A virtual event - link will be sent to all registrants

Panelists: Jeneen Frei Njootli, Vivian Hobus-Blanchard, Kailey LeMoel

Colonization transformed everything about Indigenous societies, including their relationships to sexuality and gender. Indigenous Queer people in the North face unique challenges and difficulties, but are also on the frontlines of rebuilding and recentering queer lives in their communities. Panelists will speak to their experiences of queerness in the Northern context with a look toward how queerness connects with understandings of Indigenous identity, belonging and futurity.

Presented in partnership with Public Service Pride Network

This panel will have live translation in French.

The panelists

Jeneen Frei Njootli (they/them) is an award winning artist and na’aa (mom) of two, living in Old Crow, Yukon. They are Vuntut Gwitchin with Czech and Dutch ancestry and are currently part of BUSH gallery, The ISHI Collective and helped form the ReMatriate Collective in 2014. Contemporary Visual Art, performance, sound, jewelry, fashion and collaborative murals are some of the facets of Frei Njootli’s practice. With a love of the land and working with community, Jeneen has also exhibited and performed internationally, their most recent solo exhibition was at the prestigious Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in 2025. They are represented by Macaulay & Co Fine Art in Vancouver.

Vivian Hobus-Blanchard (he/him)

A lifelong Yukon resident, he is a citizen of the Na-cho Nyäk Dun First Nation.

Kailey LeMoel is one of four of Yukon Government’s Organizational Development Consultants who works in the Public Service Commission. Kailey is an Anishinaabe person, a member of the Shabot Obaajiwan First nation (the Algonquin are the Black Bear Nation), and a descendant of Chief Francis Sharbot. Kailey is two-spirited and uses she/her pronouns.