Defending being trans, an Indigenous "way of life"

'With reluctance, I came back to the place under the skies where my Cheyenne ancestors fought to near extinction just for me to exist, this land where colonization has oft made me feel like an alien'

Just as I was about to doze off after 2 a.m. on a Sunday the weekend after Thanksgiving, a good Samaritan messaged me on social media to let me know they just saw a disturbing flier with my name and pics in it.

They said said they weren't sure if they should have removed it, or leave it as they did for law enforcement to investigate as evidence of a hate crime.

The forwarded a picture of a colored flier with bold, red letters above me stating, “PARENTS BEWARE!” The libelous text below said I was a “Transexual child groomer” and “not to be trusted around children” amongst other demeaning language implying I was a pedophile.

I thanked the person for the heads up, and said I would go take it down myself because if there was one flier, there would undoubtedly be more based on how the white supremacists I suspected of doing it operated.

Sure enough, on my way to investigate, nearly every light post and dumpster in the vicinity had this gross message plastered on it.

It was a long night pulling down some forty fliers until five a.m. spread out over a couple of square miles surrounding the immediate Billings, Montana area where I reside. A local middle school and church areas were hit particularly hard. During this time, the first heavy snow of the year fell. I caught a few hours rest, then went back out to pull down another thirty-plus fliers. Based on other people who reported, it must have been some eighty to one-hundred fliers posted.

While not expecting much action to be taken, I would later file a police report detailing to law enforcement who I suspected of doing it and why: aforementioned white supremacists who in 2023, harassed a Butte, Montana library into canceling my Indigenous history lecture about LGBTQ and Two Spirit people during the first week of pride month.

As a Northern Cheyenne He'emane'o (trans woman), I deem it important we teach such history so we can gain greater empathy towards one another as education is the best tool against ignorance and hate.

Instead, the Butte Silver-Bow County acquiesced to the harassment, and said my not wearing clothes of my biological gender violated a Montana anti-drag law recently enacted. As this news made national headlines, I was threatened with being lynched, being dragged with a four-wheeler, and this hate carried on over to the recent hate crime fliers.

A white supremacist group calling itself the Nationalist Park Patrol, who’ve filmed themselves harassing local migrant construction workers by accusing them of being pedophiles in Bozeman, first posted pics of the fliers sent via supposed “anonymous” activists. The post noted if any of their followers see me, contact them so they can confront me.

In a follow-up post, and perhaps fearing they may too face hate crime charges, the white nationalists gave a mocking denial of involvement, saying perhaps it was my (of course, non-existent) “Jewish boyfriend” who put up the fliers. Of course, they immediately reiterated exactly what the flier said as to give a nod and wink to their followers to note they were definitely involved.

After the hate crime fliers made local news, many in Montana social media comment sections were filled with laugh reactions on Facebook, in doing so carrying water for white supremacists. Others said maybe I needed to be investigated to make sure I wasn't grooming kids, and "God fearing Americans" needed to diligently protect against my "sick and vile ways" of being trans.

Billings, once renowned as the town which united to stand up against Nazis during the 1990s in a powerful show of solidarity that became the impetus of a national "Not In Our Town" movement, had been infected with trans derangement syndrome like much of the country.

Residents still cling to the decades-old NIOT happening as proof we are a community where “hate has no home,” but this nostalgia ironically ends up whitewashing past and present hate.

After conservatives realized being anti-abortion was no longer a popular issue to hitch their wagon to, they pushed $215 million worth of dehumanizing propaganda at us in the 2024 election cycle. But even back in 2020, it was reported that right-leaning news about trans people accounted for 43.33 million Facebook ragebait interactions. By comparison, conservatives literally talked about trans people four times more about than queer people themselves, with all LGBTQ news outlets having a combined 10.13 million interactions.

And because a tiny fraction of a fraction of trans women play sports (in different states, no less, if you’re in Montana), that’s becomes a "whataboutism" cudgel to queer bash and excuse to pass a bevy of other anti-trans legislation.

A recent proposed Montana law says I could be hunted down with my personal information gathered by other citizens to be sued if I dare go pee myself in a women's restroom stall.

