Sage Kiernan-Sherrow  | News Editor

Out and Proud is an event hosted by Western’s Multicultural Student Union, which, “recognizes the challenges that people of color face within the (LGBTQ+) community as well as celebrate their achievements and successes,” according to their executive board. This year, Western invited Mick Rose, an Indigiqueer, non-binary human from the Diné, Omaha, and Pawnee nations to speak about their many intersecting identities.

“Let us never forget our privilege on the land that we occupy and in the institutions in which we study,” Rose began, reminding the audience that the forced relocation of Native people is what allowed Western to grow. 

Initially, Rose stated that they had felt conflicted about speaking because of their complex relationship with their own identity; they hadn’t always identified as a member of the queer community and “at many times felt marginalized by the community.”

For them, their pride was fostered through self-discovery, and reclaiming aspects of their indiginous culture and history that had been severed.

A major turning point in that reclamation came from their grandmother’s affirmations towards their “coming-out,” as it was then that Rose was introduced to their tribe’s five-gender system and realized that they identified as Dilba, a person who identifies with the female spirit, and people their grandmother described as caretakers, peace-makers, counselors and warriors. 

Previously, Rose spent years attending college at BYU, where they assimilated and faked straightness to avoid being kicked out, excommunicated or facing electric-shock therapy. 

“I knew then, it was a dangerous place to be, and I needed to fit in … so I could get out,” Rose said.

During one particular incident, Rose recalled being nearly arrested because they had taken a bite of their pizza as they stood in line to pay for it, and the unjustified consequences that resulted thereafter. 

“This incident left a permanent on my public record. It comes up now when I apply for jobs, it came up when I applied to be a foster parent. Every time I have to justify my conviction … and relive the embarrassment of being a target as a person of color at my university campus,” said Rose.

Rose was inspired to write their senior thesis on Indian Boarding Schools, institutions known for kidnapping native children and forcefully indoctrinating them into Christianity, who operated under the former Bureau of Indian Education whose mantra was “kill the indian, save the man.” Rose’s own family was heavily affected by Indian Boarding Schools.

“This background and my family’s relationship with education is important because there’s layers in that where colonization has severed my ability to connect to my gender and sexuality,” Rose said.

Colonization has removed examples of queer, two-spirit indiginous people from history, and Christianity was responsible for many of their murders and much of their supression. 

Rose acknowledged that the loss of indiginous queer knowledge and heritage is a loss for all queerfolk. 

Now, however, “the consistent work done to discover and of identity in the indiginous community is one that is mirrored by Western society as well. How wonderful that communities and societies are shedding the confines that colonization has held. How beautiful that various tribal nations are able to reclaim and then share our traditional knowledge in these contexts,” Rose said. 

Rose’s embodiment of pride comes at a variety of intersections; it combines the pride of being indiginous, the pride of reclaiming their non-binary, queer identity and the pride of rediscovering the language of identity under the reclamation of their indiginous tradition and culture.

Rose reminded the audience, “you can identify however you feel inside .. and it will change over your lifetime.”

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