Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality

by Sue-Ellen Jacobs (Editor), Sabine Lang (Editor), Wesley Thomas (Editor)

This landmark book combines the voices of Native Americans and non-Indians, anthropologists and others, in an exploration of gender and sexuality issues as they relate to lesbian, gay, transgendered, and other "marked" Native Americans. Focusing on the concept of two-spirit people--individuals not necessarily gay or lesbian, transvestite or bisexual, but whose behaviors or beliefs may sometimes be interpreted by others as uncharacteristic of their sex--this book is the first to provide an intimate look at how many two-spirit people feel about themselves, how other Native Americans treat them, and how anthropologists and other scholars interpret them and their cultures.

1997 Winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize for an edited book given by the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Indigenous, Native American, LGBT, History, Anthropology

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Letitia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of essays, articles, dialogues, and rants, is simultaneously challenging and extremely necessary. It is dated, and the language gives evidence of that. There are several authors who incorrectly cite cross-dressing or use exclusive terminology, but at the same time this is the only work of its kind of which I am aware. Various perspectives on sexuality and gender are offered as evidence of a nuanced and indisputably non-monolithic approach to understanding Indigenous Americans' complex and frequently contradictory understanding of Two-Spirit.

I was not initially impressed with this book and literally rolled my eyes at the beginning. The first two essays did not offer anything I hadn't learned just through absorbing the topic from other sources. They were also pretentious, and required a high level of academic knowledge of previously published works, which they referenced with such casual frequency that the reader is left to feel they should have written their thesis on the topic before even approaching this book.

Do not despair, because shortly thereafter the richness and breadth of Two-Spirit People is explored much more effectively by other writers who contributed to the book. While language and definitions continue to be problematic, that is part of the beauty of this work. Native voices challenge Anglo-centric absolutism that insists on categorizing people, and specifically calls out anthropologists and their contribution to this myopic understanding not just of First Nations and cultures, but of humanity.

Identity, as the Navajo writers remind us, is a function of context, and that context changes throughout life, throughout time. That is not something the English language embraces, but the Navajo does. p. 195 "Often, for the sake of expediency and other reasons, Native American people may translate something that does not reflect how we perceive something but that works within a specific context."

p. 209 "No one person can speak for so many Native two-spirit people, no single term can apply to all of us at any time. Instead of focusing on one or two people who lived in the past it is now time to begin to write about those of us who live today. Anthropologists of today have the opportunity to record the contemporary life of our people, not just our history, for future generations. These days I no longer ask for respect, and I do not ask for sensitivity. I will not bend over backward to be seen or heard. These days I demand respect and sensitivity, and I demand to be seen and to be heard. I demand all of these because they are my right as a human being."

This book must be read as a whole, because only then will the reader understand what it actually does, and that is defy the idea of boxing people into rigid definitions. In this regard, it is alive and dynamic and will contribute to what I am sure is still constant debate within Native and academic communities. From the poignant writings about Bernard Second, to the assertive demands for decolonization of ideology and language from Native womyn and Two-Spirits, this is not like most other texts. It is a push not to define, but to defy definition. It demands the de-anglicizing of North American views on gender, sexuality, and indeed whole person, since there were many voices calling to dismiss the idea of identity as ontologically defined. This resonated with me, and challenged me to seek not just a world where we are open to every gender expression, but where we don't consider it.

Read to be considered as an Anthropology text for World Cultures ANTH 130.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a straight, white, scientifically-minded, Western man I thought it would be helpful to get a different perspective on things LGBTQ. This book does a great job of providing Native Amer. perspectives on "Two-Spirit" People. The academic setting--a collection of "papers" given at anthropological conferences--may be off-putting, but there are also numerous essays from Native Two-Spirits which give a more personal approach.

