Two-Spirit
By Kailani Sirois
Indigenous thought is diverse as the land itself and is rooted in sovereignty that fosters healthy relationships and responsibilities that hold deep respect for collective and individual self-determination. Indigenous thought honors diversity when it comes to race, gender, and sexuality. Within the Indigenous Perspective, Two-Spirit/LGBTQ people have long held important roles within culture, community, and leadership. When examining the gravity of this term we observe the resilience of the ancestors of those who today call themselves Two-Spirit and how indigenous peoples shape their identities today.
To appreciate the contemporary vision of the word, Two-Spirit, we must situate the term within the historical discourse it had in the Americas. Gender specific roles existed within traditional Native communities: Men were hunters, protectors, and political and spiritual leaders. Women complemented the work of people who identified as men by performing highly skilled occupations like cooking, harvesting crops, and being political and spiritual advisors. Women were highly respected as they were the teachers and life givers within the community. Two-Spirit individuals were the bridge that connected both male and female genders. They could walk between the two gender worlds and untie them, thus granting them spiritual qualities. Gender roles and kinship relationships within Native communities bound tradition, culture, and language together. The complex spectrum of gender roles within Native communities were not equal, rather, complementary to each other.
Cultural practices and ceremonial traditions within gender fluid people transcended Western concepts of male-female gender roles. The strong kinship relationships within Native communities is what threatened the very mission of colonial power. When European colonizers came to the Americas, they tried to change, remake, and destroy Native people. People with gender fluid identities and roles remained integral to a number of important ceremonial roles, such as overseeing puberty ceremonies and conducting Sun Dances. European and Euro-American observers condemned Native gender and sexual practices, as they were viewed as “uncivilized.” To maintain colonial power, colonists targeted Indigenous men, women, and Two-Spirited people in further attempts to dismantle the necessary balance within Indigenous communities. Indigenous gender and sexual fluidity threatened the foundation of colonial power and prevented the federal government's ongoing efforts to reduce Native landholdings and efforts to undermine Indigenous sovereignty. All indigenous people, regardless of gender, were victims of colonial gendercide.
European colonists failed to destroy native men, women, and Two-Spirit people, but in their failures, settlers inflicted physical, psychological, and intergenerational pain within existing native communities. In the beginning years of the U.S. Republic to the American Revolution, colonialism’s corrosiveness was laid bare across Indian Country. Despite this, the ancestors of people who today call themselves Two-Spirit demonstrated resilience to sustain themselves through wars, disease, and genocide. The cultural and gender genocide of our past lends itself to how our people today shape their identity.
Within my Cree culture, I have been taught that the Creator created many variations of people, but all are related in some way. We celebrate and honor the diversity of identity within our culture, but also understand that a person's identity exceeds gender and sexuality. We have long continued to nurture a sophisticated culture through language that provides us with a balanced society connected by a spectrum of gender roles and identities. Transgender or fluid identities within the community were known as napêw iskwêwisêhot or iskwêw ka napêwayat. Many native tribal communities had a range of different terms to describe identity-based specific roles within the community, how kin members perceived one's gender, and whether one’s personal identity was acknowledged within the community.
In Smithers’ book, Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal, and Sovereignty in Native America, Smithers examines and works to decolonize the history of queer/Two-Spirit, gender, and sexuality in Native North America. Smithers himself writes, “The spectrum of blended gender roles and fluid sexual identities that sustained the Ojibwe and scores of other Native societies helped people maintain balance in their family and kinship relationships. The resilience of those connections cannot be understated; they gave meaning to kinship, constituting the foundation of social and spiritual life.” (Smithers) Language used to give meaning to gender fluidity reflects the valued social roles that these special people performed for their Native communities. With the emergence of the term Two-Spirit, we begin to examine the importance of this word through the unique perspectives of Native Tribal communities. We have to remember to recognize that we all have something to contribute to each other, for each other, and for this world.
