#ojibwa

In grade school, we never read Indigenous authors. Instead, we read the typical white man's books that just about every American kid reads over the course of their public school lives. I don’t think I ever even read a book written by a woman during my time in grade school. The books we read are only culturally relevant to a small group of people. Most of the kids I went to school with, including myself, never saw ourselves or the lives we live represented in the media we were forced to consume and analyze. Today’s post is for the 2SLGBTQIA+ and POC people who never got to read books that represented their lives and struggles, and for the authors whose works are not recognized because of their identity. 

Ma-Nee Chacaby

Ma-Nee Chacaby is an activist, artist, author, 2-Spirit, Lesbian, Ojibwa-Cree elder. Her works relay the stories of abuse, addiction, and poverty she experienced throughout her life. Chacaby was first introduced to the concept of being 2-Spirit by her grandmother, who told her that “…you have two spirits in your body, mind, soul and your heart.” She tells Chacany that seven generations ago, when she was a little girl, 2-Spirit people lived freely among the First Nations people without fear of discrimination. 

In 2016, Ma-Nee Chacaby (with Mary Louisa Plummer) released A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder. The book has won multiple awards, including winning Canada Reads in 2025, the Alison Prentice Award in 2018, and the Oral History Association Book Award in 2017. The book was shortlisted for the Lesbian Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Awards in 2017, and was nominated for the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature in 2016 as well. 

The book describes what life was like for Chacaby, living with her Grandmother in a rural Ojibwa community (near Lake Nipigon, Ontario). Chacaby faces many challenges, overcoming abuse and alcoholism in her community, as well as the economic, social, and health challenges stemming from colonization. 

Decades later, Chacaby has raised her children, gotten sober (even working as an alcoholism counsellor), came out as a Lesbian controversially in 1988 in a Thunder Bay Television news story, and begun painting as a part of her healing process (See her exhibits HERE). 

Chacaby has since become an activist for 2SLGBTQ+ and Indigenous people, leading the very first Thunder Bay Pride Parade in 2013. 

Buy A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder!

Follow Chacaby on Instagram!

Gwen Benaway

Gwen Benaway (she/her) is a 2-Spirit trans poet of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She is credited as one of Canada’s most widely published trans authors, having published four poetry collections: Ceremonies for the Dead, Passage, Holy Wild, and day/break, a collection of essays, and worked as an editor for the short stories  Maiden Mother and Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes. Benaway is a Ph.D student at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Poetry in Voice states that Benaway’s work is critically acclaimed in Canada, and that she was a “finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers from the Writer’s Trust of Canada, and her third poetry collection, Holy Wild, was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Poetry, the Trillium Award, the Triangle Publishing Press Trans and Gender Variant Literary Award, and was the winner of the 2019 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry.” 

Benaway claims in a ‘micro-interview’ with Poetry in Voice that Anne Sexton helped her discover the confessional poetry that has become her focus, alongside Indigenous authors  Marilyn Dumont and Gregory Scofield.  

Buy Benaway’s Books here & here!

Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is a 2-spirit, Oji-Cree academic and author from the Peguis First Nation on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, working as an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. 

Whitehead is a prolific author and poet whose works include, but are not limited to, Jonny Appleseed (2018), Making Love with the Lands (2022), and full-metal indigiqueer (2017). Find Whitehead’s full list of publications on Goodreads. Whitehead’s works feature the intersectionality of queerness, Indigenous identity, and mental health.

Whitehead began writing poetry in kindergarten, but he really felt that he was a poet in high school. His poems are typically lyrical, with an experimental and intertextual style. He claims in his ‘micro-interview with Poetry in Voice that in his poem "full-metal oji-cree" (a poem in Poetry in Voice’s anthology), he seeks to remove the idea of Indigeneity from a historical context and write it into a futuristic, sci-fi setting. 

Portrait of an Ojibwa woman sitting outside a hide covered wigwam, Minnesota, 1870s.

A doobius little creature getting up to mischief

MISHIPIZHIW

This water monster, from the traditions of the Ojibwa and Algonquin peoples of North America, has the body of a great cat with a saw-toothed ridge along its back extending to a long and sinuous tail with which it captures its victims. It is also said to raise fierce storms on the surface of the water by churning them with its tail. Accounts of the Mishipizhiw—also known as the Mitchipissy—survive from as early as the 17th century, and an early photograph of Lake Superior, dating from 1850, shows an unexplained bow wave streaking through the water that has been attributed to the Mishipizhiw.

The Nightingale song. The Ojibwa grandfather volunteered to watch the five grandchildren and he took them to the big water. He told them if you listen well, you can hear the nightingale songs when the moon is rising to the west. Little Mia laughed and she asked. Who is the nightingale singing to? Is it for the big water? Or is it for a lost lover? He smiled and he told his grandchildren to sit…