by Amy Moran, Ph.D.
It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Month, and we acknowledge and honor the existence of trans, nonbinary and Two-Spirit people who have existed throughout history in the U.S. and around the globe.
Adopted in 1990 at a First Nations conference in Winnipeg, the term “Two-Spirit” is an umbrella term for myriad manifestations of gender identity and expression. Along with social roles and community responsibilities, Two-Spirit people exist within North American Indigenous communities and outside of masculine male and feminine female identities. Two-Spirit people are acknowledged and honored by Aleut, Choctaw, Illinois, Inuit, Lakota, Ojibwa, Omaha, Paiute, Shoshone and Zuni and dozens of other First Nations peoples. Globally, other Indigenous groups also have documented transgender and nonbinary people across history to the present, including peoples in India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand and Uganda.
Despite what the current U.S. federal government promotes, sex and gender are not the same thing. There are three “sex” categories—female, intersex and male—based on a combination of one’s genetic code, physical anatomy and endocrine/hormonal makeup. And there are untold variations on gender identity and expression, which are not anatomical at all. The spectrum of gender from feminine to masculine is wide, and not all people identify with or experience gender along a spectrum.
Unfortunately, the schism in our nation between “liberty and justice for all” and current ideals held by White House personnel and lawmakers promoting biological inaccuracies about sex and gender—long debunked by decades of social science—works to force people to exist only in the “feminine female” and “masculine male” binary. That is neither liberty nor justice for queer people and our expansive communities.
Currently, according to the FBI website, gender identity is a listed demographic protected against hate crimes, but recently an FBI trainee was fired because of the Progress Pride rainbow flag on their desk that included trans pride colors. Moreover, the authors of Project 2025, the playbook for the current federal administration’s agenda, are pressuring the FBI to categorize transgender people as “nihilistic violent extremists.” This characterization does not match the reality of mass gun violence. Of the 5,000 mass shootings tracked by The Gun Violence Archive between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 15, 2025, the number of suspects confirmed as transgender is five.
Although endangered lives of transgender, nonbinary and Two-Spirit people are too-often reduced to “identity politics,” we would do well to recognize that harms to minority communities are often indicators of how much fascist authoritarianism a country’s people will tolerate.
While harms are coming to queer, immigrant, and Black and brown communities—independent from and intersecting with each other—they serve to distract from the many other unpopular and unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration. Not least among these is the announcement by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that the long-deceased U.S. soldiers who massacred hundreds of Lakota people at Wounded Knee in 1890 would retain Medals of Honor, affirming the nation’s racist, genocidal past and those soldiers’ roles in it.
Some good news, however, is that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, where the Ojibwe nation hails from, proclaimed October 2025 as Transgender Empowerment Month and New Jersey remains steadfast in its principles of inclusive education practices. As such, let’s continue to affirm all students in our classes, regardless of gender identity/expression and sexual orientation, and stay mindful of oppression in our midst.
Amy Moran, Ph. D. (she/her) is an out queer educator, advocate and activist working to make education inclusive and affirming for all students and colleagues. She is a 31-year middle school teacher, was a high school GSA advisor for 16 years, served on NJEA’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee and received NJEA’s Equality Champion Award.
Resources
Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ Identities: Today and Centuries Ago
The Roots of Anti-Trans Violence: Indigenous Communities
LGBTQ2 Well-Being Education Series: “LGBTQ2S Advocacy, and Nativeout”
LGBTQ2 Well-Being Education “Two-Spirit People: Then and Now”
14 Children’s Books Starring Trans or Gender-Nonconforming Kids
Transgender Reading List for Children
Staff Picks: Trans and Nonbinary Reads (New York Public Library)
Social Just Books: A Project of Teaching for Change