Since September 2023, Disney+ subscribers have gotten to watch a 20-minute film about a Northern Cheyenne two-spirit teen. This story is especially personal to the film’s writer, Adam “W.A.W.” Parker. It’s not just a reflection of the relationship between him and his grandfather, but also who he is as a two-spirit individual.

Parker, a Northern Cheyenne and Harvard graduate, grew up in a small town of 300 people in northeastern Montana. When he was very young, his grandfather moved to where he was born in Lame Deer, Montana on the Northern Cheyenne reservation where many family gatherings were often held.

The relationship with his grandfather, Parker said, would form the basis for the short film.

READ: Famed Director Martin Scorsese To Produce 8-Part Docuseries On The Life Of Saints

“The Roof,” released as part of the second season of the platform’s “Launchpad” series, tells the coming-of-age story of a two-spirit Northern Cheyenne teenager (played by Phoenix Wilson) who is sent to live with their grandfather (played by Academy-Award winner Wes Studi). The two learn to connect and the teen gains an understanding of what it means to be two-spirit, while the grandfather opens up about his life.

Parker said he first wrote the film when he was visiting his grandfather after he had a stroke. He was 93 years old at the time. Parker got a phone call and was told if he hopped on a plane at that moment, he might still be able to get to him.

“I was lucky that by the time [the plane] landed he had, especially for a 93-year-old having a massive stroke, he had a relatively miraculous recovery,” he said.

His grandfather had another stroke a couple months later and died. But Parker got to spend a few final days with his grandfather, knowing that it would be the last time he spoke to him. During those days he thought about what he wanted his grandfather to say to him, and what he wanted to say to his grandfather as well.

In-between the conversations he had with him, Parker wrote the film, wishing it was the conversation he had with him at a much earlier age.

His grandfather was born on the reservation and sent to one of the Native American boarding schools. Parker said it was “the only thing in his life that he never talked about with anyone.”

There are generations of uncles and grandfathers who don’t talk about those boarding school years. But Parker said he hopes others who need to open up about their experiences do just that after viewing his film.

Parker said the film is a story about two people who need to connect with each other, but find it hard to reach out. However, it is when they share their vulnerability and history together that they can both start to overcome their own individual traumas.

“Growing up, I had wished that I had heard about two-spirit in our tribe, something that I didn’t know until much later in life,” he said.

Two-spirit people, as described by the Indian Health Service (IHS), are Indigenous men, women and intersex people who combine activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people. They occupy a distinct alternative gender status or a third gender.

Parker learned that he was two-spirit very early on in his life and felt a lot of other people might have realized it before him.

“I knew I was different when I was a kid, but I also knew before that I was different that being gay was bad,” he said, which made his realization complex because it was one that he did not want to have, wanted to hide, and had shame about it.

The first time he realized he was two-spirit and learned about it was after college when he was working in his grandfather’s garden in Lame Deer. One of his cousins came by with somebody he had not met before and was introduced to them as “Oh hey, here’s Adam, that two-spirit cousin I was telling you about.”

The introduction initially left Parker confused, but then he was taught more about being two-spirit and what it meant.

“Having a word for [two-spirit], knowing the history of it in Cheyenne — which historically we have other words — just really made me feel more connected and more a part of my tribe than I have ever felt before,” he said.

Parker said he wants people to know that the diversity in the two-spirit community is broad.

One piece of him that is in the film is the thing he is most scared of other people seeing. The part of himself that is still that vulnerable child who knew that being different was bad before he even knew he was different.

“It’s the part of me that wants to be loved, wants to be part of a family, wants to be part of a community, but not really feeling like I can and it has my hope, not just for myself, but for my two-spirit friends so that they have the family and community that they deserve,” Parker said. “For any two-spirit kid maybe like me growing up, I just want them to know that they’re not alone. They do have a family and community that loves them and sees them, and I hope it’s the one that surrounds them. But it’s possible that it might be the family and community that you have to find.”

Parker has observed growing support toward two-spirit people, including the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council passing a resolution in support of LGBTQ+ and two-spirit tribal members in June 2023 and designating June as Pride Month each year on the reservation. Last November, the film received the imagineNATIVE Audience Choice Short Film Award.

“My hope for this is that more people will connect to other two-spirit people, two-spirit storytellers, two-spirit creators, and other Indigenous voices to really lift them up because, if we do that, the creativity and joy that will come from that will be boundless,” Parker said. “And we’ll all get to enjoy that, not just for the next generation but in the next seven generations as well.” 

You can learn more about him on his website at www.wawparker.com.

Matthew Kincanon is a former Digital Content Producer with a journalism and political science degree from Gonzaga University. His journalism experience includes the Gonzaga Bulletin, The Spokesman-Review, Art Chowder magazine and SpokaneFāVS. He said he is excited to be a freelancer at SpokaneFāVS because, as a Spokane native, he wants to learn more about the various religious communities and cultures in his hometown.