Arcata raises Two-Spirit-inclusive Pride flag to mark Pride Month

A rainbow flag at Arcata City Hall carried a sharper local message this year: Pride Month in Humboldt County was being marked not just with ceremony, but with a public claim that queer, Two-Spirit and intersex residents belong in city life. The city raised the Two-Spirit and intersex-inclusive Progress Pride flag at noon on June 4 at 736 F St., in a ceremony held with Queer Humboldt.

City officials said Arcata has recognized Pride Month and held a flag-raising ceremony for several years, and the City Council was set to receive a proposed Pride Month proclamation at its June 3 meeting. The timing placed the city’s display at the front edge of a month when communities across Humboldt County are hosting Pride events, many of them tied not only to celebration but to a longer civil rights struggle.

For Andie Martin of Queer Humboldt, the flag was meant to signal more than seasonal support. “It means solidarity,” Martin said. Martin said the city’s choice also sent a message that hate would not be tolerated and that Arcata wanted to stand with people who have faced oppression. The symbolism, Martin argued, matters most when it is tied to action, including better policies for queer community members and everyday support in local neighborhoods.

The flag itself carries that layered meaning. The Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag was updated in 2021, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which says the design adds the intersex community to the Progress Pride Flag. The Progress Pride Flag grew out of the Philadelphia Pride Flag and added trans-inclusive elements, while the newer version widened that recognition further. In Arcata, that distinction mattered because the design explicitly names identities often left out of public ceremonies, including Indigenous Two-Spirit people.

Martin said the 2S label is Indigenous-specific and honors identities that existed long before colonized terminology. That gives the display a cultural depth that reaches beyond Pride Month branding, especially in a county where Indigenous identity, queer identity and local politics often overlap in public life.

Queer Humboldt describes itself as an anti-racist, anti-settler-colonialist resource center serving 2S/LGBTQIA+ people in Humboldt County and local Indigenous lands through community education, mental health services, microgrants, mutual aid, the North Coast Two-Spirit Project, networking and resource sharing. Martin encouraged residents to turn visibility into concrete support by attending Pride events and backing queer-affirming businesses, a reminder that the measure of public inclusion in Arcata will be found not just at City Hall, but in the services, policies and daily choices that follow.