Ma-Nee Chacaby

Ma-Nee Chacaby (born July 22, 1950) is an Ojibwe-Cree writer and activist from Canada.[1] She is most noted for her memoir, A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder, which was co-authored by Mary Louisa Plummer and published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2016.[2] The biography was awarded the U.S. Oral History Association's 2017 Book Award,[3] as well as the Ontario Historical Society's 2018 Alison Prentice Award for Best Book on Women's History in Ontario.[4] In addition, A Two-Spirit Journey was a shortlisted Lambda Literary Award finalist for Lesbian Memoir/Biography at the 29th Lambda Literary Awards in 2017,[5] and was shortlisted for the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher at the 2017 Manitoba Book Awards.[6]

Born and raised in the remote Northern Ontario indigenous community of Ombabika,[2][7] Chacaby escaped the Indian residential school system only because she was away hunting and trapping with her stepfather when government agents arrived in the community during the Sixties Scoop.[2] She later lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Thunder Bay, Ontario, and sparked a local controversy when she openly identified herself as a lesbian in a television news story for Thunder Bay Television in 1988.[2] She remained a local activist on LGBTQ and indigenous issues, and later began to create and exhibit work as a painter,[8] before writing and publishing A Two-Spirit Journey.

In 2019, A Two-Spirit Journey was published in French as Un Parcours Bispirituel by Les éditions du remue-ménage.[9] That same year, Chacaby served as one of the grand marshals of the Fierté Montréal parade.[8]