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Jack Saddleback, a two-spirit Cree transgender gay man, will be sharing stories and poems tonight.
The event, An Indigenous Transgender Journey Through Colonialism, is being presented by the Gender Vectors project at Simon Fraser University.
"Jack is very powerful speaker and an incredible person. He was the first openly trans person to be the president of the University of Saskatchewan's student's society. He's a real community organizer and community builder," says Dr. Dr. Ann Travers, associate professor of sociology at SFU.
Travers is one of the SFU researchers involved in the Gender Vectors project working with transgender, non-binary, two-spirit, and gender nonconforming youth to make a video game in partnership with masters students from the Centre for Digital Media.
The video game will depict the experiences of trans youth and be used an an educational tool to start conversations among youth, service providers, educators and policy makers in the Greater Vancouver Area.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided funding for the project. Travers says the funding allows them to work for four years to do the research necessary and to build a prototype of the game, called Gender Vectors of the Greater Vancouver Area.
"So much academic research ends up in journal articles that nobody reads except people in the field and we wanted to find a way to reach a more general population including the youth that we're writing about by using a video game," says Travers.
The team has been working on the project for two and a half years and has built a model of the game that they are going to workshop with trans youth and community members this weekend to get their feedback.
Jack Saddleback will be sharing his message of embracing two-spirits, conquering mental health, and finding ones identity in the Alice McKay Room at 350 West Georgia Street from 6 to 9 p.m.
Travers says if people would like to provide their feedback on the project or participate in future research they can send the team an email.
