On the heels of this year’s Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ Celebration and Awareness Day, Jessy Dame, Director of Two-Spirit Health at CBRC, appeared on CBC’s Unreserved to speak with host Rosanna Deerchild about Two-Spirit perspectives in healthcare.
Jessy discussed how the Two-Spirit Program team is working to challenge dominant narratives in healthcare and push back against systemic barriers to improve health outcomes for Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ people. “A lot of the time, we focus on our physical health,” he said from the CBC’s studios in Vancouver. “More recently, we’ve started to talk about our spiritual and emotional well-being, too. But it’s important to look at the whole picture—mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, physical health, and our sexual health. And by sexual health, I’m not just talking about sex. I’m talking about our overall needs as human beings, including our identities as sexual beings. It’s that fifth component of self-expression and power.”
Jessy got personal and spoke about his own path to discover his identity as a proud Two-Spirit man, as well as the role that Two-Spirit people generally hold in the community. He also discussed what he believes must be done to challenge and rewrite the harmful narratives of the past.
“Unfortunately, our society loves to trigger ego, and ego has no place here,” he said. “Responsibility is what we need to focus on. So, all of us—whether we are queer folks or allies—need to show up for each other. We all have internalized homophobia or internalized racism because society has forced that upon us, so we need to challenge that and take responsibility for that and actively dismantle those systems of harm within and then also support each other externally.”
Click here to listen to the full interview.
Jessy Dame, Director, Two-Spirit Health at CBC’s studios
