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By MARY PEMBERTON | Associated Press
May 8, 2006
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Elton Naswood opened the workshop on the stigma of being both gay and an American Indian with a statement that resonated through the room.
"I myself am a survivor of a hate crime," he said, then shared a story of being attacked by four thugs outside a gay bar in Phoenix in 1992. They tripped him, kicked him and pounded his head with a rock.
Naswood didn't go to the hospital. He didn't seek help from police.
"I didn't want to report it. I felt shame," Naswood said.
Naswood, a Navajo who grew up in Window Rock, Ariz., told his story last week to a standing-room only crowd gathered for the workshop on being Native and a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered individual.
The workshop was one of dozens offered as part of a national conference on HIV/AIDS for Natives in North America. The conference attracted nearly 1,000 participants _ Indians, Native Hawaiians and Alaska Natives as well as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, researchers, elders and spiritual leaders from more than 40 states, Canada and New Zealand.
Ashliana Hawelu, a transgendered Native Hawaiian from Honolulu, told the workshop that she has been raped four times, thrown out of a car and beaten with a crowbar. When she went to the hospital and the doctors found out she actually was a man, they retreated to the hallway to talk about how much she looked like a woman.
"My head was bleeding and they didn't want to touch me," she said.
Naswood and Hawelu, and other workshop presenters, said Native communities can call upon the tradition of the "two-spirit" person to foster understanding and prevent gay-bashing. The two-spirit person is one that has both male and female identities. In many Indian tribes, the two-spirit person was revered, Naswood said.
"I think going back to those traditional understandings would empower the Native gay community," he said.
Hawelu said the two-spirit person lives within her. Growing up, she did the cooking but also trimmed the tree branches because her brothers didn't like to do it.
"It is that dual spirit that I have," she said. "They love me for it."
Naswood, with the AIDS Project in Los Angeles, said violence against homosexuals in Native communities is a problem.
"I have the scars to prove it on the back of my head," he told workshop participants.
Their stories gave Jheri Davis, a Navajo from Chinle, Ariz., the power to stand up and tell his own story of being attacked in 2004 by three young Native men who offered him a ride.
"I wasn't thinking anything and the next thing a baseball bat hits me in the back," Davis said. One of the men wielded a baseball bat in one hand and a machete in the other.
"They called me a queer, a faggot," Davis said. "They said I should die."
Davis' wrist was broken, his kneecap smashed and the back of his head split open. He spent two days in a trauma center in Maricopa County. When he got out, however, he filed a complaint; his assailants, ages 16-21, went to prison.
Davis said the workshop helped give him the courage to tell his story in public.
"I always wanted to share this information. Now, I know I'm not the only one that has been victimized by a hate crime," he said.
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On the Net:
http://www.embracingourtraditions.org
http://www.redcircleproject.org
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