The irony is while they claim this will protect women and children from supposedly dangerous trans people–just as the libelous hate crime flier directed at me noted–almost half of trans people have been sexually assaulted, according to National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Predators deem us easy, vulnerable targets as %58 of us are not likely to speak to law enforcement or government agencies out of fear of them as well.

A shocking %65 of my fellow Indigenous trans people have been sexual assault victims. I count myself as a survivor amongst that grim statistic I once hid with shame, but now Montana republicans seem determined to make me relive trauma.

And for transgender men, they too will be physically assaulted if they step into a women’s restroom, as happened in when a trans man was beaten for following Ohio bathroom laws. And when a trans girl student at a Minnesota high in June of last year used the men’s room, she was assaulted and hospitalized after being called a slur.

This is what happens when conservatives convince their voters a marginalized community is subhuman, and then paint bullseyes on their back with targeted legislation.

This summer while political canvassing, a man freaked out on me when I told him I was trans after he asked several times. Even though I quickly left, he jumped in his truck, sped at me like he was going to run me over, slammed on his brakes to yell a bunch of slurs at me, and then scream, “Trump is going to get rid of all you tranny faggots!”

Feeling unsafe after the hate crime fliers, I left Montana for a couple of weeks to ponder a seemingly bleak future where anti-trans legislation would be at the top of the local GOP agenda the next month.

With great reluctance–and sometimes regret–I came back to the place now called Montana, under the skies where my Cheyenne ancestors fought to literal near extinction just for me to exist, this land where colonization has oft made me feel like an alien.

In my history lecture, the one that got canceled due to current Montana law, I talk about how Two Spirit, or Indigenous trans women and men, have existed in the Americas since time immemorial. The late Cheyenne/Seminole and Two Spirit elder, Marlon Fixico, told me our He'emane'o word means, "he is a woman," as in, born male but their heart and soul is that of a woman.

So my being trans is not some made up "ideology," but just something inherent in my and other Indigenous cultures as well as humanity itself.

A colonizer Manifest Destiny mentality, however, would try to erase this acceptance as common decency and teachings of respect towards members of my queer ilk.

In efforts to erase our identities, “Kill the Indian, save the man,” a phrase coined by Richard Henry Pratt of the infamous Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, became a de facto motto for boarding schools as our elders experienced literal torture and rampant sexual abuse in efforts to be taught to be ashamed of who we are.

“Let all that is Indian within you die!” said Rev. J.A. Lippincott at the Carlisle commencement address. Students were told they could never become “truly American … until the Indian within you is dead.”

And many did not make it home to grieving parents, and instead were left in unmarked graves far away from their homelands.

We were not to be thankful as our ancestors were to our respective Creator, or are sistren Earth and brethren animal siblings who provided, but instead taught to fear the white man’s Jesus symbolized by a corpse hung on a terrible torture device.

Associate professor of religious studies and American studies at the University of New Mexico, Kathleen Holscher, told the Mountain West News Bureau the worst pedophilic priests were sent to look over Indigenous children, “Because they knew that if they put them on a Native mission, nobody would complain, or if people did complain, nobody would listen to them.”

On the bottom of the white supremacist-created hate crime flier directed at me, the last words read, “Stay safe and God Bless America!”

At the Little Big Horn Battlefield, there are several headstones scattered about with Cheyenne names. They are engraved with the words, "A Cheyenne Warrior fell here on June 25, 1876 while defending the Cheyenne Way of Life."

In my history lecture that got banned, I speak of Cheyenne warrior’s 1880s ledger art depicting the aftermath of Custer’s defeat. In the drawing, three He'emane'o lead one of our most important ceremonies: the Victory Dance. On the left, Cheyenne people are playing drums and singing as we celebrate winning the biggest battle in our history.

When one is Indigenous, especially in a state like Montana, we are often relegated not as humane, feeling individuals with our own dreams, hope, passions, and love with our own stories to tell, but as noble, stoic, savage caricatures in the "background"–a part of the mountain or prairie scenery to a supposedly greater, white folk narrative.

The fact this warrior chose to remember our most famous victory with depictions of He'emane'o/trans women like myself speaks volumes to the respect we carried in our Cheyenne culture–towards those like me who still must, unfortunately, continue “defending the Cheyenne Way of Life.”