Latest news with #PhoenixIndianCenter
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Phoenix Indian Center holds annual Rainbow Gathering for Two Spirit LGBTQIA+ community
The Phoenix Indian center hosted its annual Southwest American Indian 2SLGBTQIA+ Rainbow Gathering on June 12, 2025, at South Mountain Community College. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror In a time of uncertainty and continuous attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Arizona and beyond, the Phoenix Indian Center wanted to offer the community a safe space for individuals to share resources and stories that highlighted Indigenous experiences. 'Visibility is more important now than ever before,' said Levi Long, a communications specialist with the Phoenix Indian Center, due to the ongoing attacks on the rights of this community. For many Indigenous people, the acronym primarily used is 2SLGBTQIA+, which includes Two Spirit people. The term Two Spirit acknowledges the traditional roles and identities of Indigenous people who lived outside the binary of male and female within many Indigenous communities, and is an identity that predates the colonization of North America. Two Spirit Diné trans woman Trudie Jackson has been a prominent advocate for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community for decades and is an Indigenous scholar with research and work that focuses on the Two Spirit community. When she placed the 2S before LGBTQIA+, she said she had people constantly trying to correct her. 'Two Spirit existed before colonization and the Stonewall Riot,' Jackson said. 'My ancestors were here before the colonizers.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX President Donald Trump's administration has pushed anti-2SLGBTQIA+ policies since he took office, including a rollback on health care services, implementing policies recognizing only two genders and banning trans people from the military and playing sports. In Arizona, several officials have pushed the same rhetoric by introducing and advancing a slate of anti-2SLGBTQIA+ bills, including a sweeping anti-trans 'biological sex' bill that Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed in April. At the Phoenix Indian Center, Long said that they are very intentional with centering Indigiqueer voices, especially in a time of uncertainty with the political landscape and the consistent challenges to their rights. He said he hopes that more organizations from the Indigenous community will step up for their 2SLGBTQIA+ relatives to let them know that there are safe spaces for them — and they're not going anywhere. The center hosted its annual Southwest American Indian 2SLGBTQIA+ Rainbow Gathering on June 12 at South Mountain Community College, providing a safe space for Indigenous people to share resources and stories. The theme for this year's Rainbow Gathering was 'Weaving Tradition: Past, Present and Future for Native People.' The Phoenix Indian Center is the oldest nonprofit organization serving the Indigenous community in the United States, offering a range of services including workforce development, peer support and youth development. Phoenix Indian Center CEO Jolyana Begay-Kroupa said the Rainbow Gathering is always rooted in Indigenous teachings of respect and a space that honors 2SLGBTQIA+ relatives as sacred healers, leaders and community caretakers. 'This gathering celebrates this diversity that weaves our Indigenous community together and makes us collectively stronger,' she said, adding that it's essential to look at the cultural teachings to guide the framework for a future that ensures all Indigenous people can thrive and have access to equitable lives. 'We gather here right now to find strength, to find solidarity and weave a stronger fabric so that we can hold on together,' Begay-Kroupa said. The gathering featured multiple speakers from the 2SLGBTQIA+ Indigenous community, who focused on topics related to Two Spirit health care, the history of Two Spirit people within Indigenous communities, body image, personal experiences and resources available. One experience shared during the event was by Charlie Amáyá Scott. She said she was 13 when she told her mother she is queer. She wrote it down on a note and slipped it into her mother's lunch bag. 'I was a scared little queer, and I was like: 'I'm queer. Love me, please,'' Scott said. 'Later that day, after I told her in a note, she told me that she loves me.' Scott, now 30, said she is proud to be her mother's oldest daughter. She was the keynote speaker for the Rainbow Gathering, and she shared with the crowd some of her life experiences as a queer, trans Diné woman and Indigenous scholar, emphasizing the importance of stories and storytelling. 'Through stories, we learn who we are, where we come from, and what we could be,' Scott added. 'We exist because of stories.' A story Scott shared reinvents the Diné creation story, going beyond the strict gender binary of the original creation narrative. 'First Woman noticed that all creatures had a choice about who they could be and who they could love,' Scott said. 'First Woman wanted this for her people, the Diné, too.' The story shares how the First Woman's gift to the Diné people was a choice, and that is how Scott would have written the creation story. Scott wrote that story over a year ago, and she said it was to share a creation story that included honoring queer, trans and intersex relatives, 'unlike the popularized versions that dictate a colonizing sex binary and heterosexuality.' Scott said she shared the story because she dreams of a better future, world and life. 'There's something very freeing when we rewrite our stories,' she said, because it provides people the ability to dream and imagine a world of possibility, liberation and freedom. 'A world that we write for ourselves and our cherished loved ones,' she added. 'Stories are not just stories, they are memories, they are lessons, they are guidance from generations before.' Scott said she has rewritten four traditional creation stories, including one about Spider Woman, who was responsible for teaching the Diné people how to weave. 