Last year, more than 500 anti-trans bills were introduced across the U.S., according to a 2024 UCLA study conducted by the Williams Institute. In 2022, 23% of youth who identified as Indigequeer — Indigenous people who are 2SLGBTQIA+ — reported attempting suicide, according to The Trevor Project.
From legislation to high suicide risk, it seems like the world is still telling Indigequeer people that they should not exist. It tells them that they are not welcome to exist as they are and they can either assimilate or disappear.
In a world shaped by transphobia and anti-Indigenous realities, Howie Echo-Hawk, local musician, performing artist and founder of Indigenize Productions, is looking to disrupt that with the INDIGEQUEER Tour. A member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Echo-Hawk has faced many injustices herself, so with INDIGEQUEER, she just wants a space for Indigequeer folks to let go and dance.
Echo-Hawk held a video call with Real Change to discuss creating INDIGEQUEER and what she hopes the experience brings to Native communities.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Gould: So what is INDIGEQUEER?
Howie Echo-Hawk: INDIGEQUEER is this party/show that I do. It’s a dance party. I play my music there. There’s usually drag or burlesque or backup dancers. It’s always changing. I like to book people from the areas that I’m in. I find other Indigequeers and have them in the show. It’s a nightlife event. It’s really fun. It’s also an opportunity for a bunch of queer Native people to get together with all their friends, and it’s our space. I won’t say there are many moments of Land Back because material conditions have not changed, but there are many moments of, “Hey, this is us. And we don’t care about anything else.” As opposed to taking back space, this is more about nurturing and sustaining.
What brought you to start INDIGEQUEER? When was the moment you knew you had to take INDIGEQUEER on tour?
I started INDIGEQUEER because, when the first pandemic restrictions lifted, I had gone through a very shitty year. I had been very suicidal. I [had] been in a really awful relationship. I was missing my family, I was missing my friends. But I also had found a new lease on life. I had done a fuck-ton of shrooms, [had] a lot of introspection and a lot of healing and exploring of myself where I realized, I’m tired of talking. I just want to get together with my friends and dance. I just want to make a space where we can shut up, not have to fight and struggle for a minute and [instead] just exist. Because so much that I’ve done in my life has been struggle, resistance and fighting. Those things are necessary and important, but they are not an identity. The struggle is a part of everything we do. I wanted to find more places where I could release.
So I taught myself to DJ. My homie, DJ Cutz, sold me his other DJ controller he wasn’t using. I got my homie Stephy Styles to host, found some cool people to go-go dance and just threw together a party. It instantly was successful, which is hard to do in Seattle. People were coming up to me crying. I had tons of people tell me that the space felt really meaningful and very restoring. It just became this thing that was bigger than what I thought it was.
I’ve always wanted to take some of my stuff on tour, but after Nex Benedict passed away, it just really hit me hard. It’s not like that’s the first time, but something about other people seeing it and also grieving it, them being so shocked by it, lit a fire under my ass. Because partially, I’m like, “Where have you been? Why haven’t you been this angry?” When it affects you, you have to build up a callus around it to be able to function. There’s just not enough space in the day to really feel the last 600 years of genocide and terror.
It just hit me that I found a place in Seattle to make a space for myself, and I feel really good. But I can’t just hide here anymore. I know that if I had just been able to see somebody who even looked like me, a Native from somewhere that I’m from, somebody who has the history that I have, it might have changed my whole life.
Because even now, a lot of the queer and trans Native representation I see are not people who I relate to. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s great. It’s just not what I see. I think that I have a story to tell about finding joy in finding a reason to live.
I’m not saying I could have saved Nex Benedict’s life, but I feel that I have a responsibility to people younger than me. I have a responsibility to people who are like me because I didn’t have anybody. I want to be visible and to be recognized, not because I want to be famous, but because I want people to live.
I imagine that bringing INDIGEQUEER to life has helped you develop as a musician and a performer. How have you noticed growth as a musician, DJ, producer, performer, Indige-baddie, etc.?
I’ve been a musician since I was five. Music is my first language, specifically drumming. I’ve always been able to jump in and play music with anybody anywhere. I’ve also done comedy, burlesque, and I’ve done lots of things. But the closer I get to making [combined] music and dance, the more uncomfortable and nervous I get because I’m really self-critical. I never imagined that I would be a DIY pop star for Indigequeer music. That was never a goal. I always wanted my music to be serious.
I put out “Don’t Let Them Colonize That Pussy” as my first song — a song that was intentionally put out because it cannot be played on any radio station, anywhere. It’s a song that’s meant to be experienced. It’s different every time with the audience.
