One heart, two spirits – Fort William First Nation honours two-spirited citizens

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION—Fort William raised a community-designed pride flag in front of the band office to honour two-spirited community members on July 11.

“This flag represents acceptance, inclusion, equality and most importantly to me, it teaches tolerance,” says Raili Saarinen, a Fort William citizen who helped raise the flag. “And that is what we need our young kids to know, that it’s okay. That flag right there is going to save lives. I’m grateful to my community and I’m very proud to be from Fort William First Nation.”

Saarinen says some two-spirited youth are bullied in school or not accepted by their siblings.

“We’ve already lost one in recent years, and we don’t want to lose any more,” Saarinen says. “We want our kids to know they are loved. It’s not who you love, it’s how you love.”

Saarinen says it was an emotional experience to raise the pride flag alongside the Canadian, Fort William and the Anishinabek Nation flags in front of the band office.

“It’s just important to me and my community so kids don’t have to feel like I felt or I can’t even imagine the generation before mine,” Saarinen says. “We don’t want that, we want to celebrate and we do that now. With a little bit of lobbying and a little bit of time, we got that flagpole erected.”

Saarinen says he carried a pride flag during the grand entry ceremonies for the last two Fort William Pow Wows.

“We didn’t have that [community-designed] flag yet, so we just used a regular pride flag,” Saarinen says. “So we are going to have our [pride] flag carried in grand entries on all three days and that flag is going to be there [in front of the band office] 365 days a year for eternity.”

Fort William Elder Lorraine Bannon says the design she created for the community’s pride flag “came very naturally” to her.

“My mother-in-law used to talk about two-spirited people and how two-spirited people were seen as very special honorary people in the community,” Bannon says. “Today we still need to recognize that we have two-spirited people.”

Bannon’s design incorporates the figures of two spirits inside a heart design created from two arrows. It also features a message: One Heart Two Spirits.

“Society is coming to recognize the importance of the individual,” Bannon says. “That’s where one heart comes in, saying it’s an individual who is two spirited. And then I put the Native arrows around the heart of two people combined, a man and a woman, because it could be either/or.”

Fort William Chief Peter Collins says the pride flag raising ceremony is about the recognition of two-spirited people.

“They are a part of our society and we’ve got to live and learn [about] their issues and how we can better enhance them and better support them in moving forward on their dreams and their aspirations,” Collins says. “We just have to support them and make sure they are a part of our society.”

Fort William Councillor Michele Solomon says the pride flag raising ceremony was long overdue.

“It is a great time to acknowledge our two-spirited people in this community,” Solomon says. “This flag is going to fly all year round, so it’s not something that we acknowledge just during one week of the year. We acknowledge our two-spirited people and their contributions to our community all year long, and that is really important.”