'Our traditions are meant to evolve and change in time,' she said. 'To keep them static is to kill them off.' Scott said that Indigenous people are losing part of themselves if traditions do not evolve or change because they are 'meant to live and reflect who we are and where we're going.' 'What remains is the teaching, not the specificity,' she added. The Rainbow Gathering has been held in the Phoenix area since 2011. Jackson established the event and it is now hosted annually by the Phoenix Indian Center. During the gathering, Jackson shared her work on the state of Two Spirit health in North America, which later became a chapter in the book 'A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States.' The book features 40 contributors and Jackson is the only Indigenous author. Jackson talked about the impact of colonization on Two Spirit health, which includes stigma, self-confidence, self-worth, health, well-being, homophobia, transphobia and historical trauma. She said that is why, within Indigenous communities, health care workers and facilities must be inclusive of their intake assessments. Before she changed her name, Jackson said that she still remembers what it felt like when the hospital would call her by her birth name. She said she often contemplated what to do in the waiting room, wondering if she should get up. However, even after she changed her name, the stigma persisted. Jackson said that her doctor would anger her because they would go through her entire medical history pointing out that she was born male and is now passing as female. 'Our community is often viewed as less than,' she said. Jackson said it is vital for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to tell their stories and assert their importance within the cultural, ceremonial and spiritual traditions of their communities. 'Listening to these voices, we can create medical institutions that recognize and meet our unique healthcare needs,' she said. As part of the gathering, the Phoenix Indian Center presented two community awards, the Basket and Dream Catcher awards. Jackson said she created the awards to be Indigenous, reflecting the identity of Indigenous people. The Basket award is given to an individual or organization recognized as an ally of the Two Spirit community who has provided support for programming and services targeting the Two Spirit community in the southwest. Jackson said the basket reward reflects the time and work that goes into preparing and weaving a basket within many Native cultures. 'The intent was to identify an individual who went down the same journey as the basket by creating that weave within the community,' she added. The 2025 Basket Award was presented to Tara Begay, a Diné board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and co-owner of TL Family Nurse Practice, LLC in Phoenix. She is actively involved in Arizona's Rapid Start Initiative, which ensures access to HIV treatment upon diagnosis, according to the Phoenix Indian Center. 'Health care is a fundamental human right,' Begay said. Some of the services her practice provides include sick visits, physical exams, HIV prevention and management, gender affirming care and chronic care. The Dream Catcher award is presented to an Indigenous person who identifies as Two Spirit and has demonstrated a lifetime commitment and services to the Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ community in the southwest. 'We see you, we see your work, we see what you're doing out in the community,' Jackson said, adding that the Dream Catcher Award is similar to having a vision out in the community, they see something is needed and they go out and 'plant that seed. The 2025 Dream Catcher award was presented to Rita DeMornay, who is Akimel O'odham from the Gila River Indian Community, where she began her 2SLGBTQIA+ advocacy journey. DeMornay currently serves as Miss Phoenix Pride 2025, she is the first Indigenous winner of the title since 2007. 'My journey has just begun, it is not over,' DeMornay said. 'I will continue to open these doors for our Native Two Spirit LGBTQIA+ community.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Native veterans living and dead are remembered at Steele Indian School Park for Memorial Day
The Phoenix Indian Center and the Veterans Administration's Phoenix regional office honored Native veterans with a ceremony at Steele Indian School Park May 23. The event was held at the American Indian Veterans Memorial at the park's central flagpole, part of the site of the now-closed Indian boarding school. Among the speakers were descendants of Navajo Code Talkers, the Marines who used their ancestral language to create an unbreakable code during World War II, a Navajo woman veteran and Michael Welsh, deputy director for the Phoenix VA health care system. VA staff were also on hand to provide information and enroll veterans or their families for social service programs. Shine Jozefiak, a Diné U.S. Air Force veteran who now works as a community care specialist at the VA, recounted her time serving in emergency rooms during Operation Enduring Freedom. "I joined the Air Force to make my grandparents proud," said Jozefiak, who grew up on her grandparents' ranch outside Fort Defiance. Her grandfather Herbert Chee was a Korean War veteran. Many Native people came through the emergency room, where Jozefiak and others would treat and prepare them to be transported to Germany for long-term treatment. "We remember hearing taps, and cried when we saw the flag draped over a coffin," she said. "When the doctors declared a soldier had died, everything stopped. You could hear a pin drop because you know what happened." Jozefiak also said that she would speak in Navajo to wounded soldiers when they were brought in to the ER. "'It's so good to hear our language so far from home,' they would tell me as I prepped them for transport," she said. The honoring ceremony concluded with laying a hand-crafted wreath of