Two-Spirit identity and decolonization in Quebec

In the shadow of Bill 96, Quebec’s national holiday celebrations, and Premier Legault’s recent comments about how the French culture needs to be prioritized

The question remains. Who gets to be part of Quebec and are all identities, all languages, and all cultures recognized and respected equally.

One two-spirit identifying Kahnawake community member says – there’s work to be done.

“I have issues in terms of Quebec needing to celebrate this day, or Canada being able to celebrate this day because it’s on the backs of individuals from indigenous communities,” said Kahnawake Elizabeth Diane Labelle.

“You are living and benefiting from living in territories and on territories that have been stolen. Right. And on the basis also of the oppression of those who were originally living in these lands and who are still living in these lands and the fact that they live lives on general lives, existences that are not equal to you. Right. You don’t have the same benefits, you don’t have the same opportunity,” said Labelle.

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“It’s like the impact of the educational system on our young people that keeps them from being able to move ahead in their lives and to change the status of their lives and relegate them to poverty and sad. Things like bill 96 or just going to propagate that difficulty. We’re still back with this language issue. And we haven’t even moved closer to acknowledging indigenous languages as mattering. And so for our young people, it’s like, yeah, so I’m being forced to learn these two foreign languages yet I cannot take pride in knowing my own language and get acknowledged for knowing my own language.”

The centuries-old indigenous-born concept of two-spirit means to identify as having masculine and feminine spirits – some, who reject the gender binary, identify as fluid.

Kahnawake community researcher and educator Elizabeth Diane Labelle says indigenous folks who are two-spirited suffer greatly.

“Two spirited individuals face a double form of oppression. And so they’re being oppressed as being members of indigenous nations, and in addition to that, are being oppressed because of their sexual orientation. Or their gender identification or questioning identification, things along those lines,” said Labelle.

Queerness, decolonization and Quebec identity have more in common than we think. We cannot have one without the others.

“The difficulty is that there is still only one way of looking at things, and that’s the only one that’s valid. And as a result of that, all of this wonderful knowledge that can be shared is being ignored. Right. So the process of decolonization is to open up your vision essentially and to be able to be open to different ways of doing things, and then to look and to take what is a value from all of the elements in order to obtain a common goal, which is a sustainable lifestyle for everybody and a rightful equal lifestyle. For everybody,” said Labelle.