For Two Spirits and Native LGBTQ+ people enduring a second Trump administration, the powwow must go on

“The big concern has been the presence of ICE,” said Tzapotl Flores, a co-chair for the BAAITS powwow. “More than ever, we are developing very specific ICE protocols internally.”

Flores did not elaborate on those protocols, but like many other Indigenous people in recent weeks, she has seen ICE personnel aggressively confront and detain suspected immigrants — including some who are Native. Flores says this could intimidate participants, volunteers and attendees, in what has long been considered a safe and accepting event.

Adding to these concerns are President Trump’s executive orders and funding cuts. One order recognizes only two genders in the United States, while another abolished gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Critics say these actions create a hostile environment that threatens the emotional, mental and physical well-being of the Native LGBTQ+ community.

Beyond the president’s actions, culture wars have also generated hostility.

“We hear these forms of propaganda where Two Spirit people are terrorists, and all of these different attacks on our community,” said Flores.

Kat Warren, co-chair for the BAAITS powwow planning committee, told Buffalo’s Fire that organizers are used to these types of pressures.

“We see the ongoing pressure of this administration, and we are trying our best to be above it, to try to do the best for our folks and as Indigenous people.”

But like Flores, Warren says government actions have left Native LGBTQ+ and Two Spirits vulnerable. This included the Trump administration budget cuts in July 2025 that terminated an option for LGBTQ+ youth on 988 Lifeline, a suicide and prevention crisis hotline operated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, denounced as ‘unfathomable” the decision to cut the service, which he said was “a literal lifeline that has provided 1.5 million LGBTQ+ youth with suicide prevention services.” The Trevor Project helped staff the 988 Lifeline and runs its own hotline.

“And so all that I keep in mind when I work with BAAITS is making sure the type of atmosphere we have for folks there,” said Warren. “I feel like it has affected our morale as a whole.”

A paradigm shift through colonization

There are multiple interpretations of the term “Two Spirit.” Many say it describes a Native person who embodies both feminine and masculine spirits, while others say it’s less about sexuality and gender and more about having certain responsibilities to one’s people, including spiritual leadership, healing and bridging the gap between genders.

Regardless, it’s agreed that in pre-colonial North America, Two Spirits were often accepted and even viewed as sacred by their tribes.

“Often folks considered Two Spirited people as healers, and those are held in much higher ranks than anyone else in the community,” said Warren, who is Diné. “Because they’re the ones that know a lot of things about being two of the spirit.”

Over the past 500 years, colonists from Europe brought Judeo-Christian teachings into Native communities, largely through missionaries and religious boarding schools. Christianity displaced many traditional beliefs in tribal communities, with converted Natives seeing homosexuality as a sin and believing in the one man-one woman paradigm that President Trump asserted in an executive order issued on his first day back in office, which stated that the U.S. government would only recognize one’s biological sex as determined at conception.

This has manifested itself in Native communities as homophobic and transphobic attitudes, says Monique “Muffie” Mousseau, a Two Spirit member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She and her wife, Felipa DeLeon-Mousseau, say they’ve dealt with harassment and death threats since Trump regained the White House.

“The majority that are speaking out against homosexuality and LGBTQ and Native Two Spirits are older men in their 60s and 70s,” Mousseau told Buffalo’s Fire. “Anywhere we go, we run into somebody and they’re like, ‘What is this Two Spirit? There’s no Two Spirit,’ and I pull them aside and we sit down, listen to what they have to say about it. Most of it is the Bible that was pounded into our elders in the boarding school.”

Like the BAAITS organizers, Mousseau is holding an affirming powwow through her organization, Uniting Resilience. The He Sapa Nagi Nunpa Wacipi — or Black Hills Two Spirit Powwow — is slated for June 13 in Rapid City, South Dakota, and will be the fourth one organized for Two Spirits and allies. And while the event is intended to be a safe space, Mousseau says last year a troublemaker showed up.

“He was trying to walk in with a big cross,” recalled Mousseau. “And he had like 15 to 20 people with him. All white people.”

Used to being called a “devil” or “demon” by Christian fundamentalists, Mousseau said she wasn’t as fazed by the man’s message as she was by the fact he had a firearm on him. Mousseau was grateful law enforcement stepped in.

“They really assisted in making sure everybody was safe, and they monitored the parking lot too,” said Mousseau. “There still has to be precautions, and it is severe right now. We are afraid to leave our home.”

Mousseau said she’s often armed and urges other Two Spirits to protect themselves in a number of ways as the world grows more polarized and aggressive. This can include turning away from the daily news and avoiding doomscrolling, which she has done. “I encourage everybody to continue their daily lives, but be more aware and see your exits. Know your escape route and have a contingency plan.”

