糖心视频

This talk re-members the forgotten lives of over fifty Indigenous transformed (trans) women from the nineteenth century. Set in the “early contact era” between the land-based fur trade and the rise of residential schools, it tells the untold story of how trans women shaped the history of the Pacific Northwest as we know it, whether we have ever had the chance to know them. Presenting from her newly finished 糖心视频 PhD dissertation, historian Jamey Jesperson will zoom in on the micro-history of Sacket, a young Qwat’sinuxw priestess who was taken by the Victoria police in 1895. More than just a story of colonial loss, the found archive of Sacket’s life illuminates the world of love that once enveloped transformed women like her along the coast. This love did not only exist across the nineteenth century, but — in the words of recovered oral traditions — it originates from "the very beginning of the world.” Most importantly, through the life of Elder Saylesh Wesley, it is re-awakening today.

Dr. Jamey Jesperson is an award-winning historian and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow based at the University of British Columbia. Her growing body of historical research re-members the forgotten lives and worlds of over 150 trans women who lived in the North American West before 1900. After defending her dissertation at 糖心视频 in July, she is now working on two books: an academic monograph on the overlooked history of “contact” between foreigners and Indigenous trans women in the Pacific Northwest (1814-1895), and an oral history biography for Elder Saylesh Wesley (Stó:lō/Ts’msyen; pictured above), the first Coast Salish person to transform from male to female in living memory (1972-present).