From The Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is

LGBTQ and A. When Alona Verley was growing up, the number of people in the media or on TV

who were queer and indigenous were roughly zero. So when she was cast this season on

Canada's drag race,

the first indigenous and two-spirit contestant to ever compete in the now global franchise,

she knew she had a big opportunity, and that is why she made the decision to, in her words, not shut up about that.

And I love that about her. I think it's smart.

Two-Spirit is an identity that doesn't have a lot of visibility.

Two-Spirit, which loosely translates to an indigenous person who identifies with both their

masculine and feminine side, it is something that I've only become familiar with in the last

couple years.

So today we do spend a bit of time talking about

that as well as about her drag. How Lona Verdeley's drag and her gender are continuing to evolve.

Here it is.

I'd like to start off by talking about being two spirit.

Is that an identity that you grew up around and with the knowledge that it was something a person could be?

No, I didn't actually.

I was, you know, I did grow up around my culture.

It wasn't until just after high school, I went to makeup school at Blanche McDonald here in Vancouver.

I met Jaline Time, who's now my dragant, but she is an amazing indigenous trans, two-spirit

drag artist.

That was my first time actually hearing that term was when meeting her.

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