Injustice at Every Turn: A Look at American Indian and Alaskan Native Respondents in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey was released on Columbus Day, an intentional effort to highlight the specific circumstances that American Indian and Alaskan Native people experience due to a history of colonialism and genocide that continues today with a federal holiday celebrating the "discovery" of America.
This report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality is an in-depth look coming out of the groundbreaking national study, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which was
published in 2011 and revealed widespread discrimination experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming people across all areas of life and demographics.
A key finding of the original report was that, even given the high levels of discrimination against all transgender people in the U.S., transgender people of color including American Indians and Alaskan Natives consistently reported even greater discrimination and experienced worse outcomes than the sample overall.
"This report shows the devastating impact that racism and anti-transgender bias play in the lives of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender people," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "The findings are as heartbreaking as they are unconscionable. They serve as a call to action to the LGBT movement and others to prioritize racial and economic justice and the needs of indigenous nations."
Craig Womack wrote about this. In one of his stories, some of the narrator's classmates are homophobic, but even more so, white people don't like him for being an Indian. (This even applies to gay white guys, who had an unwritten "no nonwhite guys allowed" policy in personal ads in those days.)
ReplyDeleteIt was written nearly 20 years ago, but still...