LaFortune was adopted by a white missionary couple from the Moravian church at the age of four , but remembers that his biological mother came from a lineage of Yupik medicine people and spiritual leaders . As a child LaFortune lived in Alberta , Canada and then a small town in upper Michigan . LaFortune was interested in music as a child and went on to study piano at Moravian College in Pennsylvania . From a young age LaFortune knew his " identity did not fit into a usual category of Western society , " and as a young adult he remembers Native elders making comments to him " about the presence of third gender people in Native cultures . " LaFortune first became an activist in 1979 following the Three Mile Island accident , which took place near Moravian College where he studied music . Following the accident LaFortune worked with anti-war and anti-nuclear weapon organizations in the 1970s . He later became the executive director of Honor the Earth , a Native American environmental justice organization . In the 1980s LaFortune immersed himself in the Native American communities of Ojibway , Dakota , Lakota , and Ho-Chunk people living in Minnesota and in the American gay community
Three Mile Island accident
Three Mile Island accident
Richard LaFortune