Walter L. Williams, Ph.D has been one of the people primarily responsible for bringing to light Native American Two-Spirit traditions. Inspired initially by his own family’s part-Cherokee ancestry, and his time living on the Eastern Cherokee Reservation, he has devoted his entire teaching career (from 1974 to the present) to exposing the truth about what the United States really did to the indigenous people of the continent. He is known for his groundbreaking publications that demonstrate the imperialistic nature of United States treatment of Indians, and the ethnic survival of First Nations peoples in spite of this. He is professor of anthropology, history and gender studies at the University of Southern California, where he teaches American Indian Studies and also Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. He was president of ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, founding editor of the International Gay & Lesbian Review, co-founder and chair of the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History for the American Historical Association, and an officer of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists. His award-winning non-fiction book The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture carefully and inspirationally recounts the respected place many Native American cultures accord to persons who combine both the spirit of man and the spirit of woman into their personality and sexual behavior.
Based on his own experience talking with Diné people on the Navajo reservation and on his wide reading in Navajo history, Walter Williams conceived and crafted the story of this book. Out of the real historical events of the tragic 1860s Bosque Redondo experiment, he wove a plausible story showing how same-sex relationships in the past might have helped bring disparate kinds of people together, at least to accord each other respect, freedom, and love. These are traits needed in the contemporary multicultural society.
Toby Johnson, Ph.D., novelist and spiritual writer, joined the project to give texture and style to Walter’s story. His mystical gay-positive storytelling is exemplified in his novels Getting Life in Perspective, Plague and the Lammy-winning science fiction novel Secret Matter (now in an updated second edition). From 1996 to 2003, he was editor of the quarterly journal of gay men’s spirituality, White Crane. Johnson is author also of several non-fiction titles about spirituality and religion in modern consciousness, including Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness. Johnson was a student of the renowned comparative religions scholar Joseph Campbell. His spiritual/philosophical autobiography is Finding Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III.
Toby Johnson and Kip Dollar, partners since 1984, ran Liberty Books, the lesbian and gay community bookstore in Austin, and gay B&Bs in the Rocky Mountains and the Texas Hill Country. Dollar and Johnson are champions and models of successful longterm gay relationship. In 1993 they were the first male couple registered as Domestic Partners in Texas. They were legally married on the 34th anniversary in Austin in 2018.
Walter L. Williams and Toby Johnson discovered in each other parallel interests in communicating Earth-based Native American wisdom to contemporary readers. Combining the strengths of both the scholar and the novelist, their collaboration provides a model of a way to reach readers that either alone could not accomplish.