A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic and health legacies of colonialism.

As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother, and trapping, hunting and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and in her teen years became alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety, trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor, raised her children and fostered many others, learned to live with visual impairment and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay.

Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humour, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people. (From University of Manitoba Press)

A Two-Spirit Journey is on the longlist for Canada Reads 2025. The final five books and the panellists who chose them will be revealed on Jan. 23, 2025.

Chacaby is a two-spirit Ojibwe-Cree writer, artist, storyteller and activist. She lives in Thunder Bay and was raised by her grandmother near Lake Nipigon, Ont.

Mary Louisa Plummer is a social scientist whose work focuses on public health and children's rights.

"I want to leave something for my kids. My great-granddaughter and my great-grandsons," said Chacaby in an interview on The Next Chapter. "I want them to know what I was about, what I was made of, what I stood for. Because there is so much violence in the communities up north and around us."

"I wish more Native women and older women, even the ones that are older than me, could write their story about their life to share it with other people so their kids can grow to understand them and learn from them. We are storytellers. That is our gift. And if they share their real stuff, what really happened in the past, the kids will learn from it."