When I was performing it last night, there [were] not a ton of people there. But there was a big crew of Indigequeer and Indigenous femmes in this little bar in Phoenix. At the bar, there were five white dudes watching us dance. It’s just so fun. I realized that it helps me get out of my head to perform it because I’m just delighting in the fact that it’s even happening. I told them last night, “We’re doing a spell.”
I look back on my childhood and I’m like, “Man, I wish I had could have seen this.” I also try not to get in my head too much about it and just enjoy it because it’s so freeing and fulfilling.
I have a lot of music that I’ve made that I want to share. I think that I write music to process the world and my own being, and sometimes, I don’t even get what they’re saying until later. There’s a song called “Paddle Together/Indigequeer.” I wrote it during the pandemic. I was very depressed, and now when I listen to it, I’m like, “Who made this?” It’s about the ordinariness of being Indigequeer, but also the beauty and strength in it.
My other message is that being Indigequeer and being Indigenous are the exact same thing. There’s no difference. We are meant to exist together ordinarily and plainly.
You grew up in Alaska. What was your experience being in a place with no people around you who looked like you? Growing up having no role models in that sense?
It was harder than I knew. I can look back and just tell how lost I felt. It was hard to not see a path for myself. I kind of dissociated from that as a child due to trauma in general. People told me, “You’re a boy; you’re going to be a man; you have to marry a woman” — all these things. And so I just said OK, even though I never connected with it. It really was difficult to be a lost kid — it’s still hard. I don’t view my identity as something that I’m creating anew. I view it as me finding what has always been there.
I bring my whole identity to the ceremony of life. I bring my queerness, my transness, all of it, because I am a whole human being. And I have to believe that the Creator made me with a purpose. I was made with value and integrity, and I bring it all. You can like it or not, but you can’t take it from me. I have tried to deny it, and it is still there. Nobody can take this from me. Not even me.
My favorite part about being Native sometimes is defiance. We are defiantly Native to the bitter end, and I gladly will go there.
I’ve been thinking about Gaza and Palestine and the horror that they’re going through. I was thinking about how they must feel. Seeing kids breakdancing or the old men sitting in bombed buildings, smoking a cigarette, even. Though they’re in terror, they know exactly who they are and where they belong. You can’t take that away from somebody. It’s something that, no matter what horrors the world brings, you can’t take that from them.
That’s how I want to feel. That’s how I should feel, because I felt like that as a kid. Before I knew I was Native, I just was. And now that I’m remembering that I’m also queer, I’m something beyond that. Now that I’m remembering that queerness is being Native — it’s being alive, being who I am — I bring it to everything that I do. It’s a part of every part of who I am.
You have experienced issues with censorship when it comes to marketing INDIGEQUEER events and speaking out against genocide. What is it like using INDIGEQUEER as a platform to unsettle an ongoing structural process?
The genocide has not ended; we are still in it. And it is important to know that we are linked in struggle, but we are separated by distance, time, money and resources.
INDIGEQUEER is a statement of solidarity with everybody who is struggling underneath capitalism and colonialism. It is always in our capacity to do what we can do. I made a song that we chant sometimes at INDIGEQUEER called “Fuck Them Colonizers.” It’s just a beat where I get everybody to repeat after me, “Fuck them colonizers; Land Back and Free Palestine,” because I do believe our words have power.
I think a lot of people struggle with [the] despair of not knowing what to do, and I think that’s good. You should explore despair because it’s a part of who you are. It’s probably telling you there are things that need to change, but currently no avenues to do so. So maybe you have to start making your own.
Is there anything else that you want to mention to our readers regarding the tour or anything else you want to have said?
I really believe that INDIGEQUEER is not my event — it is our event; it is our movement. I believe in creating spaces for Native people to be alive, to be together, to dance and remember.
I want people to support by sharing the events, donating to the GoFundMe, sharing the GoFundMe and joining my Patreon. I need people to invest in it with me because I’ve literally uprooted my whole life in Seattle just for the fact that I believe in this. Stream my music, share it with your friends and let it live in your heart.
I’m going to be on tour, sort of, indefinitely. I really want to take INDIGEQUEER wherever I can. I have dates all the way through the end of June, but because INDIGEQUEER is a different kind of tour, I want to invest in places and be around.
I think I might make Albuquerque a temporary hub for a while before I continue on toward the East Coast and eventually I want to end the year in Puerto Rico.
I really want to bring it there and hope to bring as many Indigequeers as I can and expel the spirit of straight Columbus back into the sea where he belongs.
Sarah Gould (they/he/she) is a Two-Spirit multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Washington. They have a B.A. from the University of Washington. They also enjoy drawing and painting in their free time. Find them on Instagram @native.poet.
Read more of the May 29–June 4, 2024 issue.