Building alliances and reaffirming support

Elton Naswood has leaned on watching sports and going to church services to help him keep going in this new era of Trump. The executive director of Two Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ Center for Equity says as the White House began its onslaught against his community last year, he reached out to the National Congress of American Indians.

“Part of the context of how we got more involved with NCAI was that I had heard a community member express the frustration of: ‘Why are our people not protecting us?’” Naswood told Buffalo’s Fire. “Just that simple phrase really hit me.”

The NCAI’s Two Spirit Committee formed in 2015, but Naswood said it became dormant. He raised concerns over treatment of Two Spirits and the Native LGBTQ+ community at last year’s NCAI conference, leading to a resolution affirming support for them. Naswood said his organization will also be present this week at NCAI’s executive council winter session, where they’ll discuss a developing project with the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. It’ll have students assess all tribal laws and codes to see if they’re gender inclusive and have LGBTQ+ language in their policies.

“These nations have the ability to protect our rights, and then also push back against executive orders because it’s sovereignty that we hold,” he added. The process will involve LGBTQ+ attorneys, judges and judicial personnel, and is expected to take two or three years to complete.

“It’s going to be a huge task. There’s 575 tribes now, but we’re going to plan to most likely begin in assessing the tribal laws in the state of California.”

Naswood said another issue they’ll tackle is transgender affirming care, which was targeted by one of Trump’s executive orders.

“Right now, the executive order bans trans-affirming care for youth, which means up to the age of 18,” said Naswood. “Unfortunately, a lot of our Indian Health Services clinics have conflated that understanding of the executive order and have generally applied that to all transgender clients.”

Naswood says his center will collaborate with an online group based in the Pacific Northwest called the Two Spirit Support Boat, and work with IHS clinics to better understand what the president’s executive order states and how they can assert their sovereignty to “continue the care that they give.”

Other partners Naswood credits include the Urban Indian Health Institute, the National American Indian Court Judges Association and the Native American Rights Fund. He hopes to collaborate with a regional Native voter initiative this year to help coordinate outreach and registration of Two Spirits ahead of the midterm elections, then work with the NCAI or NARF on the national level.

Change only happens when people participate in the political system, said Naswood.

The Two Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ Center for Equity has never sought federal funding, and Naswood said that was intentional. Given the Trump administration’s aggressive slashing of budgets for agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, they’ve been spared the hectic reorganizing and cost-cutting other groups have had to undergo.

“I lost six federal projects because of the current administration,” said Lenny Hayes, owner and operator of Tate Topa Consulting, a mental health counseling firm in Minneapolis. Besides cuts to projects directly tied to LGBTQ+ organizations, Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives since 2025 have chilled many partnerships.

“All of the organizations and coalitions that I was affiliated with across Indian Country actually stopped doing work with me, because if they didn’t quit doing work with me, then that meant that they would lose their federal funding,” said Hayes. “Which was really horrific. I’ve been doing this work since 2010.”

Hayes, a mental and chemical health therapist specializing in marriage family therapy, has also done violence-prevention work for more than 15 years, as it affects the Two Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ community through child welfare issues, sex and human trafficking, and the missing and murdered Indigenous people crisis.

“We worked hard to get where we were at, but then to have it totally wiped out by this current administration makes it really difficult for us today,” Hayes said.

Hayes said he identifies as a winkta — the Dakota term generally meaning Two Spirit — and gay. He said his earliest work was with the Southwest Indigenous Women’s Coalition, which created an advisory council for Two Spirits and Native LGBTQ+, which in turn led to the formation of Naswood’s organization.

Looking ahead, Hayes said many groups that work with and support Native LGBTQ+ and Two Spirits are seeking non-federal funding sources through foundations and grants, and also promoting each other’s efforts to keep morale high during a particularly difficult time. Hayes said a Two Spirit book club will restart with BAAITS board members in March, and he’ll also will be working with the BAAITS Powwow when the event kicks off on Valentine’s Day.

“I believe this is my fifth year that I will be facilitating their talking circle, which is going to be virtual,” said Hayes. “But it’s also at a national level and so that is a way we stay connected as a community.”

For BAAITS’s Flores, the oppression and culture wars weigh heavily on the Two Spirit community. But survival and joy will get them through this era, Flores said: “We’re not going anywhere. This unwillingness to acknowledge us and to dismantle and to destroy just historically, have never succeeded. And they will continue not to succeed. Not just on Turtle Island, around the globe.”