Pride festival themed ‘Sacredness before Stonewall’
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie
Mattee Jim is not only the hostess for this year’s Diné Pride, one of the honored champions, an HIV prevention advocate but also a renowned entertainer.
WINDOW ROCK
The Navajo Nation is home to the largest Pride celebration in Indian Country. This year’s Diné Pride theme is “Honoring Sacredness before Stonewall.”
“Our pride is solely focused on the sacredness of Native and two-spirit identity before Stonewall,” Alray Nelson, one of the founders of Diné Pride, said.
The event is part of the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Pride celebrations that happen every June across the United States. It will be held June 28 to 29 in Window Rock.
“Because of Western encroachment, because of colonialism, it really blurred the traditional knowledge about our LGBTQ relatives,” Nelson said. “Western teachings taught in boarding schools impacted a generation of Navajo people that now do not see our community as valid, as human or as sacred.”
This is why the event is refocusing on how two-spirit relatives were treated and fit into the Navajo community.
“So, our pride is to reaffirm, reclaim that knowledge and history that at one point in time before Western encroachment, before white people coming onto our land, before Christianity, our people were honored and recognized and revered,” Nelson said.
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