Photo: Luke Gilford

Below is a list of terms used by my people in their many languages:

Ayagigux’, Haxu’xan, Kuxa’t, Winktan, Sx’ints, Aakíí’skassi, He’eman, Hoobuk, Agi, Aayahkwew, Bote, Ma’kali, Athuth, Miati, Ho’va, Ikoueta, Sipiniq, Kwit, Monaguia, Kokwi’ma, Kok’we’ma, Tw!inna’ek, Cuit, Uluqui, Ilyaxai’, Nde’isdzan… 

What’s more, they’re all sacred words used to describe someone like me: a male-bodied Native American who possesses qualities typical of the opposite sex. If I were born a few centuries ago, my tribe would have called me a Winkte. But today, all LGBT Native Americans are now called “Two-Spirits”.

In the traditional Native worldview, a Two-Spirit was someone who could transcend conventions in how they sexually felt or expressed themselves because they were lucky enough to be blessed with both a male and a female spirit. For this reason, Two-Spirits were seen as a more whole being. They were a rarity, two genders reflected so completely in one person. But most important, LGBT Native Americans like myself were valued in our communities as conduits between the material and a spiritual world due to our special nature, which was also a defining quality of our medicine men. “We [never] threw our people away. There was a reason why the creator made them different,” said a relative in the moving documentary Our Families: LGBT/ Two Spirit Native American Stories.

These spiritual concepts have existed for thousands of years, long before gay rights were even a gleam in the eye of American culture. “No one is complete until they have a Two-Spirit member in their family,” said First Owl (Blackfeet tribe) in Our Families. Indeed, for American Indians who remember our past worldview, being gay was a gift, an honor and a spiritual designation you could embrace.

In fact, it’s well known that over 135 tribes acknowledged the existence of multiple genders. “American society [today] is really caught up in the boxes and the labeling of what individuals are. [And] the allowing of individuals to be who they are is seen as socially unacceptable... [However] when we try to understand [how Natives saw things like gender and sexuality], we begin to understand that those boxes never existed.” said Ben Lucero Wolf (Kiowa tribe). This only validates a conclusion that contemporary Western society has only just arrived at: sexuality and gender cannot be understood with the strict dualities in Western thinking.

In the Great Basin tribes, a child wasn’t called a boy or girl until they decided themselves at a ceremony where they would choose between a “basket or a bow”; choosing the function of that gender for that time in their life. Elders would even try spotting the early signs of whether a certain “boy was actually a girl”. The Zuni definitely embraced this mindset, believing that people come into this world raw and that it takes time for us to “cook” and mature into our realized gender. We’Wha of the Zuni in particular reflected this belief when at his burial, he was dressed as a man and a woman, believing that we all leave this world how we will be born in the next. (He also confused US President Grover Cleveland and the White House after they invited him as a female Zuni Princess!). In the Crow tribe, a female named Woman Chief was not only among the most honored warriors, she took four wives! While in one Yupik ceremony, all the men and women of the tribe would swap garments to honor one another. And most intriguingly, in the Blackfeet tradition, it was considered an honor and a blessing for the best warriors of the village to have sex with Two-Spirits and not considered adultery because Two-Spirits had no one specific gender. (Interestingly enough, it was considered unnatural for Two-Spirits to sleep with each other.) But most would be surprised to hear that the Navajo even have a creation story about how the first Two-Spirit brought the two sexes together when they were at war. The Native mindset was way ahead of its time.

Now, the places we have in our communities are much different, thanks to the centuries of systematic cultural, religious and racial cleansing by European invaders, Christianity and the US government. “The influence of Christianity really skewed that view of homosexuality,” explained the YouTube series Injunity. “The Spanish conquerors, European traders and the missionaries saw Two-Spirits as sodomites violating their Christian principles of absolute gender in sex.” said the World Economy short Two Spirits in American Culture. Many visual accounts survive today depicting impaled bodies at the bottom of pits and men hacking at victims with swords. But the most notorious account was that of conquistador Balboa ordering 40 “stinking abominations” to be torn apart by his war dogs and made an example of. And in the 20^th Century, the last remaining Crow chief recalled when the Two-Spirits of his tribe were abducted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, forced to dress and act like white men and plant the trees that surround the BIA office today.

But sadly, this isn’t history. It’s still the present reality. “Berdache” is still a common term for Two-Spirits despite its roots as a derogatory word used by European explorers. The “cultural amnesia” within our Native communities has turned us against one another. Discrimination and hate crimes are still as ever present today as they are for all transgendered people: I’m specifically referring to the heinous murder of 16-year-old Navajo Fred Martinez which inspired the documentary Two Spirits (2009). Reservations are dangerous places for Two-Spirits: many LGBT Native Americans often find themselves thrown out of their communities, and nearly all reservations have yet to legalize same-sex marriage, despite the ruling the Supreme Court made in 2015. It’s hard enough trying to exist between two incompatible worlds as a Native American; it’s even worse to not be accepted by either. “The place where two discriminations meet is a dangerous place to live.” spoke a man in the trailer for Two Spirits.

But despite the state of near-hopelessness almost all Native Americans still combat today, the country’s awareness of two-spirited continues to grow. Every year, Two Spirit societies like EC2SS can be spotted joining pride parades, performing healing prayers in Philadelphia, New York, Rochester, at the Transgender House Conference and even for the Human Rights Campaign. Books like Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Mythology and The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture have discussed the subject extensively. In Los Angeles, the Red Circle Project, founded in 2003, has grown into safe house for Two-Spirit American Indians. And for the fourth year now, the world’s only Two-Spirit Powwow has established its spiritual staying power in San Francisco, where hoop-dancers like Ty DeFoe see their performances as “prayers in motion” for all two-spirited people.

As far what will become of us, Natives don’t worry about our past or future. We only believe in a present. We will do what Natives do best. We will survive. We will fight. With the LGBT community as our allies. “We are turning a double oppression into a double opportunity. To create a place for gay Indians in both worlds we live in,” said Randy Burn, founder of Gay American Indians. It’s what my people understood better than “America” today. Inclusion.

This is the hope of this Lakota’s heart. This is my tearful prayer to my people.

East Coast Two Spirit Society, Tyler Ann Jacobs, ITVS, BAAITS

Sources: Wikipedia, Native Out, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, Red Circle Project, Baaits