Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation)

Overview

No statement of intent by a designer has been located. What the record carries is the submitter's explanation of the emblem: "Basically, the two feathers represent woman and man, and the circle represents unity in one." ^[1]

On 17 December 2016 an anonymous person sent the Tumblr blog ask-pride-color-schemes a single composite image holding four Two-Spirit designs, apologising that Tumblr gave them no way to submit several images at once. One was an existing, more complex flag with two faces, a dreamcatcher, an eagle and the word "2-Spirits" on a rainbow field; the other three were the simplified two-feather-and-circle emblem placed on the rainbow, transgender and nonbinary flags. The submitter identified the complex one as the design the blog had said it found too complex to redraw, and described the rainbow-field version as "an alternative one I've see around the Internet". ^[1] The emblem was therefore already in circulation by December 2016. Where it came from, and who drew it, remain unestablished.

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Two-Spirit

Subcommunity

Indigenous North American people who hold or claim Two-Spirit identity

Movement

Two-Spirit visibility, Indigenous Queer pride

Diaspora Context

Indigenous communities across the Canada and United States border

Language Context

Two-Spirit is an English term, first proposed by Elder Myra Laramee at the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in 1990 as an alternative to the colonial term berdache. ^[5] Albert McLeod, writing for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, dates the term's introduction and adoption in North America to 1990 and does not claim to have proposed it himself. ^[6] Nations have their own words: the submitter who documented this flag gave winkte as the Lakota term. ^[1]

Religious Context

The First Nations Health Authority describes Two-Spirit as "an Indigenous-specific term that is used to self-identify with expressions of gender or sexuality through a pre-colonial lens", existing separately from Western constructs and not equivalent to an LGBTQQIA+ identity, though a person may identify as both. ^[5]

Racial / Ethnic Context

Two-Spirit is Indigenous-specific. Use of the term by non-Indigenous people is inappropriate. ^[5][7]

National Context

Pan-Indigenous in scope, spanning what are now Canada and the United States, with Nation-specific roles and terms varying widely.

Two-Spirit is not a synonym for bigender, nor exclusively a gender identity. It can concern gender, sexuality, spirituality, cultural role, kinship or responsibility, differently by Nation and by person, and McLeod records that not all Indigenous LGBTQI+ people use the label, particularly Inuit people. ^[5][6] The submitter who documented this flag described it through their own Lakota perspective as an identity in which "a person has the spirit of both woman and man within them", adding that it "could be thought of as a cultural version of bigender". That is one person's account and not a general definition. ^[1]

Creators

Associated Figures

Attribution notes

The designer of the two-feather-and-circle emblem and of this flag is unknown. The contemporaneous record separates three roles. The anonymous person who submitted the image to ask-pride-color-schemes on 17 December 2016 described the rainbow-field version as "an alternative one I've see around the Internet", which is a report of something already circulating rather than a claim of authorship; in a follow-up message they signed themselves "the Two-Spirit anon". ^[1] The blog that received it, ask-pride-color-schemes, and its companion pride-color-schemes, redrew the designs and published them, recording "Designed by: Unknown". ^[2] Later guides shortened "Two-Spirit anon" to 2Sanon and began printing it as a designer's username: Flags of the World writes that the flag "was first designed in 2016 from a user on Tumblr by the username '2Sanon'", and retailers and listicles repeat it. ^[3][8][9] That is attribution history, not evidence of authorship.

Origin

Place Type

Tumblr submission

Digital Origin

Yes

Origin Type

first_documentation

Physical Origin Status

unknown

Digitally documented. No place of design is recorded, and none is inferred from the submitter's own identity, so this entry carries no map location. ^[1]

The earliest located appearance is a submission to the Tumblr blog ask-pride-color-schemes on 17 December 2016. No place of design is documented, and none is inferred from the submitter's own Lakota identity. ^[1]

