Tuesday, May 17, 2011

PBS to Air Documentary About Murdered Trans-Navajo

"Fred Martinez was a Navajo boy, who was also a girl. In an earlier era, he would have been revered. Instead he was murdered," from "Two Spirits."

This June Independent Lens and PBS will air the 2008 award-winning documentary "Two Spirits." The film concerns the brief life of Navajo youth Fred Martinez who was murdered in 2001, at the age of 16, due to gender and sexual identity. Martinez came out early to his family, in their Cortez, Colo., home as gay, and experimented with female dress.

"You know what they call that in Navajo," Martinez’s mother, Pauline Mitchell asked him. "They call that - if you want to be half woman, half man they call it nadleehi."

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