Barbara May Cameron : Google doodle celebrates the 69th birthday of Native American photographer poet and writer

Barbara May Cameron, a Native American photographer, poet, writer, and human rights activist, is honored in today’s Doodle. Sienna Gonzales, a queer Mexican and Chitimachan artist, created the artwork for the Doodle. Barbara Cameron was born in Fort Yates, North Dakota, on this date in 1954.

Cameron was conceived an individual from the Hunkpapa bunch, one of the seven gathering flames of the Lakota clan, and raised on the Standing Stone Reservation by her grandparents. In the wake of graduating secondary school, she concentrated on photography and film at the Native American Workmanship Establishment in St Nick Fe, New Mexico. It was here that Cameron started winning honors in theater and media expressions.

Cameron moved to San Francisco in 1973 after coming out as a lesbian. There, she worked for LGBTQIA+ acceptance in the Native American community and addressed racism in queer spaces. In 1975, she helped to establish Gay Native Americans — the very first devoted Local American LGBTQIA+ bunch — with her companion and individual extremist Randy Consumes.

Cameron participated in different projects to advance human government assistance. From 1980 through 1985, she coordinated the Lesbian Gay Opportunity Day March and Festivity. Additionally, she co-led a lawsuit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which discriminated against gay applicants. The Supreme Court heard the case and ruled in favor of Barbara and her co-plaintiffs, who presented convincing arguments for change.

She went on to become an executive director at Community United Against Violence a few years later, where she helped victims of domestic violence and hate crimes. The San Francisco City chairman selected Cameron to both the Residents Board of trustees on Local area Improvement and the San Francisco Basic freedoms Commission in 1988, and the following chairman designated her to the Assembled Countries Commission on the Situation with Ladies.

Cameron stepped up to take the lead because Native Americans were disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS in the early 1990s. She worked as a consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, assisting with AIDS and childhood immunization programs, and she was involved in the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the American Indian AIDS Institute.

Cameron is associated with her enthusiastic composition and talks, a considerable lot of which are housed at the San Francisco Public Library. Her words live on through her article, No Conciliatory sentiments: A Lakota Lesbian Viewpoint, as presented in Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Asset Book.

Happy birthday Barbara May Cameron, thank you for working tirelessly to improve human rights and for giving queer Indigenous people a place to feel safe and belong.