That’s roughly 6 percent of the total Native population - and slightly higher than the 5.6 percent of the general population that identifies as LGBTQ, according to a Gallup poll in February.ĪIAN people who identify as part of the LGBTQ community tend to be younger, according the report, with 33 percent between the ages of 18 and 24, compared to just 15 percent of non-LGBTQ AIAN people in that age group. Using data culled from the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey from 2012 to 2017, the Williams Institute estimates that 285,000 AIAN adults identify as LGBTQ. “We aim to be a safe space, and LGBT people are integrated into everything we do,” Day said. They may preach in the native language, but they still preach the dogma of white, homophobic Christianity.”ĭay founded the Indigenous Peoples Task Force after her brother, Michael, tested positive for HIV in 1987 and they discovered a near total lack of HIV education and prevention programs aimed at the American Indian community. In the area where I lived, there were more churches in town than anything else. “These are not gay-friendly churches, and they’re the ones that have a lot of sway in those areas.
“In the South, the Church of Christ and Southern Baptist Church are pretty pervasive,” Jumper-Thurman said. “If LGBTQ people get assaulted or beaten up in a hate crime on tribal land, it’s often not prosecuted.”ĭata on LGBTQ American Indians is extremely limited, but a 2010 survey conducted for the New York State Department of Health found nearly 1 in 3 (29.4 percent) reported experiencing hate violence - the highest rate of any LGBTQ demographic in the report.
Tribes are sovereign nations with their own laws and regulations, she added. “They have to be very careful about who they’re out to.” “In the cities, they may have access to a sense of community, but on the reservations and the rural surrounding areas, they can be ostracized, made fun of and pushed out to the fringes,” she said of LGBTQ American Indians. Jumper-Thurman said she’s not surprised by the findings. Pamela Jumper-Thurman is a retired research scientist in the ethnic studies department at Colorado State University and has researched HIV/AIDS education, substance abuse and mental health in American Indian communities for three decades. Haaland also lives with clinical depression. Somáh Haaland, who is queer and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, is the media coordinator for the Pueblo Action Alliance. In the report, Wilson stated that, “It is critical that policies and service interventions consider the LGBT status and multiracial identities of AIAN adults.” 'Pushed out to the fringes' Wilson, a senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and the report’s lead author, told NBC News.
“The complex picture of health and economic vulnerabilities of AIAN LGBT people is likely a product of factors shared with all Indigenous peoples, such as the impact of historical trauma, and those shared across LGBT people, such as anti-LGBT stigma,” said lead author Bianca D.M. And nearly half reported a major financial crisis in the prior year, compared to just 11 percent of heterosexual, cisgender Indigenous people. Three-quarters of respondents reported not having had enough money to make ends meet in the prior year, compared to less than half of non-LGBTQ AIAN people. AIAN LGBTQ adults, particularly women, are also more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors, including heavy drinking, according to the findings.