The documentary Two Spirits will have its world premiere on Saturday, November 21 at the Starz Denver Film Festival.
The film is directed by Lydia Nibley and produced by Say Yes Quickly Productions and will screen at 12:30 p.m. in the 520-seat King Center Concert Hall on the University of Colorado at Denver’s downtown Auraria campus. The film will be followed by a panel discussion and reception, and the event will be hosted by the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
Two Spirits interweaves the tragic story of a mother’s loss of her son with a revealing look at the largely unknown history of a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female and many Native American cultures held places of honor for people of integrated genders.
Fred Martinez was nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine essence, a special gift according to his ancient Navajo culture. He was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at sixteen by a young man who bragged to friends that he had “bug-smashed a fag.” Two Spirits explores the life and death of a boy who was also a girl and the essentially spiritual nature of gender and sexuality. The film makes the case that in the twenty-first century we need to return to traditional values.
TWO SPIRITS: Sexuality, Gender, and the Murder of Fred Martinez
One Who Constantly Transforms
Two Spirits offers a unique perspective on gender and sexuality, one that is anchored in traditions that were once widespread among the indigenous cultures of North America. The film explores the history of Native two-spirit people—who combine the traits of both men and women with qualities that are also unique to individuals who express multiple genders.
The Navajo believe that to maintain harmony, there must be a balanced interrelationship between the feminine and the masculine within the individual, in families, in the culture, and in the natural world. Two Spirits reveals how these beliefs were historically expressed in a natural range of sexual and gender diversity. For the first time on film, it examines the Navajo concept of nádleehí, “one who constantly transforms.”
In Navajo culture, there are four genders; some indigenous cultures recognize more. Although two-spirit people were celebrated in many tribes, as Europeans began to arrive on this continent Native views that the range of human sexuality is not a sin but a gift were met with genocide, the forced imposition of Christianity, and other kinds of subjugation that have resulted in many tribal communities losing touch with their two-spirit traditions.
Native activists working to renew their cultural heritage adopted the English term “two-spirit” as a useful shorthand to describe the entire spectrum of gender and sexual expression that is better and more completely described in their own languages. The film demonstrates how they are revitalizing two-spirit traditions and once again claiming their rightful place within their tribal communities.
Two Spirits reflects the ways in which contemporary non-Native LGBT people have been inspired by two-spirit traditions to balance the sexual and spiritual in their own lives. It also suggests that straight women can learn to more skillfully carry their masculine energy by learning that wisdom from lesbian women, and that straight men can better understand their feminine qualities through the example of gay men.
Two Spirits mourns the young Fred Martinez and the threatened disappearance of the two-spirit tradition, but it also brims with hope and the belief that we all are enriched by multi-gendered people, and that all of us—regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or cultural heritage—must be free to be our truest selves.
Grassroots Outreach
A growing coalition of over fifty organizations have made specific, measurable commitments to use Two Spirits in violence reduction programs, safe schools initiatives, suicide prevention programs, LGBT equality programs, in racial and gender equality efforts, and in support of civil and human rights.
Two-spirit and Native outreach partners include: NativeOUT, 2SPR-Two Spirit Press Room, Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, Honor Project, Two Spirit Society of Denver, The Red Circle Project, NorthEast Two Spirit Society, Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits, Tulsa Two Spirit Society, Two Spirit Society of Rochester, Nations of the 4 Directions, The Wichita Two-Spirit Council, Montana Two-Spirit Society, Oklahoma Native American AIDS Coalition, Native HIV Advocacy
Nonprofit, government, and faith-based partners include: the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, GLAAD, PFLAG, Human Rights Coalition, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Gender Identity Center, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Equality Arizona, Colorado Anti-Violence Program, The Center, The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Citizens Project, National Association of Black & White Men Together, Kindred Spirits, California Network of Mental Health Clients, Paso HIV/AIDS Support Group, PFLAG Denver, PFLAG Northern Colorado, Coalition of Colorado PFLAG Chapters, Transgender Europe
Education outreach partners include: ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives,Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals, Ball State University, LGBTA of Virginia Tech, Equality Maricopa, Montclair State University, UNLV Two-Spirit Association, Multicultural Center UNLV, Colorado State University Women’s Programs and Ethnic Studies, Agnes Scott College, University of Redlands, Williams College, Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, UNL LGBTQA Programs & Services, Montclair State University LGBT Center, The Stonewall Center of the University of Massachusetts
Media partners include: BloomingOUT-WFHB Radio, the International Gay and Lesbian Review, Reel Affirmations
Key Members of the Outreach and Media Team
Wesley K. Thomas is a widely recognized Navajo anthropologist who studies, among other subjects, cultural ideas about gender, and Navajo culture and language. He is the co-author and co-editor of an anthology titled Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spiritualityand is completing a new book, Navajo Third Gender. He travels throughout the U.S. and Europe to speak about the issues raised in the film and has many years of experience working with the Native American two-spirit community. Wesley brings his rich personal history as a two-spirit to his key interviews in the film and his work representing the project in academic settings and in the media.
