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Ty Defoe

@tydefoe

writer+interdisciplinary artist 🌬️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🪶✨ nyc✨🎞️📷💎📝 2026 United States Artist Fellow
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Weeks posts
Honored to have some pictures of @tydefoe ‘s Skeleton Canoe included in the Winter 2026 issue of Puppetry International Research, along with “Natural Landscape of Native Puppetry” by Opalanietet. Check out all the articles in this great new venture from @unimausa ! Link in Bio!
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2 months ago
I serve on the Board of the André Cailloux Center on Bayou Road. Tonight we’re lighting up the building for a community holiday celebration with music, treats, and a beautiful light display.✨ If you’re in New Orleans, come through 6–8 pm. If you can’t attend, please consider supporting our End-of-Year Giving campaign at /ACC25. 💫
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5 months ago
Thank YOU/Miigwetch for all the birthday 🥳🤩 wishes, family and friends near and far!! I’m grateful to be in community with you for another turn. I spent the day with that bday glow; breathing, resting, and allowing myself to be held by the sun. Thank you for the reminders to slow down and invitation for laughter. On this road to being a warrior, each year teaches me something new, about myself and about us. This year’s lessons were both tender and unexpected. 🤓 I also learned that chalk is made from the exoskeletons of insects, the microscopic shells of marine organisms mixed with magnesium carbonate that help dry our hands 😆🪲 Life is always teaching, even in the smallest of ways. . I had the privilege of spending the day at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands @acmrs_asu in a gathering called Toward Morning, Nyamathaam’im, Abíní. We reflected on the meanings of morning, dawn, and sunset in circle, on how beginnings work on us. One teaching that stayed with me: “Morning presents itself even in the time of monsters.” ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🪶 ☀️A reminder that light returns, even in the hardest chapters. Here’s to more learning, more resting, more becoming, more water, and to nurturing the relationships that transform us. Grateful to make it this far. Chi-miigwetch for being 🩵🩷🌅✨ . #thecenter #humanitiesweek #sunrise #sunset #HBD #scorpioseason♏️🦂 #🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 #twospirit #indigiqueer #orbit #reflections #bloom . 📸 taken after participating in ceremony this year 🔥☄️ the sun was rising over the Atlantic.
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6 months ago
Celebrate the joyous spirit of choral music in this concert showcasing Poulenc’s exuberant Gloria alongside Jocelyn Hagen’s captivating new work. Poulenc’s score sparkles with brilliant brass fanfares, playful rhythms, and haunting soprano solos—expertly weaving together moments of drama and delight. Treat yourself to an evening of musical splendor as these two works combine tradition and innovation in a truly stirring performance. Poulenc’s Gloria Jocelyn Hagen World Premiere What the Soul Already Knows Robert Istad, conductor Pacific Chorale Pacific Symphony Rabihah Davis Dunn, soprano Rooted in an exploration of the sacred—in both the physical world and the unseen—the work invites listeners to reflect on the deep interconnectedness of all life. At its core, What the Soul Already Knows is a meditation on our shared humanity and the potential for beauty that arises when we live in alignment with gratitude, unity, and service. The title received inspiration from the book Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul by Celtic spiritual teacher John Philip Newell, whose writings illuminate the sacred as present not only in heaven, but within the earth and all living beings. This philosophy resonated personally with the composer, whose Scottish roots and recent travels to Scotland further deepened the spiritual framework of the work. The libretto is anchored by “The Circle,” an expansive poem by Ty Defoe—a Two-Spirit Native American writer and interdisciplinary artist. Excerpts from the poem serve as a throughline for the piece, interwoven with newly commissioned texts by Gretchen Ernster Henderson and Noor Unnahar. Additional texts are drawn from poets Julia Klatt Singer, Malcolm Guite, and Jan Richardson. What the Soul Already Knows seeks to awaken both mind and spirit to the sacredness of the world we inhabit—and the world within ourselves.