The Western, scientific, anthropological effort to solidly define characteristics and qualities does not work for Native worldviews. The Western clearly-demarcated view of gender/sex (male-female) is foreign to many Native concepts: "For example, in Navajo understandings everyone and everything is male and female; thus, the term 'two-spirit' applies as accurately to a tree as it does to a 'nadleehi' [a Navajo word used for many LGBTQ identities.]" (p. 187)

Likewise, the Western difficulty with separating gender from biological sex is also foreign to many Native views: "In such [Native] epistemological systems, sex is something people have and do; it is biophysiological. Gender is how people are classified along a continuum from female to male (or vice-versa)." (p. 27)

Native gender identities are difficult to define (in a Western sense) because these concepts depend on Native contexts and situations. This fluidity is foreign to Western viewpoints put essential for Natives. One of the academics in this book (Terry Tafoya) compares this ambiguity to the quantum idea in physics: Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty which explains that the more you know about the position of an object, the less you can know about its velocity, and vice-versa: "The Tafoya Principle of Uncertainty states that in cross-cultural research one can have context or definition but not both at the same time. The more one attempts to establish a context for a situation or process, the more one will blur a clean, simple definition for a situation or process and the more one will lose a sense of context." (p. 198)

One final quote which sums things up nicely:

"For the past four hundred years there have been enormous pressures for First Nations people to assimilate and acculturate to European and Euro-American norms. That there are still multigendered--two-spirit--people with viable places and roles in their reservation communities speaks to the persistence of underlying cultural values and wisdom embodied in First Nations cultures. These are values, with associated wisdom, that I believe could well be adopted by mainstream Euro-Americans. We are far to poor in human resources to waste any talents, especially the talents of those who can see two ways, who are endowed with more than most, who know what it is like to be different but valued, and who can also speak to the nasty underside of contemporary cultures, whether those are mainstream or First Nation. We are each relatives to those to whom we were born; we are each embraced by friends to whom we are not related; we are, as well, each in relationships, regardless of our sex or gender or our partners; we are all human beings. Truly, we are all in this together." (p. 250)

[Neal Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seminars from an anthropology conference on Native American gender identity and sexuality, many from Native American academic and non-academic participants. The contributors share a commitment to enquiry and diversity, but agree on few details. One of them has even propounded an uncertainty principle that “in cross-cultural research one can have context or definition but not both at the same time”. One reason for this disagreement is that almost all the available evidence dates from the 20th century and so reflects external impacts such as Christianity. The contributors do agree that the currently dominant North American culture is short-sighted in equating sex and gender and, by way of example, the book conveys how these can be cross-grained.

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two-Spirit people is a collection of essays from a variety of two-spirit indigenous scholars (mostly, not all of them are scholars, and in one case, not all of them are two-spirit/indigenous). This book examines indigenous sexuality and gender in a variety of different ways.

This book was written and published in the late 90s, and so a lot of the concepts they're working on articulating, especially around gender, have become a little more mainstream. Reading this collection, I have to wonder now how much of our understanding of non-binary gender identities are able to be articulated now, even in Caucasian communities, because of the work that two-spirit scholars put in.

One of the essays written by a white woman made me go "Wow, this person has read way too much Castaneda books, and then she went on to mention the book by name which I guess proved my point, but other than that one all of these essays were very thoughtful and well put together.

I especially enjoyed Sabine Lane's "Various Kinds of Two Spirit People: Gender Variance and Homosexuality in Native American Communities", "Traditional Influences on a Contemporary Gay-Identified Sisseton Dakota" by Michael Red Earth, and "I Ask You to Listen To Who I Am" by Doyle V. Robertson, but I found the entire collection well worth the read.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book will stay with me the most out of everything I’ve read. I really like books like this, each chapter being a different academic-journal essay entry, where they all communicate with one another. The essays and information is incredibly important and impactful; it being published during the peak of AIDS only makes it more so. I loved the book’s flow and the variety of contributors. Strongly, strongly, strongly recommended.

[Corina Wieser-Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see why it’s a foundational text, but it is extremely dated. The shining moments were definitely the Native voices and their experiences, but everything else was merely “blah” academic and anthropological work.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foundational but dated.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this book because i was really interested in knowing how Natives were treated when they were lgbt. This book is about Native people who are lgbt and when they are lgbt they were known to have two spirits, and it just talks about the studies on the Natives that were lgbt and how they were treated and what they did and how they acted and other stuff like that. My personal feelings on this book were that I liked it, and I liked it because it was pretty good/interesting to me to see how they were treated just because they were lgbt. I would recommend this to others but only if they are interested in this type of stuff, like I would recommend this book to people who like to read about lgbt stuff and history because this book does go back in history.

[Caleb Tankersley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful scholarship, refreshingly interspersed with the stories of real people.

[Dylan]

I've been on a bit of an academic reading kick lately.