Today's Google Doodle is Barbara May Cameron's 69th Birthday
Today’s Doodle celebrates Barbara May Cameron, a Native American photographer, poet, writer, and human rights activist. The Doodle artwork is illustrated by queer Mexican and Chitimachan artist Sienna Gonzales. On this day in 1954, Barbara Cameron was born in Fort Yates, North Dakota.
Cameron was born a member of the Hunkpapa group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe, and raised on the Standing Rock Reservation by her grandparents. After graduating high school, she studied photography and film at the American Indian Art Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was here that Cameron began winning awards in theater and media arts.
After coming out as a lesbian, Cameron moved to San Francisco in 1973 and advocated for LGBTQIA+ acceptance in the Native American community and addressed racism in queer spaces. In 1975, she co-founded Gay American Indians — the first ever dedicated Native American LGBTQIA+ group — with her friend and fellow activist Randy Burns.
Cameron took part in various programs to promote human welfare. From 1980 through 1985, she organized the Lesbian Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration. She also co-led a lawsuit against the Immigration & Naturalization Service which had a policy of turning away gay people. The case went before the Supreme Court and ruled in favor of Barbara and her co-plaintiffs who made persuasive arguments for change.
A few years later, she became an executive director at Community United Against Violence, where she supported people affected by hate crimes and domestic violence. The San Francisco Mayor appointed Cameron to both the Citizens Committee on Community Development and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in 1988, and the next mayor appointed her to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
HIV/AIDS disproportionately impacted Native people in the early 1990s, so Cameron stepped up to lead the charge. She was active within the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the American Indian AIDS Institute, and served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, helping with AIDS and childhood immunization programs.
Cameron is remembered for her passionate writing and speeches, many of which are housed at the San Francisco Public Library. Her words live on through her essay, No Apologies: A Lakota Lesbian Perspective which is featured in Our Right To Love: A Lesbian Resource 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.