Richard (Anguksuar) LaFortune is a citizen of the Yupik tribe and the director of 2SPR-Two Spirit Press Room, an effort to make Native voices heard more powerfully in all media. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Richard was part of a community of Native people from many tribes who began the organizing efforts that resulted in the ongoing International Two Spirit Gathering. His professional work in health and human services, arts and culture, and philanthropy and public policy are currently directed at reducing the suicide rate of Native youth, as well as the issues of Native American language revitalization. Richard appears throughout the film and speaks to the media about its subjects.
Author-activist Mark Thompson contributed reporting on culture and politics for two decades as a feature writer, photographer, and senior editor at the national newsmagazine The Advocate. He edited a book documenting the struggle for civil rights, Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement. He is also known for his influential trilogy Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning, Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit, and Nature, and Gay Body: A Journey Through Shadow to Self. Mark appears in Two Spirits and continues to work closely with the project.
Cathy Renna of Renna Communications in Washington, D.C. serves on the advisory board of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Live Out Loud! Cathy is recognized as a major force behind the success and growth of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)—where she worked for fourteen years. Following the beating death of Matthew Shepard, she helped activists in Laramie, Wyoming coordinate local, national, and international media and coverage of the tragedy and subsequent murder trials. She also was one of the key activists working with Fred Martinez's family, the media, and the police following Fred's murder in Cortez, Colorado. Working with two-spirit leaders Cathy will coordinate the media awareness efforts of the project. She appears in the film and is a media interview subject as well.
The Production Team
Rock music icon and political activist Patti Smith contributes music to the production, as do a number of Native artists who record with Canyon Records. Two Spirits also incorporates the vibrant roots music of the Four Corners region; as well as original music funded by the First Nations Composer Initiative, pieces by Navajo two-spirit composer Juantio Becenti, who also appears in the film.
Lydia Nibley is the executive producer, director, and co-writer of Two Spirits and a principal of Say Yes Quickly Productions with her husband and production partner Russell Martin. Lydia has worked in film, television, radio, and stage production and is the co-creator of the original television pilot Rise. In Two Spirits she uses a montage approach that incorporates intimate interviews, scenic Southwest landscapes, and an eclectic palette of found footage to approach the subjects of the film artistically, rather than only journalistically, combining stories of the historic past with contemporary characters and the challenges they face.
Producer and co-writer Russell Martin’s bestselling books have been translated into numerous languages and the television and film projects to which he has contributed have won numerous awards. The international television documentary, Beethoven’s Hair, based on his book of the same name, has been screened at film festivals and broadcast throughout the world. It has received three Gemini Awards, and the Festival Director’s Prize at the International Television Film Festival.
Henry Ansbacher is a producer of Two Spirits and the Executive Director of Just Media, a nonprofit organization that creates documentary films that help give voice to those who are disenfranchised and underrepresented. Just Media’s film, Iron Ladies of Liberia, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007 and their film They Killed Sister Dorothy aired on HBO and won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2008.
Editor Darrin Navarro edited Bug for famed director William Friedkin, and the film received the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. He produced and edited the documentary film The Painter’s Voice, also directed by William Friedkin, as well as the feature films Grace; Momma’s Man, an official selection at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Hate Crime, an official selection at the 2005 Palm Spring International Film Festival, and numerous other shorts, documentaries, and features.
David A. Armstrong, Two Spirits’ director of photography, began his career in documentary film and has since served as the principal cinematographer for more than a dozen feature films, including the films in the Saw horror series. He has also shot numerous television productions including Crime & Punishment and Lyric Cafe.
Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer Ron Eng’s credits include Coraline, Lakeview Terrace, Darfur Now, Bug, Vanilla Sky, The Wicker Man, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive, The Straight Story, Independence Day, and Return to Neverland, among many other films.
The documentary film Two Spirits and the educational outreach efforts of the Fred Martinez Project have received the Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia.
For more information about the film, please contact:
Lydia Nibley at Say Yes Quickly Productions in Los Angeles, Tel. 818.861.7590,
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For media inquiries, please contact:
Cathy Renna at Renna Communications in Washington, D.C. at 202.745.0440
and in New York at 917.757.6123,
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TWO SPIRITS: Sexuality, Gender, and the Murder of Fred Martinez
Two Spirits offers a unique perspective on gender and sexuality, one that is anchored in traditions that were once widespread among the indigenous cultures of North America. The film explores the history of Native two-spirit people—who combine the traits of both men and women with qualities that are also unique to individuals who express multiple genders.
Native activists working to renew their cultural heritage adopted the English term “two-spirit” as a useful shorthand to describe the entire spectrum of gender and sexual expression that is better and more completely described in their own languages. The film demonstrates how they are revitalizing two-spirit traditions and once again claiming their rightful place within their tribal communities.
