay pride event called Queerapalooza at the University of Saskatchewan.

Jack Saddleback, the pride centre coordinator for the students’ union, says traditionally there was a place for gay people in aboriginal ceremonies.

Saddleback, who identifies himself as a two-spirited transgender gay man, organized this week’s events.

They began with a gender-neutral pipe ceremony on the university campus Monday morning.

There will also be a sweat lodge Wednesday that is open to everyone.

Saddleback says historically, gay people had specific roles in aboriginal society such as being medicine people or war chiefs.

“They were folks who would take on the orphan children in the tribes,” he says. “They were also really good mediators. This is where the term `two-spirit’ comes from. It shows the balance that a queer aboriginal person has, in that we have the ability to see both the female and male side.

“Unfortunately, with residential schools and some homophobia that has been instilled in our culture, there has been a bit of a step back from the two-spirited culture.”

One of the leading researchers on two-spirit identity is Alex Wilson, who will be part of the Queerstorical Campus Walking Tour by Greystones Secrets.

The interactive tour tells the history of sexual and gender diversity through the years as it relates to the University of Saskatchewan.

Many experiences that took place before the 1970s are quite hidden, said Joe Wickenhauser of Greystone Secrets.

He said one of the most interesting pieces of the tour includes the Doug Wilson case, which took place in 1975. Wilson put an ad in the Sheaf, the campus newspaper, for a gay group and was effectively banned from supervising practice teachers and from completing his degree in the college of education.

“The university community really came out in support of Doug Wilson and it lead to the first challenge of the Human Rights Code in Canada,” Wickenhauser said.

Sexual orientation was not protected at the time. Wilson never finished his degree but because of his case, the University of Saskatchewan changed its policy on discrimination against gays and lesbians 15 years in advance of the province’s legislation.

At the end of the tour, people will able to recreate the photo “Nan and Hope and the 99-Year-Old Kiss.”

Wickenhauser found the two-inch tall photo in the university archives of two women kissing in 1914 outside the Saskatchewan Hall residences.