Acknowledgements

Here, I acknowledge and thank all the wonderful people and institutions that made this project possible.

I thank Sister Luisa Douren for her vision to notice a knowledge gap, to fund this exhibition to fill that gap, and for her raw determination to make sure people of color are represented in the history of trans spirituality.

I thank LGBTQ-RAN for having the vision to contract an anthropologist who in the role of content manager could bring a BIPOC perspective to curate a project on BIPOC trans-spiritual history. Mark Bowman has been an inspiring, encouraging, helpful, and supportive resource. Carl Foote, the computer wiz, offered constant technical support in training, saving, loading, activating, and audio editing the materials in ways that work. Doris Malkus has been an indispensable colleague and mentor in finding and using the archives. AhSa-Ti Tyehimba-Ford lent ancillary support relevant to her arduous task of getting LGBTQ-RAN projects into digital formats. Riot Mueller championed the project's vision and offered her penetrating assessment of the project's timeliness, value, and novelty at a crucial moment. Penny Junco's indispensable role as paymaster thanked the interviewees with a small honorarium.

Other helpful partners include The Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, The Internet Archive, The New York Public Library, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, the NYC Trans Oral History Project, the Digital Transgender Archive, M. Jade Kaiser at Enfleshed; Ann Filemyr, Founder and Director of the PhD in Regenerative Practice and Visionary Leadership at the Southwestern College and the New Earth Institute; Ash Stephens, CLJ Bridge to Faculty Post-Doc, Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago: Tre'Andre Carmel Valenti,ne Executive Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Additionally, Karis Slattery, Program Manager at LGBTQ Resources, volunteered to walk over from her campus office to the Yale Library. Ralph Watkins visited the Library of Congress's Rare Books and Special Collections Division. Jessica Becker in Public Services in the Manuscripts and Archive section of Yale Library provided access to their collections and materials delivery. As the Associate Dean for Digital Libraries at the University of North Texas Libraries, Mark Phillips shared his expertise about making digital files accessible to the public.

Deep appreciation to those who made this project visually appealing. In particular, I thank the artist Rebecca Mitchell-Guthrie at www.psychiccoach.net for permitting an image of her watercolor to be used as a backsplash. I also thank the six-person production team whose members created Kapaemahu, whose work and educational products can be found at Kapaemahu.com.

Finally, I dedicate this project to two people. My first dedication is to Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu. Her cultural resurrection and preservation work in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands is recuperating mahu from its place of colonized degradation by elevating it to its rightful decolonized place as a sacred third space. Second, I dedicate this project to my African American trans-spiritual mentor and friend whose years of visionary work in projects, like Cathy Campbells the Silent Illumination Think Tank of 2021, shed light on trans end-of-life issues and support my efforts to serve trans people and their allies with this project - Jonathan Thunderword. 

Dr. Enoch H. Page, Curator