Watch Candace Owens Call Native Americans ‘High’ and ‘Cannibals’ While Denying Two-Spirit Existence

Candace Owens, a far-right commentator, dismissed the historical existence of transgender individuals and denigrated Native American culture during a heated exchange with a young attendee at a recent event.

Video of the interaction was brought to light by journalist Victoria Brownworth, who posted a clip on X, formerly Twitter.

“Candace Owens responded to a young woman challenging Owen’s anti-trans rant by pointing out Native American Two Spirit people existed. Owens goes off on her, calling Native Americans cannibals and drug users. Shocking, racist, and vile,” Brownworth wrote.

The discussion began as the audience member explained, “There are dozens of words for two-spirit people, people that would now be considered LGBTQ or trans people in the Native languages. …Trans people were around then; I’m just wondering why you think it is that trans people are only here now because the media is telling people these things.”

Owens retorted by questioning the rise in transgender identification since her high school years, asserting, “Well, do you think it’s weird that I graduated with zero trans people? What do you think has contributed to the explosion of transgender people from the time that I was in high school?” She then veered into a derogatory tirade, equating the concept of two-spirit individuals to drug use and cannibalism among Native Americans.

“Is this like a Native American tribe, like high smoking and talking about your spirit? I’m asking you seriously because when I think of Native American tribes talking about their spirits, I know that they used to smoke a lot. They used to do drugs. They also were cannibals who used to eat people,” Owens said.

Ignoring the historical evidence provided, Owens continued to deny the existence of transgender individuals in Native American cultures.

“It’s historical knowledge that there were trans Native Americans?” she asked with a tone of disbelief after the person in the audience accurately shared with Owens that transgender people are known in the historical record to have existed.

“I really don’t think that’s historical knowledge…I don’t think that there were trans Native Americans,” Owens said.

The term “two-spirit” is an adjective used by some Indigenous and First Nations people as an umbrella term to describe individuals who are not straight or cisgender.

According to GLAAD, “Many Indigenous communities have specific words in their language to describe these experiences, but some do not.”

The young woman then encouraged Owens to educate herself further on the topic, responding, “If you’d educate yourself a little more, you would know that as well.”

Owens’z derogatory remarks are not new to the public sphere. In September, she was suspended from YouTube for her anti-LGBTQ+ statements. Her suspension was announced by her Daily Wire colleague Michael Knowles, following a strike issued to the Candace Owens Podcast channel by YouTube for violating its hate speech policy. This violation stemmed from content promoting hatred against protected individuals or groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. Owens’s statements included assertions that homosexuality is caused by molestation and other traumatic incidents in childhood and derogatory remarks about the LGBTQ+ community; she referred to LGBTQ+ identity as a “social contagion.”