Native and Indigenous people have been using the identity Two-Spirit for thirty- plus years now. The term was created by attendees, elders, and activists during the Third Annual Intertribal Native American and First Nations Gay/Lesbian Conference in Winnipeg, Canada in 1990. The adoption of this term during the gathering arose out of a discussion about the need to have specific and empowering cultural terms defined by Native LGBTQ people themselves. By embracing Two-Spirit, the community sought to disavow the colonized, anthropological, harmful, and derogatory terms such as “berdache.” The emergence of the Two-Spirit identity coincides with the cultural shift within settler-dominated communities toward challenging binary categories of sex and gender. The challenges the conference wanted to address included questions about how changes in contemporary gender expression relate to the identities we embrace today, and how gender identities assist Indigenous people in rejecting colonial mindsets.
In Margaret Robinson’s journal, “Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity,” Robinson approaches these questions as a Two-Spirit Indigenous scholar, Mi’kmaw woman, and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. Robinson writes, “To write about Indigenous gender I have to start with land. A Mi’kmaw Creation Story suggests that we have sprung from the land, like a plant, and that my continued existence and identities are rooted in my relationship with the land that birthed me.” (Robinson) Land shapes our relationships with humans to the rest of nature in the web of life around us, creating culture and identity. Land shapes language, teaching us what can be said about identity and gender and what must remain ineffable. If we center our understanding of gender and sexuality with land, we then frame our analysis around the fact that the land and its people are actively being colonized. The formal and informal methods of behaviors, institutions, ideologies, policies, and economies that maintain the subjugation or exploitation of Native and Indigenous Peoples, lands, and resources. Inevitably, Indigenous gender identities are impacted by colonization.
For places outside the U.S. like Aotearoa, there have been positive achievements and transformations for their LGBTQ/Two-Spirit relatives within these communities. One of those being the exploration of the well-being of takatāpui, Two-Spirit, within Māori and Indigenous LGBTQI+ communities within healthcare. However, for Māori communities in Aotearoa and the Indigenous Human Rights Commission in 2008, many found significant gaps in health services for LGBTQ/Two-Spirit people with available services being limited. There also exists a dire need for more information and education regarding the discrimination in historical and contemporary medical practices faced by LGBTQ/Two-Spirit people. To address this issue, the HONOR Project and the Honour Project Aotearoa were created to provide opportunities to practice and to address the invisibility of these communities impacted. “In giving voice to Indigenous expressions, experiences and aspirations for health and well-being, these projects reinforce the belonging of takatāpui/two-spirit and Indigenous LGBTQI+ communities in our present, ancestral and future generations.” (Pihama)
Māori communities are utilizing traditional Māori culture and spirituality to redefine gender and sexuality in Aotearoa, particularly, around how it impacts the elders and young people within the community. To embrace these concepts within the larger community, the Te Whare Takatāpui framework was created to explore the idea of conceptual and practical ways to address the homophobia and transphobia that impact Rainbow Health, takatāpui, well-being, and relationships. Pihama further explains the Takatāpui framework by stating:
It is based on the Te Whare Tapa Whā health model and considers whakapapa (genealogy), wairua (spirituality), mauri (life spark), mana (authority/self determination), tapu (sacredness) and tikanga (rules and protocols). Te Whare Takatāpui identifies mana wāhine as essential to restoring the traditional balance between women and men that our tīpuna (ancestors) experienced, so that we may address the historical trauma and gendered violence of colonization affecting us today.
Within Native and Indigenous communities around the world, the fight for awareness and diversion from contemporary and historical discrimination within education and health care is a continuous battle. Just as the Māori communities continue to develop and execute their utilization of traditions, culture, and spirituality to redefine gender and sexuality within their communities, many other movements within Indian Country are working towards a similar vision.