red, white and blue flowers at the foot of one of the four pillars of the memorial. Each pillar commemorates a group of veterans who served and sacrificed for their nation, including Native veterans who paid the ultimate price for freedom. Welsh said the employees made the four-foot-diameter wreath because they couldn't locate one that size. Missing from the conversation was the fate of the tribal flags that had been on display in the lobby of the Phoenix VA Hospital for about 40 years. In March, the flags were unceremoniously removed in compliance with a new VA policy limiting which flags can be displayed on VA grounds. Tribal VA staff, not wishing for the flags to be stuffed into a closet and forgotten, took them to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which accepted them for safekeeping. A week later, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs accepted the flags to be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda, where they now reside. Hobbs invited a group of Native veterans and tribal leaders to see the flags April 8. "Phoenix Indian Center recognizes the importance of the Native community's military veterans over the years," said Warren Kontz, the Indian center's director of programs. "Native people have always protected their own lands." Kontz, who belongs to the Muscogee Creek and Navajo nations, said Memorial Day reflects Indigenous resiliency. "We recognize those who did not return," he said, "and we think of our ancestors who fought for this land." Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @debkrol and on Bluesky at @ This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix Indian Center, VA honor Native veterans for Memorial Day
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Native languages should be spoken and preserved, tribes say after Trump's 'English' order
As Native language programs flourish in classrooms, Indian centers, tribal meeting rooms and online, President Donald Trump issued an executive order over the weekend declaring English would be the official language of the U.S. Trump also rescinded a 25-year-old order that increased services to people with limited English proficiency and further enforced Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other provisions, forbids discrimination against people whose English skills aren't proficient. What's unclear is if Trump can enforce his order in Indian Country, where federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship and federal law protects Native language use and instruction. Faced with the risk that Native languages could fade as elders pass on, tribes are trying to preserve their words to keep their tongues alive. The significance of preserving Indigenous languages often goes beyond culture or history, such as when a group of Navajo speakers played a role in helping the U.S. win World War II. For many Native people, the order created confusion, said Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly. "It is taking a stance without really any teeth behind it," she said. "So it's essentially saying this is optional for people, which is not how our government operates or should operate." The order also revived memories of failed federal policies when Indigenous languages were banned and children caught speaking their mother tongues in federal boarding schools were punished and often beaten. Services in the city: Phoenix Indian Center moves to bigger quarters after selling its longtime building Native languages within the U.S. border account for about 245 out of more than 500 languages spoken on the North American continent, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The federal government attempted to eradicate Native languages by instituting English-only instruction in government- and religious-run schools, including boarding schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, beginning in 1887. That directive also banned any tribe's language from being spoken on school grounds. 'The Government has entered upon the great work of educating and citizenizing the Indians and establishing them upon homesteads,' said Commissioner of Indian Affairs J. D. C. Atkins, who issued the language order. For more than 100 years beginning in the late 19th century, Native children as young as four were removed from their homes and sent to government- or religious-run boarding schools designed to extinguish their languages, cultures and tribal identities. The goal: assimilate tribes into mainstream society and eliminate the government's trust responsibilities to tribes as listed in treaties, executive orders and legislation. An Interior Department investigation, with support from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, identified 417 federal Indian boarding schools operating on 451 sites across 37 states, or then-territories, between 1819 and 1969. That included 22 schools in Alaska and seven in Hawaii. The investigation didn't include the estimated 1,025 religious or private schools. The 1887 order, which was in effect for about 50 years, resulted in tribal kids being punished, sometimes brutally, for the "infraction" of speaking their native tongues. During a fact-finding meeting in the Gila River Indian Community in 2023 held by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, one woman said her aunt's tongue had been split after a clothespin was put on it for being caught speaking O'odham. