A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby (review)

The telling of the story of Ma-Nee Chacaby’s life begins not with Ma-Nee herself but with the story of her grandmother Leliilah. A Cree woman born in the 1860s in what would become Saskatchewan, Leliilah stands out as a major figure in the first part of her granddaughter’s life. Leliilah, who is the only adult Chacaby remembers to have escaped the alcoholism that consumed her childhood community, seems to have provided one of the few sources of unconditional love for Chacaby in her early years. She is the one who gifted Chacaby with her first teachings about being two-spirit, recalled from the past into a present where such teachings appear to have been largely forgotten.

The tie between Ma-Nee and Leliilah is one among many in a book that is largely defined by relationships, both good and bad. The chapter titles are defined by time, place, and relationship, for example: “Losing My Grandmother and Mother, Becoming a Parent, and Surviving an Abusive Marriage in Auden (1965–1970),” “Meeting Grace and Building a Life Together in Kaministiquia (1991–2004).” It is through these relationships that the shape of Chacaby’s life comes into view.

The first half of the book follows Chacaby’s life from birth to early adulthood, a time characterized by the love of her grandmother and life in rural Ontario, as well as by the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse she received from family and community members. Memories of joyful times bonding with other children sit alongside frank descriptions of violence and alcoholism. Though Chacaby does not delve deeply into the psychology behind the abuse and addiction prevalent in her childhood community, she vividly depicts the effects of racism and colonization on Native people at large.

Moving from her childhood to her young adulthood, Chacaby recalls an abusive marriage followed by a period of intense alcoholism and homelessness in a chapter that is unrelentingly haunting in its despair. It is her involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous that seems to turn the tide, both through helping her get sober and by leading her into a career of counselling that allowed her to provide for her family. This in turn led to her work doing outreach to homeless teens and fostering them in her own home. Chacaby describes all of this very matter-of-factly, neither playing down nor overemphasizing the remarkable nature of the work she was doing.

The story of how Chacaby came to terms with her sexuality is woven throughout the book and appears at various moments throughout her life. In one of the most memorable passages, she quotes her grandmother’s words to her: “Little girl, you have niizhin ojijaak (two spirits) living inside of you” (64). Chacaby remembers her grandmother passing on to her teachings of how two-spirit people were accepted in the community long ago. In another childhood scene, Chacaby and her friend Shiigohbii exchange the secret knowledge that both wish they could marry someone of the same gender. After these early moments of clarity, however, Chacaby notes that she seems to have repressed her attraction to women for a long time. There is no clear moment of epiphany for Chacaby; instead, her realization that she is a lesbian comes as a gradual acknowledgment of what she has always known.

The second half of the book is suffused with the excitement Chacaby felt discovering life as a lesbian. While the exploration of her sexuality was clearly an enormous part of this discovery, Chacaby’s memories show that just as important was the development of relationships with other gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. She describes this experience as feeling like “a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that, until then, had been forced into the wrong spaces, even into the wrong puzzle. But at...