Crushing Colonialism’s Indigenous WorldPride Events Featured in Global LGBTQIA+ Human Rights Report

Our organization’s Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer WorldPride programming has been recognized in a global report on Pride and LGBTQIA+ communities around the world by Outright International: “We Will Not Bow To Fear”: Pride Around the World in 2025. Our two-and-a-half-year programming series, Decolonized Beatz Indigenous World Pride (DBIWP), culminated with two nights of events during WorldPride 2025, which were included in this report. Outright International’s write-up outlines the crucial nature of having Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer-led events.

DBIWP, held on Piscataway land (“Washington, D.C.”), brought together Indigiqueer artists, storytellers, performers, and community members from tribal nations around the globe, such as the lands known as Brazil, Canada, Fiji, Finland, Australia, The Gambia, Palestine, The United States, India, and beyond, to share stories through creative arts, performance, dialogue, and community care.

Our event featured a creators’ market for local Indigenous businesses to sell their merchandise, a medicine bundle stocked with free public health supplies, and programming that prioritized disability justice, language justice, inclusion, and community safety, and security. Crushing Colonialism also led a human rights conference panel on storytelling in arts and media and delivered land acknowledgements and calls for Land Back at two official World Pride events, helping ensure Indigenous queer perspectives were present across the international celebration.

“We know from years of experience across many Pride celebrations from the local to the global that if we don’t demand and organize for space for ourselves, then no one typically will,” said Jen Deerinwater, Founding Executive Director of Crushing Colonialism and a Two-Spirit, bisexual, and disabled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. “We know we have a hard road ahead of us, but can’t fight for decolonization if we leave behind some of our relatives.”

We began planning for WorldPride 2025 after learning in 2022 that the global event would be held in “Washington, D.C.” We created a hybrid gathering designed to welcome people who could not attend in person while centering underserved community members, including youth, elders, disabled people, and people facing barriers to travel and participation.

To support community safety, Crushing Colonialism provided internal security, medics, human rights training, safety planning, and lawyers for participants traveling into the United States. 

Deerinwater said the extensive preparation was necessary to safely implement a queer Indigenous arts and performance event in the nation’s capital. Beyond visibility, the event created paid opportunities and directed resources back into Indigenous, Black, Brown, queer, disabled, women-led, and tribally owned businesses. “We do everything we can to move funds back to the community, whether through the printers we use for our posters to the caterers that feed our people, we want to put as much of our funds back into the hands of Indigenous and other minoritized communities”.

Download the full report here, with Crushing Colonialism’s mentions on pages 83–84.