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden formally apologized to tribes for the boarding school program and the intergenerational abuses, including language suppression, that they caused in Indian Country. Fact-finding tour: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hears from Indian boarding school survivors in Arizona In 2015, the Administration for Native Americans, an agency housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, reported 65 Native languages were extinct and another 75 were under threat in the nation. Federal laws affirm the right of tribal member students to receive education in their Native languages and of Indigenous peoples to use their languages without fear of punishment. The Native American Languages Act protects the rights and freedom of Native people to use, practice and develop Native languages. It also enables tribal language instruction in federally funded schools and recognizes the rights of states, territories and other U.S. lands to make Native languages official as well as other such provisions. The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006 authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make three-year grants for educational Native American language nests such as immersion schools, survival schools and restoration programs. Cázares-Kelly is a citizen of the Tohono O'odham Nation and works with a group, Democracy Rising, to empower women of color leaders and officials. She said she will conduct business as usual, based on federal law. "The people are protected by certain laws protecting your voting rights and ensuring that you can understand the ballot process," she said. "The voter registration forms and other voting materials are protected by law." That law is particularly needed in Pima County, she said, a "border county," where at least 26% of the population are Hispanic speakers, as well as O'odham and Yaqui speakers. Although recent censuses found few Native people need translation services, Cázares-Kelly said she keeps tribal and Spanish language interpreters on hand to help voters exercise what she called the fundamental rights of citizens. At least three states — Hawai'i, Alaska and South Dakota — have made one or more Native languages official. Hawai'i enshrined the Hawaiian language as one of its two official languages in its constitution in 1978. Arizona voters approved a proposition mandating English only in public school education, with English learners placed into immersion programs in 2000. Then-Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano said Native kids attending public schools on "the Reservation or elsewhere" could be taught Native languages and cultures, citing tribal sovereignty and federal law. Fortunately for the nation, some Native people had never lost their languages. During World War II, members from 15 tribes joined special units using their native tongue to confound enemy troops. The most famous of them: Navajo Code Talkers. About 300 young Navajo men created special terms in Diné Bizaad, or the Navajo language, to relay military equipment or troop movements. Their communications, never broken by the Japanese in the Pacific Theater, were acknowledged to play a pivotal role in winning the war. 'Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima,' Marine Division signal officer Major Howard Connor said. Tribes and organizations serving Indigenous peoples have taken advantage of funding from the Administration for Native Americans to open or sustain language instruction both on and off tribal lands. To keep that part of tribal heritage alive, the Phoenix Indian Center offers free language classes in both Diné and O'odham, funded by federal grants. "Our language is an important part of who we are," said Phoenix Indian Center's CEO Jolyana Begay-Kroupa, a Navajo Nation member. "Just speaking my four clans in Navajo is beautiful." And, she said, many terms delineated in Indigenous languages, including Navajo, aren't translatable into English. Preserving languages is also an important part of tribal resilience even in the face of barriers to preserving languages and cultures, said Begay-Kroupa, who called the executive order "divisive." "It's a way to maintain our cultures," she said. "Our languages provide storytelling lessons given to us. It's beautiful." The Administration for Native Americans told The Arizona Republic there are no interruptions to funding for the agency's language programs. 'Diné bizaad': After council vote, Navajo is now the official language of the Navajo Nation The leader of the nation's largest Indigenous tribe affirmed the value of using and preserving Native languages. "Diné Bizaad is power. Our language is more than words — it is our connection to our ancestors, our teachings, and our future," Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said. In December, Nygren signed legislation and an executive order officially reaffirming Diné Bizaad as the official language of the Navajo Nation. "As a sovereign nation within the United States, we have the right to pass laws that protect and strengthen our identity, culture, and language," Nygren said. Nygren and the Navajo Division for Children and Family Services launched a Diné Bizaad literacy campaign. The program will focus on preserving family stories through books written in Diné. And, Nygren said, the nation holds free online lessons in Navajo on Facebook and YouTube every Wednesday at noon, featuring Diné language expert Peter Thomas. Begay-Kroupa also said that technology is increasingly used for teaching Indigenous languages. The Indian center uses online tools like Zoom to support language learning. In the Verde Valley, the Yavapai-Apache Nation went a few steps further. The 2,700-member tribe created a comprehensive language program in 2023 to preserve and sustain its two languages. Elders worked with The Language Conservancy, a nonprofit that works to preserve the world's endangered languages, to create a mobile database, picture books and a phone app that features words in the Wipupka-Tolkapaya Yavapai and Dil'zhe'e Apache dialects common to the two peoples of the region. "What a boring place it would be if we all spoke, ate and did the same things," Begay-Kroupa said. "There's no one language that supersedes all on Turtle Island." "Our words carry the wisdom of our ancestors, and through them, we are building a stronger future," Nygren said. "We will continue to defend and promote Diné Bizaad's use for generations to come." Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @debkrol. Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tribes say Native languages should be spoken despite Trump's English order
