An indigenous woman who’s spent decades working to bring justice to her people got a big honour last weekend.
University of Saskatchewan researcher and associate professor Alex Wilson’s niece was in Winnipeg to accept her “Nellie” award for her. The award is named after suffragette Nellie McClung.
There are some big differences between the two women. While McClung fought for the right to vote, Wilson has fought to bring attention to the inequality that queer-identified aboriginal people face and to bring an understanding of those who are “two-spirited.”
Wilson said she feels a kinship with McClung because they both spoke up at a time when their opinions weren’t popular.
“Sometimes things have to be said and people are afraid to say it. So there’s kind of like a point in my own life where I felt that … there’s more of a danger if you don’t speak up than if you do,” Wilson said.
Wilson described what that moment was for her, when she was working as a youth facilitator during her undergrad studies.
“I went home for the summer and I came back in the fall and went to the youth group and all the native kids that were in the youth group had committed suicide over the summer,” she said.
Those three lives, Wilson said, ended because these people didn’t feel safe being themselves.
“It changed my life in some ways,” Wilson said, because once she started looking into the history of two-spirit people, she realized the documentation of systemic racism, homophobia and misogyny was almost non-existent.
After Wilson made this topic her research focus, she saw hope out of all of this suffering.
She is a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Manitoba, and is also a two-spirit woman.
“I think one of the findings, or the results of the research I was doing was the concept of ‘coming in.’ So rather than coming out, as people think about when talking about queer people, coming in is recognizing that we do have a valid place within our communities even if that means we create our own communities,” Wilson said.
She also notes that two decades ago, the term “two spirit” was unheard of but is now quite common.
Wilson is an associate professor in the College of Education and director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre.