Academic who created the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym featured as “inspired research.”
Laurier’s annual research report showcases the work of a professor who created the expanded MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ identity.
Author: Melanie Bennet
The lengthy MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym that went viral after NDP MP Leah Gazan used it in Parliament this spring has been circulating in activist and academic circles for years, including through the work of a Wilfrid Laurier University professor recently featured in the school’s “Inspired Research” annual report.
Wilfrid Laurier University professor, Percy Lezard, who identifies as “Mnimcelx - They, Them,” developed the expanded acronym through the federally supported 2SLGBTQQIA+ Sub-Working Group.
The acronym went viral this spring after Gazan accused the federal government of ignoring what she called an “ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” people in Canada.
While most were unfamiliar with the acronym, it has already been circulating in activist and academic circles for years.
A 100-page report released by the 2SLGBTQQIA+ Sub-Working Group in 2021 used MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ as part of its work addressing what it described as “systemic racism and violence” against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people.
Lezard has argued that using the full acronym is important when discussing violence against Indigenous women and girls.
“You’re literally telling me that the violence that I experience on the daily or that members of my community experience on the daily is not important,” Lezard said in a video posted by Laurier. “It’s not valid. It’s not worth talking about.”
“So until we move from that space, to including the actual longer acronym, I think the quality of life is not going to change.”
An Ontario Institute for Studies in Education graduate, Lezard discusses the relationship between Indigenous identity and academia in her university bio.
While saying they are “grateful to be here” at the university, Lezard criticizes what they call the “Academic Industrial Complex.”
“In an era where the Academic Industrial Complex continues to reward race shifting, indigeneity-by-aspiration, and the continual reproduction of pretendianism, I name myself, my nation, and my kin with intention,” Lezard says.
“This is an ethical stance against the erasures, appropriations, and false claims that harm Indigenous peoples and distort our knowledge systems.”
Lezard says their responsibilities as a scholar include “refusing extractive research practices” and “resisting the reproduction of colonial authority.”
“My presence in academic spaces is not neutral; it is shaped by survivance, kinship, and an obligation to interrupt the structures that attempt to rewrite who we are,” the biography reads.
The university’s latest “Inspired Research” report outlines how it approaches “Indigenization.”
The report starts with a “Beyond the Acknowledgement” section celebrating the academics who “stepped into a year of learning, unlearning” by attending an “on-the-land camp” in the Northwest Territories.
The taxpayer-funded camp “invited us to slow down, listen differently, and experience Indigenous ways of knowing and being with humility and respect,” according to the report.