MISSION — Ryelynn Melton is like a lot of girls her age.

She adores makeup, spending hours creating art on her face. She loves jewelry, clothing and her dog, Riley.

She teases her parents and occasionally talks back. She likes to bake but not to clean up afterward, according to her mom.

Unlike most teens, though, Ryelynn rose to media attention when on June 3 she was crowned freshman prom princess for Nixyaawii Community School on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The 15-year-old is the first transgender girl to become a prom princess at the charter school. Because of that moment, doors have opened for Ryelynn’s voice to catch the public’s ear.

And she’s got a lot to say.

Ryelynn is strongly interested in developing an advocacy platform for causes she believes in, such as LGBTQ issues and MMIW — Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

“I have always wanted to be a public figure and make my voice heard,” the teen said. “I want to be a social influencer. Or go into politics.”

Transgender Native Americans are referred to as “Two-Spirit” people and were historically held in high esteem, said Katrina Melton, the teen’s mom.

Definition and history of the term, including the shortened “2S,” can vary among groups. “Two-Spirit” was coined in the 1990s to encompass Native people in their communities. Although the term can be included within the umbrella of LGBTQ, it doesn’t simply mean someone who is a Native American or Alaska Native and gay, according to the federal Indian Health Service.

Traditionally, Native American two-spirit people were male, female and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people, the agency says on its webpage.

In a Native American community, people’s roles are often fluid, said Randall Melton, Ryelynn’s dad and exhibit curator for the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute near Pendleton, and the same can be applied to gender-variant members.

When Ryelynn realized she was transgender, she wasn’t worried about the outside world’s perspective, but she did care about what her tribal community thought, Katrina Melton recalled.

“Pretty much everyone has been accepting and loving … and you have all these older, Two-Spirit people,” she said.

Causes that matter

Ryelynn, the youngest of the six children raised in the household (including foster kids), counts her family — rippling out from her siblings to community elders — as her primary support group.

Growing up, Ryelynn began building advocacy muscles in fifth grade, when everyone joined to drive 15 hours to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The tribe’s position was that the location of the proposed massive pipeline posed a serious threat to their land and survival and would destroy valuable cultural resources.

It was one of the first activist moments for the Melton family, but it was not the last.

Upon returning home, Ryelynn was soon making signs and marching with her family in other protests, including supporting Black Lives Matter.

Now the teen uses those experiences to research issues before adding her voice to a cause, she said.

“I want to make sure I agree and support the cause,” Ryelynn said.

Like clean energy and preserving natural resources, Katrina Melton said.

“Just yesterday she ordered cat litter that’s better for the environment,” she said.

This past school year, Ryelynn persuaded her social studies classmates to help support a LGBTQ organization via a school-based, youth philanthropy program called CommuniCare.

As students campaigned for different causes to support with those philanthropy funds, Ryelynn convinced her classmates that LGBTQ-focused Basic Rights Oregon nonprofit encompasses people of color, those without housing and others who can face discrimination due to sexual orientation, she said.

But it has taken Ryelynn time and work to reach this level of strength, her mom said.

Just when her youngest child had started seventh grade, Katrina Melton noticed Ryelynn was uncharacteristically resistant to going to school.

Talking that over led to a revelation that things were changing for the middle schooler.

Becoming herself

Ryelynn began to figure out she was different than how she’d presented at birth but, as is often the case with transgender people, she first thought she must be bisexual.

“I went from bi to gay to trans, but I don’t consider myself straight,” Ryelynn explained.

None of that matters to the Meltons.

“My kids all know people who identify differently, and they were very accepting of how Rye was feeling,” Katrina Melton said. “It really wasn’t a conversation, Rye being trans. It was just you, wearing your makeup.”

The makeup has been everything, the two agreed in laughter.

“I didn’t start wearing makeup until seventh grade, that summer. I wasn’t deeply interested in makeup, then I started getting into it. I went totally crazy with it, like wearing 400-pound eyelashes,” Ryelynn said.

Her older sisters, she pointed out, wear neutral colors in cosmetics and leave the drama to Ryelynn’s face.

There are a few older people in their circle who struggle to understand those who identify with a gender different from their birth sex, Katrina Melton said.

For those folks, it seems easier to pin Ryelynn’s newer gender identity on what she went through at age 8.

It was 2015. Randall Melton was out of town, and Katrina Melton was taking a long-overdue night out with friends at the Pendleton Round-Up. When she came home, Ryelynn stuck to her like glue, refusing to sleep alone.

The story that soon emerged was horrific. A young man who had been very close to the Melton family for years had sexually assaulted the child in various ways.

The man was sentenced to federal prison for three years, but it’s Ryelynn who has the lifelong sentence to carry, her mother said.

Even as her youngest child went into counseling the minute the abuse was revealed and continued for “years and years,” the trauma stays with Ryelynn, she added.

It boiled over in 2019 in an attempted suicide, seemingly triggered by a disagreement between Ryelynn and a good friend.

“Looking back, I feel like those were such small problems,” the teen recalled.

Afterward, Ryelynn began having panic attacks, missing more school days than not; online schooling at home became the healthier option, Katrina Melton said.

Ryelynn returned to Nixyaawii for eighth grade and is again doing well, even as she suffers from trust issues and worries about being hurt again — which makes publicly acknowledging being transgender just about a superpower, her parents feel.

To add in wearing the flounciest dress adorned with sparkles to prom and being crowned princess?

“At that age, I would have never had the guts to do that. She’s amazing,” Katrina Melton said.

That win at school prom did something nothing else has.

“I think it has empowered you,” Katrina Melton said to her daughter. “I see big growth. She’s always had confidence, but I feel like there was more carelessness before … now there’s a maturity.”

At a recent family wedding, comments were made about Ryelynn wearing a dress and makeup. That would have normally caused her girl to storm out, Katrina Melton said.

“But now she can stay respectful, and she made her point,” she said.

Going forth

Still, her upcoming sophomore year will test that, Ryelynn predicted.

“I want to go back to school to play basketball and see my teacher, Michelle,” she said. “I know there will be negativity, but it doesn’t bother me. I’ll just go to the vending machine and get my lunch and go to philanthropy.”

Ryelynn’s next frontier is making her body match her spirit.

“I want to start taking hormones, and I want to find a good surgeon and get certain surgeries, ASAP,” she said. “I think it’s urgent for my mental health.”

Here is where her parents want to apply the brakes, a bit, to their daughter’s journey.

“Rye has never had a regular surgery for anything,” Katrina Melton pointed out. “She may not realize it, but those are major surgeries.”

The Meltons are doing their best to prepare Ryelynn for a world that might not be well prepared for her.

Before their daughter’s participation in Pendleton’s ”Proud Together Pride Parade” in mid-June, for example, there needed to be a serious conversation, Katrina Melton said.

“We told her, ‘This can bring a lot of hate and people who aren’t supportive of the cause. And they will come out of the shadows,’” she said.

Ryelynn’s ready now, it seems.

Just as Native American Two-Spirit people served special roles in the past for their community, Ryelynn has a similar task to hers — one of education. In championing various causes, she’s worked to spread awareness about not only the struggles LGBTQ people face, but those Native Americans face.

It’s a big moment in the history of indigenous people, Katrina Melton said, and she could not be more proud that her daughter is part of it.