Growing up as a Grand Ronde and Chinook person, Felix Furby felt like the only queer Indigenous person in the tribal community. “That wasn’t exactly true, but it felt true because we didn’t talk about it. We couldn’t see each other. It felt like people who weren’t queer knew who all of us were [better] than we could see each other,” he recalled. “There was an attitude of keeping everything separate that made it very hard for us to feel that sense of belonging in our community.”
Furby, a linguist, Indigenous historical researcher, and carver, first heard about Anthony Hudson (Grand Ronde, Siletz) in 2019 in Smoke Signals, the Grand Ronde tribal newspaper, and attended his performance as Carla Rossi, Portland’s premiere drag clown, sitting in the front row. Afterwards, Hudson came out to meet this other queer person from his own tribe.
“For me, this was the first time I met a queer person from my Grand Ronde culture specifically, and that was just wicked amazing,” recalls Hudson. “And honestly, it was just sort of a sense of like just basking in the existence of this other person that can relate to a very, very, similar experience, as different as we might be in any other way.”
“Having that feeling of like, oh my god, I’m not alone,” recalled Furby. “We have such an illusion that we are alone and that our queerness and our indigeneity don’t fit together very well, and we kind of grow up under that, and I think it takes time to unlearn that. But sending out that message to the community is like we are here, there’s more of us. There is so much more room for us in this culture.”
That first connection led four years later to The Shimkhin Project, a multi-year project featuring two exhibitions, including a touring exhibition and supporting programming centered on the 19th century Two Spirit healer Atfalati (Tualatin) Kalapuya healer Shimkhin. In addition to looking at the historic role of Two Spirit figures and understanding the concept of queer in tribal history, the project will also highlight contemporary Two Spirit and Indigiqueer artists and their contributions to revitalizing Indigenous culture.
My Father’s Father’s Sister
Their collaboration began with the 2023 exhibit My Father’s Father’s Sister at the Chachalu Cultural Museum in Grand Ronde. Focusing on Shimkhin, a 19th-century Two Spirit Atfalati [Tualatin] Kalapuya healer, the exhibit explored the history of Two Spirit and Indigiqueer peoples in tribal communities, and shone a light on contemporary Two Spirit work by artists within the Grand Ronde tribe.
Two Spirit is a contemporary Indigenous term for people who are not limited to the Western male-female binary and who can encompass a wide range of gender and sexual orientations. Not all Two Spirit individuals identify as Indigiqueer, an umbrella term for queer Indigenous folks. The concept existed before white colonialism: Two Spirit people traditionally were spiritual leaders and healers in their tribal communities.
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“We said let’s begin with the history and let people know that we are rooted in this earth and we are rooted in this culture,” said Furby. “We’re not a modern anomaly, regardless of whether the term Two Spirit for us is modern.”
Furby and Hudson wanted to use history as a jumping-off point for the art in My Father’s Father’s Sister. The exhibit included historical documents, but also work by Indigiqueer Grand Ronde artists that gave face to these ideas in modern day, including Steph Littlebird, Silas Hoffer, and a queer elder, Qahir Beejee Jamil Peco-Llaneza, whose artwork often explores her tribal identity and heritage.
But much of the exhibit was based on Furby’s research of historical linguistics. It was contextualized, said Hudson, “through the use of all these old pieces of ancestral testimony that had been given by our own ancestors to the white, ethno-linguists that came onto the reservation and were tasked, basically, with recording or securing our history before it ‘died forever.’”
That testimonial history had disappeared into academia, but Furby has uncovered much of it in his research. It required him to recontextualize and adjust the translations where it failed the original language, where a white academic imposed their own translation onto a language that didn’t have gender or pronouns. “They were saying he and him to refer to a person that was actually a she and that the language referred to as they,” added Hudson.” The result was the assimilation of gender within the white Eurocentric binary definitions and the disappearance of Shimkhin and other Two Spirit Indigenous people like her.
Shimkhin (1821-1904), pronounced “Shim-hun” or Shum-hin”, was a Two Spirit healer who had been born male, but who performed rituals, including dancing on Spirit Mountain for five nights for five consecutive years, to become woman and attain her spirit power. Santiam Kalapuyan language does not have gendered pronouns, but family records indicate Shimkin was referred to as “she” and “her” and as an aunt — “my father’s father’s sister.”
