Two-spirit

Two-spirit (also known as two spirit or occasionally twospirited)[a] is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) social role in their communities.

[2][3][4][5] Coined in 1990 as a primarily ceremonial term promoting community recognition, in recent years more individuals have taken to self-identifying as two-spirit.

However, according to Kristopher Kohl Miner of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Native people such as anthropologist Wesley Thomas of the Dine or Navajo tribe also contributed to its creation."

In 2009, writing for the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, Kylan Mattias de Vries wrote: With the urbanization and assimilation of Native peoples, individuals began utilizing Western terms, concepts, and identities, such as gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersex.

[14]The binary nature of two-spirit, or the idea of having two spirits in one body, is not a theme found in the traditional gender roles for Native people, and concerns about this misrepresentation have been voiced since the 1990 conference where the term was adopted.

Although two-spirit implies to some a spiritual nature, that one holds the spirit of two, both male and female, traditional Native Americans/First Nations peoples view this as a Western concept.

"[14] Male-bodied two-spirit people, regardless of gender identification, can go to war and have access to male activities such as male-only sweat lodge ceremonies.

Although the current new meme or legend surrounding the term two spirit is certainly laudable for helping LGBTQ people create their own more empowering terminology to describe themselves, it carries some questionable baggage.

My concern is not so much over the use of the words but over the social meme they have generated that has morphed into a cocktail of historical revisionism, wishful thinking, good intentions, and a soupçon of white, entitled appropriation.

Cameron writes:[16] The term two-spirited was chosen to emphasize our difference in our experiences of multiple, interlocking oppressions as queer Aboriginal people.

[15][46] Among the goals of two-spirit societies are group support; outreach, education, and activism; revival of their Indigenous cultural traditions, including preserving the old languages, skills and dances;[47] and otherwise working toward social change.

[48][53][54][55] Writing in March 1998 to advise colleagues and peers in the anthropology profession on the accurate and respectful use of language for Native American subjects in anthropological research and archeological projects, Alice Beck Kehoe, a non-Native Professor Emeritus at Marquette University who attended the Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conferences, recounts her observations of the discussions that resulted in the term two-spirit at the 1990 conference: "At the conferences that produced the book, Two-Spirited People, I heard several First Nations people describe themselves as very much unitary, neither 'male' nor 'female', much less a pair in one body.

Nor did they report an assumption of duality within one body as a common concept within reservation communities; rather, people confided dismay at the Western proclivity for dichotomies.

"[8] Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts.

~ Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Ojibwe)[56]According to German anthropologist Sabine Lang, cross-dressing of two-spirit people was not always an indicator of gender identity.

Lang believes "the mere fact that a male wears women's clothing does not say something about his role behavior, his gender status, or even his choice of partner".

[57] Other anthropologists may have mistakenly labelled some Native individuals two-spirit or berdache because of a lack of cultural understanding, specifically around an Indigenous community's worldview, and their particular customs concerning clothing and gender.

The English translation reads: I have submitted substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing and character of women – there being two or three such in each village – pass as sodomites by profession. ...

[61]Although gender-variant people have been both respected and feared in a number of tribes, they are not beyond being reproached or, by traditional law, even killed for bad deeds.

In the Mojave tribe, for instance, they frequently become medicine persons and, like all who deal with the supernatural, are at risk of suspicion of witchcraft, notably in cases of failed harvest or of death.

[64] Lang and Jacobs write that historically among the Apache, the Lipan, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and southern Dilzhe'e have alternative gender identities.

[65][66] One tribe in particular, the Eyak, has a single report from 1938 that they did not have an alternative gender and they held such individuals in low esteem, although whether this sentiment is the result of acculturation or not is unknown.

[69][70] Some sources have reported that the Aztecs and Incas had laws against such individuals,[71] though there are some authors who feel that this was exaggerated or the result of acculturation, because all of the documents indicating this are post-conquest and any that existed before had been destroyed by the Spanish.

When asked by transgender researchers in 2004 if they ever considered surgical transition, "none of the respondents found the idea interesting, but rather strange" as their essence as muxe is not dependent on what type of body they are in.

De Vries writes, "Berdache is a derogatory term created by Europeans and perpetuated by anthropologists and others to define Native American/First Nations people who varied from Western norms that perceive gender, sex, and sexuality as binaries and inseparable.

[86][87] In the 2018 indie film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a Lakota character – Adam Red Eagle, played by Forrest Goodluck – is sent to a conversion camp for identifying as winkte and two-spirit.

[88] In the 2019, second season of American Gods, Devery Jacobs (Mohawk) plays a young Cherokee woman, Sam Black Crow, who self-identifies as "two-spirited" (although in the book, she is mentioned in passing as being bisexual).

Her character, raised by a white mother and estranged from her Native father, speaks of looking to older ancestors to try to find her own beliefs, much like the other humans in the series.

In an interview Jacobs says, "I identify as queer, and not two-spirited, because I'm Mohawk and we don't have that" and that Neil Gaiman (author of the novels on which the series is based) advocated strongly for her to be cast in the role.

[90] Showrunner Misha Green addressed the fate of this character by tweeting "I wanted to show the uncomfortable truth that oppressed folks can also be oppressors.