Driskill’s[1] monograph, Asegi Stories, utilizes qualitative interviews with LGBTQ and Two-Spirit Cherokee people. Driskill’s research focuses with historical research on the Cherokee term, asegi, to inquire about relationships between language, the trauma of language loss, and LGBTQ/Two-Spirit Cherokee communities. Participants in Driskill’s research highlighted the relationships within Cherokee language and how it largely impacted the words they chose to identify themselves. Many Cherokee participants noted that the sexuality or gender of an individual was less relevant to their place within Cherokee communities than to the roles they played in the balanced and cooperative relationships with others in their community.
For native Two-Spirit youth in Toronto, Canada, the refutation of anthropological authority continues the discussion of contextualizing the idea of a for-us, by-us ethic when it comes to addressing identity. In Laing’s book, Urban Indigenous Youth Reframing Two-Spirit, they investigate the perceptions of the Two-Spirit community and what Two-Spirit means for the Native youth in Toronto. Partnering with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network to design and implement the research, Laing engages with youth participants in the urbanized Native communities in Toronto. The participants were asked about their connections to the Two-Spirit community and their perceptions of the term meant for them. The results of the interviews showed that not all participants identified with the term Two-Spirit and many did not experience a “two-spirit community” within the urban setting.There exists a conception that the term, Two-Spirit, is a one-dimensional word that creates boundaries similar to Western terms - preventing people from using the term. The participants also voiced their desires for more teachings from Two-Spirit elders and knowledge keepers. They also asked for more opportunities for cultural and social events for Two-Spirit people outside the social service delivery setting. As the research showed, Two-Spirit youth of Toronto are deeply impacted by the form and content of conversations when it comes to understanding or identifying with the Two-Spirit community. In particular, each participant’s difficult relationship with the term Two-Spirit highlights the need for further conversations with LGBTQ/Two-Spirit native youth about the ways that the term can be used and how it relates to other terms utilized in describing identity within their communities.
Driskill and Laing’s inclusion of interviews from Native communities on their perceptions surrounding Two-Spirit opens the discussion for what it means to be a two-spirit person within the Native American community and the larger world. Settler-dominated communities are beginning to undergo a cultural shift toward challenging binary categories of gender and sexuality. For Two-Spirit people, the struggle remains to embrace traditional knowledge and contemporary ideas to redefine themselves. In exploring tribally specific Native queer/Two-Spirit critique within the Cherokee and Cree Two-Spirit lens we are then able to interpret the past, and understand our present, and imagine a decolonial future.
These unique works emphasize that relationships held within Indigenous queer, trans, and Two-Spirit communities with the term Two-Spirit, across time and place, are varied and complex. Although there still exists an absence of representation and knowledge regarding the Two-Spirit term, there are current movements to prevent further damage from being inflicted. Reclaiming and sustaining the broad gender roles and fluid sexual identities that Native peoples hold within their communities can restore the balance that European and Euro-American cultures sought to erase. In experiencing the erasure of our genders and sexuality and the theft of languages that express their complexities, we continue to build and reshape community, affirm our power, and uphold the balance within our communities.
Works Cited
Belcourt, Billy-Ray. This Wound Is a World. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
Belcourt, Billy-Ray. “Indigenous studies beside itself.” Somatechnics, vol. 7, no. 2, Sept. 2017, pp. 182–184, https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2017.0216.
Driskill, Qwo-Li. Asegi Stories Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory. The University of Arizona Press, 2016.
Gilley, Brian Joseph. Becoming Two-Spirit Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country. University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Laing, Marie. Urban Indigenous Youth Reframing Two-Spirit. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
Pihama, Leonie., and Alison. Green. Honouring Our Ancestors : Takatapui, Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQI+ Well-Being. Victoria University Press, 2023.
Robinson, Margaret. “Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 67, no. 12, 2020, pp. 1675–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1613853.
Smithers, Gregory D., and Runner Raven E Heavy. Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal, and Sovereignty in Native America. Beacon Press, 2022.
[1] It is crucial to note that Driskill has been found for falsifying their Indigenous identity. Despite this, I find that it is important to continue to read and discuss Driskill’s academic work as it contains very useful information in our studies with NAIS. But it is crucial to note how Driskill made their career.