Activist Arnold Dahl-Wooley advocates, educates about the two-spirit community in rural Minnesota
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At the opening ceremony for Bemidji Pride this weekend two-spirit activist Arnold Dahl-Wooley will give the land acknowledgement. Although June is typically observed as Pride month, Bemidji organizers say they hold their festival in August to be more inclusive toward Bemidji State University students and the area’s three tribal nations: Leech Lake, Red Lake and White Earth.
Arnold Dahl-Wooley said rural Minnesota is becoming more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community but stressed there is still a lot to be done.
At a recent presentation in Cotton, Arnold Dahl-Wooley, a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, explained the term he uses to describe himself.
“Two-spirit, sometimes two-spirited, depending on the source, is used to refer to the Indigenous members who can see through the eyes of more than one gender,” he told audience members.
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He said every tribe had its own words to describe two-spirit individuals. Oftentimes they were revered and honored as spiritual leaders. And throughout Indigenous communities they were accepted.
“Native American two-spirits were male and female, and sometimes intersex individuals that combined activities of both that were unique to their gender or to their status as two-spirits,” Arnold Dahl-Wooley said. “And in most tribes, they were neither men nor women, but they occupied a distinct alternative gender status.”
However, based on their religious beliefs some European settlers labeled two-spirits as sinners and abominations.
“During early colonization, the early French explorers in North America referred to two-spirit individuals as ‘berdache,’” Arnold Dahl-Wooley said.
Today, the term is considered a derogatory word for a male sex worker.
In the early 1990s there was a push at Indigenous international gatherings to replace it with the modern English term two-spirit. Arnold Dahl-Wooley stressed the term is not interchangeable with gay.
“It applies to people who are considered to be more gender fluid,” he said. “And typically hold a sacred ceremonial role within their culture.”
Arnold Dahl-Wooley now runs Two-Spirit Advocacy, an outreach agency in Bemidji supporting two-spirit and LGBTQ+ people. He said growing up two-spirit in greater Minnesota wasn’t easy, he remembers hearing a tape he made with his friends when he was much younger.
“So, we’re all excited and just joking around and it gets to my voice, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can tell,’” he recalled. “And I didn’t know you could tell from my voice, because inside my head, it was very deep and gravelly but then some of the words I heard is, like, you can tell. And so, I was very terrified at that point.”
He said back then members of the LGBTQ+ community were being persecuted. In high school just being perceived different brought real hardships.
“I wanted to graduate, so I made sure I changed the way I talked, changed the way I walked, sat, all those different aspects,” Arnold Dahl-Wooley said. “I wanted to make sure that I was going to be okay.”
After high school Arnold Dahl-Wooley graduated from Bemidji State University then moved to Oregon for a decade. There he met his future husband, Matthew Dahl-Wooley. He says returning to Minnesota about 20 years ago was tough, “like being transported back in time.”
“When we moved back home the derogatory comments were unreal, notes, phone calls, whatever, you know, it was a lot,” he said.
Before they married back in Oregon, Matthew Dahl-Wooley ended up in the emergency room following a health scare. The staff there welcomed Arnold Dahl-Wooley to Matthew Dahl-Wooley’s bedside while he was being treated.
Fast forward to after they moved back to Minnesota, and it was a totally different circumstance. This time it was Arnold Dahl-Wooley being rushed to the hospital for what turned out to be a reaction to a food allergy.
“I was so sick. And they asked Matthew while we’re in the emergency room, ‘Who are you?’ He goes ‘Well, I’m his partner,’” Arnold Dahl-Wooley recounted. “And they said, ‘You’re not going in there because we don’t consider you family.’”
In response Matthew Dahl-Wooley delivered some choice words to the staff and barged over to Arnold Dahl-Wooley’s bedside anyway. Arnold then had to give a verbal statement that allowed Matthew Dahl-Wooley to stay with him.
“I no longer felt safe. And it’s the way they said it,” he said. “I didn’t feel like they even wanted to see me, just by the way they were acting, and the only thing I wanted to do was leave.”
But with the support of friends and family they moved forward. Eventually Matthew Dahl-Wooley and Arnold Dahl-Wooley would marry in what he said was “the first same-sex marriage to be sanctioned by the Ojibwe Nation.”
“When I say nation, that’s Minnesota, Wisconsin, parts of Michigan and Canada, that was history,” Arnold Dahl-Wooley said. “That took two and a half years, because I would have needed somebody to look up to, to see is that even possible? And I didn’t see anybody. So, I thought, I’m going to do it.”
In time people in similar circumstances around Leech Lake began reaching out to Arnold Dahl-Wooley for support. That gave rise to his first presentation at the facility center in Cass Lake. Which led to presentations for police departments, and then schools, Target and even at churches that had once called him an abomination and a sinner.
“It’s nice that they’re reaching out to our side,” he said about how things are changing. “Saying, ‘Can you please tell us about you and everyone else like you? And what does that mean, culturally in Native American communities?'”
After Arnold Dahl-Wooley’s presentation in Cotton, Caroline Roesch, who works for Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency said it was a great talk.
“I would love to hear him again. I mean, amazing, but we did a lot of damage. The colonization did a lot of damage, and it’s hard to get out of that,” she said. “He needs to be promoted more. And going around to the smaller towns, they are the ones that are struggling with change.”
Darcie Schmid, who works for Range Mental Health also took away a lot from Arnold Dahl-Wooley’s presentation.
“I found it very informative and educational and it kind of touched me a little bit, because I didn’t know what a two-spirited person was, and it makes all kinds of sense to me how we could be more accepting of just allowing them to be who they are,” she said. “Especially children, they’re always trying to figure out who they are, and they go through all these things. And when we tell them ‘You shouldn't be that way,’ we’re telling them ‘you’re wrong,’ but we should let them be who they want to be.”
At Bemidji Pride Arnold Dahl-Wooley will offer information about easing that struggle at his Two-Spirit Advocacy booth. Check out Arnold Dahl-Wooly’s advocacy website to learn more about him, his work or to listen to his podcast.