Stage & Arts

‘Queering Indigeneity’ debuts at the Minnesota Museum of American Art

The exhibition is part of a multiyear, multigenerational project that includes 16 artists from the Upper Midwest.

By Alicia Eler

The Minnesota Star Tribune

October 24, 2025 at 12:00PM

Noah Polk, Awanigiizhik Bruce and Madeline Treuer are three of the 16 two-spirit artists in "Queering Indigeneity" at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Artist Penny Kagigebi, a White Earth Ojibwe direct descendant, felt called to curate an exhibition of “Native queer” and gender-expansive artists as a way to encourage healing within Native communities.

Over the course of three years, Kagigebi worked with the Minnesota Museum of American Art to make that happen. The exhibition “Queering Indigeneity” features 16 two-spirit, “Native queer” and gender-expansive artists in the Upper Midwest.

Two-spirit, a term that was coined in 1990 at the Inter-Tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a pan-Indigenous term for a Native person who carries the spirit of a man and a woman.

That in-between identity has often been left out of conversations, and Kagigebi, who is two-spirit, wanted to bring it back. With the help of the Minnesota Museum of American Art and supporting curator Ben Gessner, she’s done just that.

Community Curator Penny Kagigebi organized "Queering Indigeneity" at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The show is more than just a one-off: It is a multiyear, multigenerational project that will continue after the exhibition closes in August.

Artist and activist Sharon Day's (Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe) artwork "The Tree of Peace," 2020, greets visitors before they enter the exhibition. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Kagigebi, 60, has been involved in activist work since the 1990s. She sees the term “two-spirit” as inclusive and broad.

In organizing the show, Kagigebi, who lives in Detroit Lakes near White Earth Indian Reservation, “really wanted to focus on the positive, but the work was to undo lateral violence, lateral oppression in the Native community.”

She realized that radical nurturing was needed, and “that’s why there’s such a gulf between those two ― because two-spirit people are missing from our communities.”

Two-spirit people can perform that healing, she said.

Penny Kagigebi's baskets rest on shelves in front of Niibawi Ajijaak's (Standing Crane) poem "A Community without Two Spirits" at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

This is the second exhibition in the Twin Cities this year centering two-spirit people. Two Rivers Art Gallery at the Minneapolis American Indian Center hosted “We Are Still Queer” in June.

Opening night earlier this month felt like an extended family reunion. Artists spoke about each other as relatives, and some artists called Kagigebi their “auntie.” Artist Dyani White Hawk came through, admiring the work of her two-spirit relative Noah Polk (Diné, Apache, and enrolled member of the Quechan Nation), who also works in White Hawk’s studio. He created two beaded works inspired by Quechan women’s capes.

Artist Awanigiizhik Bruce (Mikinaak-Wajiw Anishinaabe, Nehiyawe, Michif), who uses they/them pronouns, explained their large-scale photograph and fashion artworks to curious visitors.

“How do they heal themselves in a two-spirit ceremony?” 2025, a collaboration with Dyana DeCoteau-Dyess (Anishinaabe, Michif, Northern Cheyenne, and Arikara), depicts six versions of Bruce. The person sitting on a blanket in the middle receives healing from various iterations of Bruce, including one holding an owl fan, another holding an eagle feather fan and a person with a buffalo mask, a “Buffalo Society member,” Bruce said.

Awanigiizhik Bruce's self-portrait "How do they heal themselves in a two spirit ceremony?" and a two-spirit strap-dress tunic are on view at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

“How do I find healing?” Bruce said. “Who do I seek? And how to keep choosing to stay in healing?”

Artist Zoe Allen, citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Nation and descendant of White Earth Ojibwe, made a single beadwork butterfly on velvet with her sister Sadie. Working on it helped her to better understand her two-spirit identity.

“This piece is a visual representation of that process, because there’s a lot of emotions that came up, a lot of my own traumas around my queerness that came up doing this work,” Allen said.

Zoe Allen worked with her sister Sadie on "Little Spirit," 2025, a beadwork butterfly about her two-spirit identity. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

She noted the importance of two-spirit people, today and historically, as people who take care of their communities.

“For a long time, that part of our history was missing from conversations due to colonization,” she said. “Two-spirit people have always been here and would often take on roles that other people in the community couldn’t because they saw things from so many different perspectives.”

Allen has known Kagigebi for a long time. Kagigebi gave her sister Sadie her spirit name and was one of the first two-spirit people Allen knew.

“I have lots of two-spirit people in my family, and I didn’t really know that until I brought that language to them, because we don’t all identify that way,” she said. “Penny really helped me build some language around that.”

Minnesota Museum of American Art Executive Director Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota and Muscogee Creek) said she feels the show offers peace.

“We are in this highly political moment right now and we need to remember who we are, and we need to celebrate our authentic selves,” Beane said. “We need to do that for each other in a way that’s celebratory and unapologetic.”

Artist Delia Touché's (Spirit Lake Nation) artwork "Dinosaur Oyate" is in the exhibition "Queering Indigeneity" at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)