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6 months ago
Indigenous Peoples Day 2025. . What a gift to be around community today. 🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶 a gift to return to the homelands and be with my relatives. The florals were brilliant and biodiverse. Ayyy! 🤣😅😇😌 🌸🌻🌼🌻🌷 Miigwech everyone and to the organizers. After 30 years! . #detroit #michigan #weouthere #anishinaabe 👨🏽‍🎤#tydefoe #indigenouspeoplesday #everyday #indigiqueer #twospirit🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 #NAIADetriot
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7 months ago
Trans World II: Madoodiswan @yalerep , Binger Center for New Theater — September 2025, a reading of new work in a workshop, NYC. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🪶 . I nearly passed out hearing the work read aloud. Finally: 🏳️‍⚧️trans, non-binary, and 🏳️‍🌈queer voices gathered for civic imagination. We told this story—one play, one constellation in the Trilogy Play Galaxy Cycle. . In this lodge… After being denied entry to the Kennedy Center simply for existing, in these metamorphic forms, I fled to @fuseboxlive @outsiderfest , and created an installation @themuseumofhumanachievement on a bus 🚎, I reset among the cornfields of @nh_project Gathered with my 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🩵🩷 network at @popculturecollab 💫 (Thank you to those leaders who said, Ty, please come we believe in you, what do you need? @zspacesf and @playpenn ) In my process— Usually, I’m “team chop.” But not this time. I needed to hear every single word spoken into the room. I needed to take up the space on the pages. I am profoundly grateful to be supported as a fully realized human-being, playwright, artist, and someone with things to say about gender, eco-sexuality, nature, Indigiqueer futures, star nations, and care. I could not have done this without my communities 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🪶, and these brilliant actors, artists, and friends: @thefreeactorvist @samoraperdida , @believeinmaybe , @clew.cifer and @tuffchicks SM: @charlie.lovejoy and prod 4 YR:🫰🏽@hfgellman . Under the direction of @santiago.iacinti whose creativity and capacity to convene is magnificent, we shook the little room off 42nd Street and Broadway in NYC. We played, cried, laughed. We made medicine. I shed unnecessary energy, people, and pages. 📄 The draft grew stronger and so did we. Can I get an AHO! ✊🏾💥 . #transformation #futuretranscestor #unstoppable #transfuturists #twospirit #indigiqueer #tydefoe #stillhere #newplay #newpages #transworld 🌎🌏🌍🌐 #satire #bloombaby 🌸🌻#writeon 📝📝 #scifi #care #worldview #weouthere ⚔️🩵🩷⚔️
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7 months ago
Me and my folks 🦆🐥 are sifting through the archives of 1976 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️👁️🪩👁️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 where are my two-spirit / Indigiqueer relatives at? Gathering🖖🏾research 🤓@waygayphilly 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 soooo grateful to get to do this evocative, powerful, and needed work. . #writeon📝 #playwrighting #philly #obsidian #philedelphia #haudenosaunee #Anishinaabe #trickster #twospirit #indigiqueer #transworld 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ #chapter0 #joy #thrive #history #futurism #landback #summer #because
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8 months ago
Draft in 📝 💥 Jump. Fly. Levitate. Dreams along the seams👖 . 👖@levis and 🧢 @urbannativeera #liveinlevis #draft #writeon #TWII #happypride🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ #twospirit #indigiqueer #portals #denim👖#summervibes☀️ 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕
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9 months ago
One dish, One spoon — to remember we are guests on this great table earth we did not build alone. . The belt does not speak in words. -take only what is needed, leave enough for others, Respect the bowl that holds us all. . #callmybymywampum #research #land #waterfalls #indigiqueer #twospirit 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 #protectthedolls ✊🏽 #happypridemonth🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ #rematriation #oneida #newyork #democracycle #haudenosaunee #mom💜 #homelands #roominourhouse #artist #tydefoe @tydefoe
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11 months ago
Image of @tydefoe in @allmyrelationscollective “Skeleton Canoe” at the @chipuppetfest 2025
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1 year ago
✨✨ 🔊 Trans Youth Rally in NYC 🔊✨✨ The recognition of gender expansiveness on Turtle Island 🐢 today 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🪶YES! To those Trans Folx in rural communities, we are out here and care. You are loved. The movement is growing and moving ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ our constellation is vast. . #twospirit #indigiqueer #tydefoe #creations #writeon 📝 #transworldII #transfuturist #thegalaxyplays #transworldtriology @zspacesf @playpenn @yalerep @popcollab @paceuniversity @acmrs_asu
304 6
1 year ago
🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🧊 Beneath the Ice 🧊 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 A frozen lake mirrors the sky’s breath, its surface still, a canvas of silence. Beneath, water stirs, unseen, whispering secrets of thaw and upheaval, like politics smoldering under the crystalline facade of control. -7 degrees, locks us in stillness cold pressing pause on movement, but not on power. Beneath the frost-bitten skin of today, currents rage and churn, ancestors speak in ripples that cannot freeze. The ice will melt. This is not a question, but a promise— a story whispered to kindred hearts standing against the wind. Your existence, our existence, warrants this thaw, deserves the warm burst of spring’s rebellion, deserves to claim space, as sure as water claims its flow. So hold on, siblings, friends, family, loved ones and those with fire in their chests. This frozen moment is fleeting. The cracks are forming, sun will rise, and the lake will pulse once more. #1-20-25 #tydefoe #🖤 #MLK (thank you) #writeon #frozenlake #chicago #anishinaabe #artist #greatlakes #lakemichigan #skeletoncanoe 🛶 #care #makingsense #winter #wegotthis #wearehere ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼 #twospirit #indigiqueer #transfuturist @popcollab 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 🪶🪶
133 6
1 year ago