Who We Are

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The goals and objectives of the Family (known as the Four Houseposts) are as follows:

1) SPIRIT: To develop and maintain Coast Salish 2Spirit focused safe spaces within local and urban Indigenous communities in ways that honour and recognize Coast Salish cultural maintenance and reaffirmation; 

2) FAMILY: To encourage loved ones, relatives, and Coast Salish Nations to decolonize, to reclaim our Coast Salish truths about gender and sexuality, and to include 2Spirit family members in all aspects of Coast Salish cultures and ceremony; 

3) saʔəst - To Lift Up the spirit, wellbeing and families of 2Spirit/Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ friends and relatives living on Coast Salish lands, so they may strengthen their relationships to local Coast Salish histories, protocols, and ancestral ways of knowing and being;    

4) c̓ec̓əw̓itəl̕ - To help one other build local, Coast Salish focused 2Spirit teachings as medicine, and to recognize 2Spirit intergenerational, ancestral, and contemporary cultural knowledge systems as part of our transformation teachings as xʷəlməxʷ (People of this Land).

BELONGING– 2Spirit people have the ancestral right to come home to their communities, cultures, and own identities as gender and sexually diverse relatives fully and without discrimination. 2Spirit people have historic and contemporary roles and responsibilities in Coast Salish cultures and ceremonies, and also have the right to safe spaces and homes within community.

TRANSFORMATION – Transformation has always been a central element of Coast Salish cultures. We recognize 2Spirit people as change-makers, and as creators of balance and healing within our families and communities. We acknowledge change as tradition and strength in our Coast Salish Nations and societies. We make space to lift-up the distinct truths of 2Spirit peoples’ transformation in their own journeys, their needs, and the medicines they offer; this includes all aspects of our cultural ways of knowing and being. 

RESPECT – We take care of our relations, and our relations take care of us; this is our teaching of shared responsibility as Coast Salish people. 2Spirit people are respected, openly celebrated and included in all community gatherings, ceremony, and events as full contributors and participants in culture. We aim to ensure acceptance of 2Spirit people in Coast Salish families and community, and to meet non-acceptance (as acts of unkindness) with teachings of love, protection, humility, and mutual respect. We recognize that doing this work reinforces our obligations as family, rooted in our snəw̓eyəɬ (teachings, law).

FLUIDITY – 2Spirit people are a fundamental part of their families, communities, and cultures because of their role, responsibilities, and medicines that encourage ancestral teachings of inclusiveness and diversity. 2Spirit fluidity is a gift and strength from the Creator, and this must not be confined by their families or communities.

θəʔit (TRUTH) - As relatives in Coast Salish Nations and cultures, we honour the right of 2Spirit children, youth, and adults to learn about and develop their gifts within their traditions, in order to guide and strengthen value over their own teachings within the geography and ecosystems they belong to. We recognize that all teachings around body, gender, and sexuality are interconnected and are clearly sacred.

ADVOCACY – We honour and stand in solidarity with our 2Spirit relatives, and in their need to develop and strengthen 2Spirit community within our own Coast Salish Nations and families, as well as other urban Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ communities living on our ancestral lands.

BALANCE – We respect the many languages and cultural teachings within different Coast Salish territories, and also of urban Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ relatives living within the boundaries of Coast Salish territories.