Indigenous Identity Context

Territory

Turtle Island

Geographic Scope

pan-Indigenous

Colonial State

Canada, United States

Traditional Knowledge Notice

Yes

Affiliation Type

identity_framework

Pan-Indigenous

Yes

Two-Spirit is a modern pan-Indigenous English umbrella term, first proposed by Elder Myra Laramee at the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in 1990 as an alternative to the colonial term berdache. ^[5] It is not one uniform precolonial identity: what it covers can concern gender, sexuality, spirituality, cultural roles, kinship or responsibilities differently across Nations and individuals, most Nations have their own terms, and not every Indigenous LGBTQI+ person uses the label. ^[5][6] The Nation and language fields here are left empty because the designer of this flag is not known. The anonymous person who documented it on Tumblr in December 2016 wrote as a Lakota person and gave winkte as the word used in their tribe, which is their own identity rather than the flag's. ^[1] No design holds pan-Indigenous authority.

Two-Spirit is Indigenous-specific and pan-Indigenous in scope. No Nation affiliation is recorded for this flag, because its designer is unknown. ^{[1][5] [1][5]}

Human Interest

The most reproduced Two-Spirit flag has no documented designer

The design is manufactured and sold by commercial flag makers, has been raised by a university, and appears in reference guides as the representative Two-Spirit flag. ^[8][10][3] No source names the person who drew it. The one contemporaneous document is a Tumblr submission from someone who had seen it online, and the blog that received it recorded its designer as unknown. ^[1][2]

Dates & Chronology

Earliest located documentation

December 17, 2016

Creation Bounds

17 December 2016 is the date of the Tumblr submission that documents the design, not a date of creation. The submitter presents the emblem as something already in circulation, writing that the version on the rainbow field is "an alternative one I've see around the Internet" and pointing to it as what a web search for "two spirit flag" would return. No earlier appearance has been located, and no date of design has been established. ^[1]

The blog redrew the four designs and published them on its Pride-Flags DeviantArt gallery on 25 December 2016, and reissued them on the pride-color-schemes blog on 29 January 2017 under "Designed by: Unknown". ^[2][4] From there the rainbow-field version spread. Flags of the World records its use by the University of Waterloo, at Victoria Pride in 2019 and 2021, by the Wabanaki people in 2020, at Thompson Pride in Manitoba in 2022, and at the first Two-Spirit Powwow in Spokane, Washington, in June 2023. ^[3] The University of Waterloo flew it alongside the Intersex-Inclusive Pride Progress flag through June 2023, the first time it had been raised on that campus. ^[10] It is manufactured and sold as a three by five foot flag by Flags For Good and others. ^[8]

The emblem has been carried onto other fields. Flags of the World documents it on Monica Helms's transgender flag, used by the Maskwacis people in Alberta; on the Progress Pride flag, in the version made official at a 2022 Pride Week event in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Treaty 8 Territory; and on the New Progress Pride flag used by Cambrian College in Sudbury in June 2022. Flags of the World assigns a separate group of appearances, including Utah Pride in 2019, Fort Erie in 2021 and Pride London Ontario in 2022, to the more complex Two-Spirit design rather than to this one. ^[3] Other Two-Spirit flags exist independently of this design: Art Zoccole's of 2005 for 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations in Toronto, a 2021 design by the Twitter user sirieko, and Patrick Hunter's, unveiled in 2024 and promoted by the International Day of Pink as the first Two-Spirit Pride Flag. ^[11][12]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Rainbow Pride Flag

Direct children

Two-Spirit Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Transgender Pride Flag

Related flags

Indigiqueer / Two-Spirit Flag (cedar-maw), Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Leather Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Nonbinary Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2021, sirieko), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (Patrick Hunter)

Sibling flags

Alberta Gay Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Anarcha-Queer Flag (rainbow variant), Argentina Gay Flag, Australia Gay Flag, Brazil Gay Flag

