Ojibwe

Gichi-apiitenindizowin

The story of finding this word: Living a short time in the Twin Cities, I was able to witness a growth of appreciation (not appropriation) for Native culture including welcomed shifts around language -- watch your use of tribe, spirit animal, and the always to show up in a business context - pow wow.

There are a number of tribal communities who called the borders of Minnesota home. Seven communities are Anishinaabe (Chippewa, Ojibwe) and four are Dakota (Sioux). I focused on the major languages used between these communities and was able to track down terms/phrases for Ojibwe and Dakota. Ojibwe took some sleuthing via contacts from my science days as UC Boulder. A peer there had grown up in Duluth and had academic ties. She eventually connected with a contact in the UM American Indians Studies department who has a daughter in the LGBTQ+ community. He was able to discuss with colleagues to land on what might work - like I've mentioned on this site, many languages do not have a single word like English, especially a positive term.

Here's the text of the communication: "I have a two-spirited friend who is a fluent speaker and writer. After some thought he came up with this. These words mean "finding great value in oneself."

I had a follow up question about the hyphen: "I would add a pre-verb to it to give it that More enhanced depth.” Consequently, first the shorter version of the word was viewed as “lackluster’ and the hyphenated version got closer to the meaning you were looking for. It was the way it was spelled by my friend- and this person teaches the Ojibwe language at one of the world’s great Universities. The shorter version means simply “a person thinks of himself”. The hyphenated verb form that was provided apparently means “a person looks at himself and finds great value”.

I was given the link to the UM Ojibwe dictionary for pronunciation. I didn't see this expression exactly, but you can see some other forms which lead to this complete expression. Check out the awesome dictionary here.