Two Spirits

Fred Martinez was nádleehí—someone who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits—a special gift according to his traditional Navajo culture.

But his determination to express his truest identity tragically cost him his life. At age sixteen, he was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was murdered in Cortez, Colorado.

On a warm summer evening, Fred Martinez—ignoring his culture's warning to avoid going out in the dark of night—hugged his mother, said he would return soon, and left the trailer house in which they lived to attend a rodeo carnival.

Dressed as he usually did with a touch of mascara, wearing a small bra stuffed with socks beneath his sweatshirt, and carrying his favorite purse, he spent several hours with friends, then he disappeared.

His savagely beaten body was found five days later in a shallow canyon near his home. His murder attracted limited media attention, and the residents of the small off-reservation town in which he lived struggled to comprehend how someone so gentle—and so determined to experience a big and meaningful life—could have his life so senselessly destroyed.

Two Spirits: Sexuality, Gender and the Murder of Fred Martinez is new film which been made about the life and death of this young man, which also looks at the history of Native two-spirit people and how they were respected, particularly by the Navajo.

The greater goal of the film, however, is to educate society on how multi-gendered people enrich lives and why people must be free to be their true selves.

The Fred Martinez Project and the documentary film Two Spirits received the 2008 Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia.

The U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in Washington has joined the Fred Martinez Project as an outreach partner. The department will host screenings of Two Spirits around the country as a part of their ongoing national diversity programs.