Two Spirits
A documentary film produced by Russell Martin and Lydia Nibley and directed by Lydia Nibley

The Fred Martinez Project and the documentary film Two Spirits have received the 2008 Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia.

Fred Martinez was nadleehi--someone who possesses the gift of both masculine and feminine traits according to his traditional Navajo culture. On a warm summer evening in Cortez, Colorado, Fred hugged his mother, said he would return soon, and left the trailer house in which they lived to attend a rodeo carnival. Fred was sixteen years-old. He dressed as he usually did with a touch of mascara, wearing a small bra stuffed with socks beneath his sweatshirt, and carrying his favorite purse. He spent several hours with friends and then disappeared. His savagely beaten body was found five days later in a shallow canyon near his home.

Two Spirits is grounded in the events foreshadowing the murder, and the terrible reality of what happened on a night when one boy bludgeoned another with rocks, then bragged to friends that he had "bug-smashed a fag." The film asks the question posed by Fred’s mother, “Why are people killed for being who they are?

The film also explores the history of Native two-spirited people and the range of gender expression and sexual identity that has long been seen as a healthy part of many of the indigenous cultures of North America, and of Navajo culture in particular, which recognizes four genders. The first is the feminine woman. The second is the masculine man. The third is the male-bodied person who has a feminine essence—nadleehi. The fourth is the female-bodied person who has a masculine essence—dilbaa. When a child is born, elders seek to support the child in becoming fully who they are, and, in adolescence, the ceremony that marks entry into life as an adult is different for each gender. Quite wonderfully, a nadleeh or dilbaa person receives a combination of the masculine and feminine ceremonies.

In Navajo, nadleehi means “one who is transformed," and as the film traces the ramifications of a murder in the lives of those most affected, we see the possibility to transform bigotry into a respect for the balance of the masculine and feminine as a way of maintaining sacred order. When people are seen as being healthy and whole in any part of the gender and sexuality spectrum, perhaps we can return to the most traditional values.

  More information at www.twospirits.org

Rise
An original pilot for a television series
written by Lydia Nibley and Russell Martin

Rise is a show about a doctor in a small Arizona town who discovers that the experimental allergy drug she prescribes is a kind of legal ecstasy. The drug suddenly scrambles her patients’ lives—some for the better and others for the worse. It transforms their outlooks, libidos, and their relationships. And the doctor’s life and her family are turned upside down as well. The ensemble cast of white and Latino characters struggles with the fine line between living a larger life and utterly screwing it up, as each of them questions just what they are willing to risk in order to try to feel and be better.

Script-doctoring, ghost-writing, and producing

Recent script-doctoring and ghost-writing projects include a book about brain science and spirituality for a well-known international figure; a memoir of a painter; a novel; a book on spirituality; a business book on management; a science fiction screenplay; a business book on communication; and a book about important life-skills for at-risk youth entering college. Recent producing projects include a 13-hour radio series, and a collection of audio CDs on Jungian psychology. 

It's Complicated
A radio piece broadcast by the BBC

The story begins in front of Picasso's great painting Guernica on September 11, 2001, and continues on a journey to the town of Gernika in Basque country in northern Spain, a town destroyed by a new kind of warfare, a strike from the sky against a symbolic target, with many innocent people dead, as a means of terrorizing the civilian population during the Spanish Civil War. When asked about current ETA terrorism, the young Basque woman acting as interpreter justified the ongoing violence, repeating the phrase, "It's complicated."

Masses for the dead in the United States were said throughout Europe in the days after September 11th, and the piece uses ambient sound and found pieces of story to approach the subject of how truly complicated these events are, both contemporarily and historically. Picasso said, "Wars end. Hostilities go on forever." But in this story, we find there is an equally powerful bond between those who have survived terror—and their compassion for each other also endures.

Kissing the Ground

Co-authored with Russell Martin, Kissing the Ground is a story about real love in the trenches. It’s about the painful upheaval and dramatic transformation that are often required by the choice to live life with passion. The couple join their lives word-by-word through a shared love of language and the lively art of storytelling--as they share their histories and the hidden longing that forges their connection.

The Mysteries of Beethoven's Hair

The true story told in The Mysteries of Beethoven’s Hair takes middle-grade readers into the worlds of music, history, and science with startling revelations and a real life mystery solved. Written by Lydia Nibley and Russell Martin, the book was published by Charlesbridge in 2009.

"The Mysteries of Beethoven's Hair presents an intriguing interdisciplinary story. Martin and Nibley trace the labrinthine journey of a lock of Beethoven's hair encased in a glass and wooden locket from the 18th century to the present. . . . a most unusual, thoroughly researched detective story written in a clearly accessible and lively tone . . . an incredibly readable and absorbing selection that demonstrates the multidimensional nature of true scholarship." - School Library Journal

The Dance of the Masculine and Feminine

A radio program and stage production by the poet Robert Bly, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, and Marion Woodman, author of numerous books and a renowned Jungian analyst, produced by Lydia Nibley. In the tradition of mythic storytelling, Bly and Woodman explored the depths of connection between men and women who work consciously to achieve balance between the masculine and feminine—both in the inner world of the psyche and the outer world of human experience.