“There are specific cultural roles that people like us would have held in the community and a lot of the information about those specific roles and what they would have been called and what the people would have done has been erased or suppressed,” noted Furby. “There are a lot of us trying to use history to inform these roles, but also to put them in context with our current-day understanding of ourselves. One of the things to think about is that gender is a concept that doesn’t translate well between languages and cultures. So what does queerness mean within these Western European concepts? What did it mean for our ancestors? What does it mean for us today? We’re just exploring these ideas to put ourselves in context.”
“The research that I was doing was very personally motivated, and it got to a point where I was like, other people need to hear this,” Furby said. “And I wanted to explore a cultural revitalization project, which is not necessarily an official project, but it’s something where those of us who are interested in this cultural role can talk about what it would mean to revitalize it for us in our communities.”
While My Father’s Father’s Sister looked to the past and the ways that assimilation with white, Western culture had erased the long history of Two Spirit people in tribes, the second part of their project looks at the present and to the future.
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Transgressors
On view through April 26 at the Chachalu Cultural Museum, Trangressors explores the cultural revitalization under way today through the work of contemporary Indigiqueer/Two Spirit artists.
The exhibit features the work of nine national and international artists, including a.c. ramírez de arellaño, Evan Benally Atwood, Geo Soctomah Neptune, Jeffrey Gibson, Lehuauakea, Qahir Beejee Jamil Peco-Llaneza, Roin Morigeau, Steph Littlebird, and Walter Scott. On view are paintings, carvings, sculpture, beadwork, and photography that explore the role of Indigiqueer and Two Spirit people in their tribal worlds both today and in the future.
As curators of the show, it was important to Furby and Hudson to get all the Indigiqueer artists to share their stories however they wanted to share them: to share artwork about being queer, about their traditions, and about how they see themselves within their culture. “It was really important to us to start with the artists being from here, within all the tribal people, the Pacific Northwest,” noted Hudson. “The other half of the artists came from further out across the continent, across Turtle Island and even Hawaii. Thanks to our canoe culture, I think we have a close kinship, so we were able to bring in Lehuauakea from Hawaii, as well as artists from the East Coast like Jeffrey Gibson and Geo Soctomah Neptune.” In addition, Walter Scott, an interdisciplinary artist known for the Wendy trilogy of graphic novels, hails from Quebec, Canada.
Hudson and Furby were initially nervous about how the two exhibitions would be received by their tribal community, considering there was work on view that might be challenging or painful, or things which could de-center their world views. But they said the response was better than they could ever have expected.
“Conversations about queerness used to be in hushed voices in the corner of the room and, all of a sudden, we’re having full-voiced conversations in the center of the room,” said Furby. “There have been moments of pure joy, like when we did the closing for the first exhibit, seeing people from the Canoe Family come out and sing for us and seeing the Tribal Council members there, sharing stories I’ve never heard from them.” Many elders, non-queer Indigenous people, even talked about how they themselves have been impacted by gender and its expectations.
For many attending the exhibits, it’s been the first time that Shimkhin has been interpreted, shared, and remembered in this way.
“The exhibits have been for our entire community,” said Hudson. “We are a part of our community, with all of our diversity and intersections. The community isn’t complete without each one of us in it and I wanted to make sure this exhibit felt like something for all of us.”
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“The reason for the word ‘transgressors’ is that those boundaries are codified as rules. There is a rigidity, an authority to them, which is what makes our very existence between these spaces transgressive, even though there’s nothing transgressive about it at the end of day,” explained Furby.
“The way I look at Two Spirit is that it refers to plurality. It refers to an identity that allows for more potential, multiplicity and complexity,” Hudson added. “Something really important about a Two Spirit person in the role of a healer or a shaman or medicine person is that they’re capable of walking between worlds and of crossing different cultures and sexualities. They alone can cross that boundary, which is why we called the show Transgressors.”
Future ancestors
According to Furby, revitalization isn’t just about going to the past. “It considers who we are now, and it’s informing what we want out of our future, what we want out of our present based on these things, but it’s showing people that we have always existed,” he explained. “There is also an attitude that people like us aren’t part of our ancestral life, which just isn’t true. Though things are lost to assimilation, we think of the knowledge of them as being in the land and in our communities. It’s asleep and we’re waking them up.
“We want to connect ourselves to our past in an environment where the past is constantly pushed back away from us,” he continued. “We also want to reframe ourselves as future ancestors. What kind of ancestors do we want to be in the future, what kind of future do we want to build? You know, we have the ability, as part of a living culture, as part of a community that has a future, to also think about what we want out of that future and make decisions for it. And so some of the exhibit was stepping into that role as full participants in our own cultures. It’s calling attention to the fact that, one day, all of these people will also be ancestors that people refer back to.”