+ 44 more

British Columbia Gay Flag, Canadian Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Chile Gay Flag, Dominican Republic Gay Flag, Egypt Gay Flag, European Union Gay Flag, France Gay Flag, Gay Pride Flag of Pakistan, Heteroflexible Pride Flag, Heterosexual / Straight Pride Flag, Homoflexible Pride Flag, India Gay Flag, Italy Gay Flag, Japan Gay Flag, Jewish Gay Pride Flag, Manitoba Gay Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick Gay Flag, Newfoundland Gay Flag, Northwest Territories Gay Flag, Nova Scotia Gay Flag, Nunavut Gay Flag, Ontario Gay Flag, Palestinian Gay Pride Flag, Panama Gay Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Prince Edward Island Gay Flag, Quebec Gay Flag, Rainbow Flag with White Triangle (Sapporo), Rainbow Israel Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag (2014, Angela Getler), Russia Gay Flag, Saskatchewan Gay Flag, Social Justice Pride Flag, South African Gay Pride Flag, Switzerland Gay Flag, Tanzania Gay Flag, Texas Rainbow Flag, Turkish Gay Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown), Yukon Territory Gay Flag

The field is the standardised six-stripe rainbow flag, which is what this design charges the emblem on. The emblem itself is not derived from an earlier flag in the record: it was already circulating when the December 2016 submission documented it, and its origin is unknown. The transgender-base and nonbinary-base versions are not children of this one. All three arrived in the same submission, on the same day, each placing the same emblem on a different existing flag, and neither the rainbow version nor the others has priority in the record. Later flags that carry the emblem, on the Progress Pride flag, the New Progress Pride flag and the transgender flag, are documented as taking it from this design and are recorded as its descendants. Art Zoccole's 2005 flag is eleven years earlier and no source connects the designs; the 2021 sirieko and 2024 Hunter flags are separate Two-Spirit designs rather than derivatives.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 7 records across 5 generations.

Ancestors -3

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestor

Rainbow Pride Flag

This record

Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation)

Children

Two-Spirit Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Transgender Pride Flag

Colors & Symbolism

An Indigenous emblem on a Queer flag. The two feathers and the circle carry the Two-Spirit meaning and the six-stripe rainbow field carries the Queer one; the explanation on record is the submitter's, and it is short. ^[1]

Measured from the 5000 by 3000 December 2016 rendering ^[4]

Two white feathers with black tips, bound beneath the circle

The submitter's explanation: the two feathers "represent woman and man". ^[1][2]

Circle above the feathers

The submitter's explanation: the circle "represents unity in one". ^[1][2]

The woman-and-man reading is the account of one anonymous person writing from a Lakota perspective in 2016. It is not a general statement about Two-Spirit identity, which is not confined to a masculine and feminine pair, and the emblem is not documented as representing a universal Indigenous spiritual tradition. The six bands are the standardised six-stripe rainbow field and their meanings belong to that flag rather than to this one; the submission explains only the emblem. ^[1]

No palette was published with the design. The values here are measured from the 5000 by 3000 rendering the receiving blog published on 25 December 2016, whose six bands hold the standard six-stripe values exactly. ^[4] The archive's own 2560 by 1536 copy is not the file to measure: its bands read #E50000, #FF8D00, #FFEE00, #008121, #004CFF and #760188, each displaced a step or two from the published values by a lossy stage somewhere in its history.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

The December 2016 rendering is 5000 by 3000 pixels and the archive's copy 2560 by 1536, both of which reduce to 3:5 and agree with the standard production ratio shown here. ^[4]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

6

Layout

horizontal stripes with center symbol

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet

Center Symbol

Two white feathers with black tips, bound beneath a circle

Six bands of equal depth, with the emblem centred and reaching from the second band into the fifth. The two feathers cross at the binding and splay downward, each white along the shaft and solid black over the lower third. The circle sits above the binding and is drawn as an open ring with a light spiral inside it. ^[4]

The base is the standardised six-stripe rainbow field, not a variant of it. The emblem is drawn in white and black and is not tinted to the stripes it crosses. ^[4]

Six equal horizontal bands in the standard rainbow sequence, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. At the centre, two white feathers with black tips hang crossed beneath a white circle outlined in black, bound where they meet.

