Day 21. Queer Pilgrimages and Sacred Sites.
Pilgrimage is often thought of as a religious journey to holy lands, but for queer and Indigenous people, pilgrimage takes many forms. It can mean walking in Pride marches, returning to ancestral homelands, or gathering in online sanctuaries where community thrives. Each act of reclaiming space transforms ordinary ground into sacred placemaking.
For Indigenous peoples, pilgrimages often return them to the lands where ancestors prayed, resisted, and survived. Walking these paths is a form of healing and sovereignty. For queer communities, Pride itself has become pilgrimage: a march through streets that once silenced us, now filled with color, music, and defiance. In the digital age, queer and Indigenous youth create sacred sanctuaries online, through hashtags, livestreams, and forums where identity is affirmed and survival is celebrated.
To make a pilgrimage is to insist that we belong here. Our bodies and spirits sanctify this place. Whether kneeling on ancestral earth, dancing in a parade, or gathering in a Zoom room, these journeys become rituals of collective memory and liberation.
As writer and activist bell hooks reminds us:
“Home is that place which enables and promotes varied and ever changing perspectives of reality, a place where one discovers new ways of knowing.”
For queer and Indigenous peoples, reclaiming sacred sites, physical or digital, reminds us that we carry holiness with us. Wherever we gather, we create sanctuary.
Learn More
- Book: A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby – memoir of pilgrimage, land, and queerness.
- Resource: Queering the Map – a digital archive mapping queer moments globally.
- Film: Pride (2014) – The story of LGBTQ+ solidarity as a form of pilgrimage to justice.
- Article: 11 Ways to Decolonize Your Thanksgiving – Cultural Survival
- Article: ‘Let’s Go to the Land Instead’: Indigenous Perspectives on Biodiversity and the Possibilities of Regenerative Capital – Wiley Online Library
- Article: Building Inclusive and Resilient Communities: Queer Storytelling Approaches to Placemaking – Project for Public Spaces
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