“We are the living participants of our actively living culture, and so not everything is rooted in tradition or the past,” added Hudson. “We are capable of building traditions together today. And I think with that idea of being future ancestors, too, there’s a sense of urgency for us in making this work. One of our artists is now an ancestor, one of our artists walked on this last summer, passed away, and that person who is a friend of ours should still be alive. That added a sense of urgency. It added a sense of like we need to respect and be here for these people living these truths and these stories and experiences today. We need to not just look at history, but we need to be present for all of our community members today. We hope this is a way to just inspire that kind of care and compassion.”
The exhibit moves next to the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, opening May 15. “We hope to reach more tribal people within Oregon, because this show is going to be touring through very different areas of our homelands through the Willamette Valley and the coast also,” said Hudson. “We are hoping to also reach just Oregonians, like settler Oregonians and their descendants that do not know the history of the land, do not know the political history of this land, do not understand sovereignty. We want to just try to teach them and share them a little with or share a little bit about ourselves with them.”
Support for Transgressors comes from the Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center, Native Arts + Culture Foundation, New Expressive Works, and the Oregon Community Foundation.
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About Anthony Hudson and Felix Furby
Anthony Hudson is an artist, writer, and performer who is well known as Portland, Oregon’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi. A 2013 graduate of the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Hudson is also a playwright whose writing has appeared in American Theatre and Arts and International Affairs. He has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2022 Indigenous Place Keeping Artist Fellowship from the Grand Ronde tribe; a 2024 Tin House Residency and 2024 COURAGE to WRITE grant for his memoir, Looking for Tiger Lily; and he was one of two local Indigenous artists selected by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation this year to receive one of the first awards in the new Spark Award program intended to support the Oregon arts community. Hudson was also recently named Native Artist-Scholar in Residence at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
Felix Furby is a linguist, carver, Indigenous historical researcher, and Indigiqueer advocate. He works on regional Indigenous history and languages, with focuses on language revitalization, cultural lifeways and practices, and Indigequeer/Two Spirit inclusion.
Hudson and Furby also received the Native Arts + Cultures Foundation’s SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts award, which empowers artists, curators, and community collaborators to address social change issues through a Native lens. The SHIFT award was awarded for Transgressors.
Touring exhibition
Transgressors, a touring exhibition and supporting programming about ancestral and contemporary international Two Spirit and Indigiqueer visual art, voices, and contributions.
On view in its entirety through April 26 at Chachalu Cultural Museum in Grand Ronde. It will open May 15 at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History. A smaller version of the exhibit will continue to tour throughout Oregon through 2026.
ixt tilixam / whole person, 2024
Chinuk poem translated into english
By Felix Furby
wik sitkum-man-sitkum-ɬuchmen nayka
wik sitkum tilixam nayka
ixt tilixam nayka
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kʰanawi nayka, nayka ukuk
wik kʰəpit man nayka
wik kʰəpit ɬuchmen nayka
kʰəpit tilixam nayka
ixt-ixt tilixam ɬas tiki munk t̓səx̣ nayka
nawitka, ayaq mayka munk t̓səx̣ paya stik
ghawqaɬ mayka munk t̓səx̣ tilixam
ixt tilixam nayka
ixt tilixam uk q̕at man, uk q̕at ɬuchmən, uk chaku x̣luyma
chinuk pi shawash-iliʔi tilixam nayka
ixt-ixt tilixam ɬas wawa khəpit sitkum shawash nayka
ɬas tiki munk ɬq̕up ɬasq̕up nayka
kakwa pus kwinin nayka
ɬas tiki munk la pus wik nayka miɬayt kakwa nayka,
pus nayka mash khanawi ixt nayka ɬq̕up
ɬas tiki kakwa ɬaska aɬqi nayka
bət wik tilixam nayka uk miɬayt t̓ux̣əlq’a hayu ɬq̕up
wik sitkum tilixam nayka
khanawi ukuk, nayka ukuk
ixt tilixam nayka
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(in English)
I am not half-man-half-woman
I am not half a person
I am one person
All of me, all of it is me
I am not a man
I am not a woman
I am just a person
People want to split me
Indeed you can split firewood
You cannot split a person
I am a whole person
who loves men, who loves women, who transitioned
I am a Chinook and Grand Ronde person
Some people want me to say I am only part Native
for me to throw away each one of my parts
They want me to live like them
But I am not a person with too many parts I am not half a person
All of it, it is all me
I am one whole person
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Conversation