Usage & Adoption

Organizations

University of Waterloo, which raised it on campus for the first time in June 2023 ^[10], Flags For Good, which manufactures and sells it as a three by five foot flag ^[8]

Geographic Usage

Canada, United States

Online Usage

Tumblr, where it was documented and reissued ^[1][2], DeviantArt, where the receiving blog published its rendering ^[4], Reference guides and listicles, which reproduce it as the representative Two-Spirit flag ^[9][3]

Event Usage

Victoria Pride, British Columbia (2019 and 2021), per Flags of the World ^[3], Wabanaki people (2020), per Flags of the World ^[3], Thompson Pride, Manitoba (2022), per Flags of the World ^[3], First Two-Spirit Powwow, Spokane, Washington (June 2023), per Flags of the World ^[3]

Current Status

widely circulated, unofficial

Documented circulation is wide and unofficial. It covers institutional flag-raisings, Pride events, commercial manufacture and reference guides, and it does not amount to adoption by Two-Spirit communities generally: no Two-Spirit organisation is documented as having adopted this design, and no design holds pan-Indigenous authority. Good Good Good, which reproduces it, puts the same point plainly: "The flag is not an official agreed-upon design, but it is the most commonly seen Two-Spirit Pride Flag." ^[9][3] The event reports above are Flags of the World's, cited there to Flickr, news and social-media pages that have not been read here.

Image Archive

Renderings

Discourse & Debates

• Whether a single Two-Spirit flag is appropriate at all, given the range of Two-Spirit traditions across Nations. ^[7]
• Whether non-Indigenous people should display the flag. ^[7]
• Whether a rainbow base implies an equivalence between Two-Spirit identity and Western LGBTQ categories that misrepresents it. Two-Spirit people quoted by the University of Waterloo made the related point about flags flown side by side: Amy Smoke said "Indigenous ways of sexual orientation and gender expression were here long before the 2SLGBTQIA+ acronym", and Leith Bulford that "members of the broader LGBTQIA+ community must also acknowledge and respect the contextual and cultural differences of our experiences". ^[7][10]

Common misidentifications

• 2Sanon is a nickname for the anonymous submitter, formed from their own "This is the Two-Spirit anon", and is widely printed as the name of the designer. The design's authorship is not established. ^[1][3]
• The four images in the December 2016 submission are sometimes described as four designs by one person. Three of them place one emblem on three existing flags, and the fourth is a separate and more complex design that predates the submission. ^[1]
• Two-Spirit flags are often conflated with one another: Art Zoccole's of 2005, this one, the 2021 sirieko design and Patrick Hunter's of 2024 are distinct flags with distinct authorship. ^[11][12]
• Two-Spirit is frequently conflated with being gay and Indigenous. It covers cultural and spiritual roles that do not map onto Western categories of sexuality or gender. ^[7][5]

Criticisms

• No single flag can carry the range of Two-Spirit identities across hundreds of Nations, each with its own understanding of gender and role, and a pan-Indigenous symbol necessarily flattens those differences. ^[7]
• The woman-and-man reading of the two feathers has been questioned as reinstating the binary that Two-Spirit identity complicates. ^[7]

Two-Spirit, also written Two Spirit, 2S and two-spirit, is an Indigenous-specific term adopted in 1990 to replace the colonial term berdache. ^[5] The related term Indigiqueer, coined by TJ Cuthand and popularised by Joshua Whitehead, does not rest on a two-part gender framework. ^[7]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

compressed archive copy of the December 2016 rendering

• A later third-party rendering of the design, drawn for Flags of the World by Zachary Harden and dated 13 September 2023. The same page records the flag's spread: the University of Waterloo's first campus raising, Victoria Pride in 2019 and 2021, the Wabanaki people in 2020, Thompson, Manitoba in 2022, and the first Two-Spirit Powwow in Spokane, Washington in June 2023. ^[3] · Credit: Zachary Harden, Flags of the World · Flags of the WorldRights Rendering by Zachary Harden for Flags of the World, credited to him and to that site.