Today our guest is Cree-Ojib­wa two-spir­it Elder, artist, and author Ma-Née Cha­ca­by. We chat about the suc­cess of her mem­oir recent­ly pub­lished through UMPress: A Two-Spir­it Jour­ney. With the help of Mary Louisa Plum­mer, Ma-Née walks us through her life from grow­ing up in the bush of North­ern Ontario straight through to her work with the GBLTTQ2* Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty today. A Two-Spir­i­ty Jour­ney has gar­nered a num­ber of acco­lades includ­ing a nom­i­na­tion for a Lamb­da Lit­er­ary Award in the cat­e­go­ry of Les­bian Mem­oir — for which Ma-Née launchd a GoFundMe page to cov­er her trav­el expens­es to New York City. Ma-Née’s sto­ry runs the gamut of emo­tions, cov­er­ing the dra­mat­ic and shock­ing vio­lence of her ado­les­cence to the high­lights of her emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al jour­ney as an Elder, her sto­ry is both unques­tion­ably unique and resound­ing­ly famil­iar of the Indige­nous two-spir­it expe­ri­ence in Cana­da for the last 60 years. We chat about men­tor­ship, self-care, two-spir­it advo­ca­cy, and danc­ing in the Big Apple.