SAN FRANCISCO | California Indian Two-Spirit Visionaries Gathering

Read the Research Report

A collaboration with Dr. Abel Gomez and Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS)

To speak about California Indian peoples is to speak about survival and persistence in the face of apocalypse. Despite academic narratives of extinction, federal neglect, and deliberate attempts of eradication, California remains the state with one of the largest numbers of tribal nations. Though there are 109 federally recognized tribal nations, many like the Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay Area do not have federal status as sovereign tribal governments. Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer people continue to make important contributions to the work of cultural and political resurgence, even as they experience homo/transphobia in the Native community and racism in dominant society. The California Indian Two-Spirit Visionaries Gathering brought together Two-Spirit leaders from Ohlone, Kumeyay, and Tongva tribal communities to honor their contributions to the Two-Spirit community. 

This event was organized alongside the Living in Abundance Project funded by the SF Human Rights Commission. Through this initiative, Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) conducted a series of talking circles (focus groups) to better assess the needs of the broader Two-Spirit community. The California Indian Two-Spirit Visionaries Gathering expanded this model to create an entire day of activities. This included a formal honoring of participants, community building activities, a wellness workshop, lunch, and a talking circle. The talking circle helped to assess the needs of California Indian Two-Spirit community members but also invited participants to reflect on what makes life meaningful. The findings were published in the Living in Abundance report published by BAAITS in August 2024. 

Religion in San Francisco / Yelamu

Named after the Spanish colonial mission, Mission San Francisco de Asis (1776), San Francisco is home to one of the most diverse populations in the country. Known by some by its Indigenous name Yelamu, San Francisco is the homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. Shaped by Spanish Catholic, Mexican, and later American colonialism, the land is the birthplace of numerous cultural, political, and artistic movements. Alongside multiple waves of migration, San Francisco was among the many cities that Native peoples moved to as part of the Indian Relocation Act (1956)  intended to assimilate Native Nations. This policy backfired and in 1969, a group of relocated Native people known as the Indians of All Tribes engaged in a famous 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island which galvanized Native peoples around the country to political activism. In 1975 Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara May Cameron (Hunkpapa Lakota) founded Gay American Indians (GAI), the first Native queer organization in the US. Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) was founded in prayer in 1999 and in 2012 established the first and still largest public Two-Spirit Powwow. Today, diverse Ohlone tribes and families live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, neighboring relocated Native peoples, and Indigenous migrants from south of the US-Mexico border. California Indian and other Native ceremonies take place alongside a diversity of religious practices from around the world.

EXPLORE THE GLP ARCHIVE

As part of the Our Good Life Project in San Diego, our team collected hundreds of handwritten (or hand-drawn) reflections about local residents’ relationships with their animal companions during the pandemic, many of which were accompanied by photos. We also conducted oral history interviews with individuals working in social services and other fields to learn how they supported both humans and their pets during this time. The full collection of images, audio, and other materials is available in the Our Good Life Project Archive. We encourage you—and, if you are an educator, your students—to explore the archive!

Suggested Readings & Resources 

Meet the Team

Dr. Abel R. Gomez (he/him) is Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at San Jose State University. His research and teaching examine the relationships between sacred sites, ceremony, gender and sexuality, Indigenous cosmologies, and (de)colonization. Dr. Gomez engages in ethnographic research about and with Ohlone tribal communities in the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay regions to theorize enduring meaning of homeland and coalitions to protect sacred sites. His research has been published in American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture and his public-facing scholarship is featured in various podcasts and online publications. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous spiritual traditions at Texas Christian University. Dr. Gomez is a queer Latinx scholar from a Central American and Mexican family born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ohlone homelands.

Abel Gomez

Angel C. Fabian (he/she/they) in ceremonial spaces is known as Tlahuizpapalotl (Butterfly of Light). Angel serves as Executive Director of Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS), which hosts the world's first and still largest public Two-Spirit Powwow. They are a person in recovery, an immigrant, a curanderx, Two-Spirit/Queer, Ben’ Zaa (Zapotec), manager/administrator, clinician. and cultural bearer. Angel holds a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University, a Masters in Nonprofit Administration from the University of San Francisco and a Doctorate in Medicine from the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara.

Angel Fabian

Mayra Mendoza

Mayra Mendoza is a genderqueer community builder from the Xi’ui and Purépecha peoples of Central Mexico. They grew up and live in the unceded Ohlone territory known as Oakland, California. Mayra has spent over 20 years doing community-based work around issues such as Indigenous rights, legal access, sexual and reproductive rights, and immigration justice. They have a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from San Francisco State University. Most recently they served as Program Manager at Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS), caretaker for their aging parents, and provided vital administrative support for the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area (IIBA).

Our Good Life Project was seeded by Harold Morales, Rupa Pillai, and Kayla Wheeler with support from Amrita Bhandari, Ariel Mejia, Sierra Lawson, Fatima Bamba and many others from the Center for Religion and Cities’ collective. Learn more about the CRC team here.

The work is supported through generous funding from Morgan State University and the Henry Luce Foundation.

The city of San Francisco / Yelamu is located on the homelands of the Ramaytush Ohlone people.
The CRC invites you to join us to learn about the Indigenous history of and contemporary context of Native nations and communities in the lands and cities we live and work on.

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