Williams Institute Reading Room: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resources in Law and Public Policy: LGBT / Two Spirit Native Americans

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí'skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism's written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed--and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.
*Also available online (UC users only)

Billy-Ray Belcourt's collection of personal essays opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile Cree Nation. From there, it expands to encompass the big and broken world around him, in all its complexity and contradictions: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it, first loves and first loves lost, sexual exploration and intimacy, and the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.

This book offers insights from young trans, queer and two-spirit Indigenous people in Toronto who examine the breadth and depth of meanings that two-spirit holds. Tracing the refusals and desires of these youth and their communities, Urban Indigenous Youth Reframing Two-Spirit expands critical conversations on queerness, Indigeneity, and community and simultaneously troubles the idea that articulating a definition of two-spirit is a worthwhile undertaking. Beyond the expansion of these conversations, this book also seeks to empower community members, educators, and young people - both Indigenous and non-Indigenous - to better support the self-determination of trans, queer and two-spirit Indigenous youth. By including a research zine and community discussion guidelines, Laing demonstrates the possibility of powerful change that comes from Indigenous people creating spaces to share knowledge with one another.

A compelling, harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story of resilience and self-discovery. A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism. As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and in her teen years became alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay. Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humour, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.

In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles. Asegi, which translates as "strange," is also used by some Cherokees as a term similar to "queer." For author Qwo-Li Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee history in order to listen for those stories rendered "strange" by colonial heteropatriarchy. As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future. The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Asegi Stories derive from activist, artistic, and intellectual genealogies, referred to as "dissent lines" by Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Driskill intertwines Cherokee and other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots activisms, queer and Trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native studies, and decolonial politics. Drawing from oral histories and archival documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered Two-Spirit critiques, Driskill contributes to the larger intertribal movements for social justice.
*At Young Research Library.

Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary "Lammy" Award in LGBTQ Studies The first book to examine the correlation between mixed-race identity and HIV/AIDS among Native American gay men and transgendered people, Indian Blood provides an analysis of the emerging and often contested LGBTQ "two-spirit" identification as it relates to public health and mixed-race identity. Prior to contact with European settlers, most Native American tribes held their two-spirit members in high esteem, even considering them spiritually advanced. However, after contact - and religious conversion - attitudes changed and social and cultural support networks were ruptured. This discrimination led to a breakdown in traditional values, beliefs, and practices, which in turn pushed many two-spirit members to participate in high-risk behaviors. The result is a disproportionate number of two-spirit members who currently test positive for HIV. Using surveys, focus groups, and community discussions to examine the experiences of HIV-positive members of San Francisco's two-spirit community, Indian Blood provides an innovative approach to understanding how colonization continues to affect American Indian communities and opens a series of crucial dialogues in the fields of Native American studies, public health, queer studies, and critical mixed-race studies.
*At Young Research Library

In 1970 the Nixon administration inaugurated a new era in federal Indian policy. No more would the U.S. government seek to deny and displace Native peoples or dismantle Native governments; from now on federal policy would promote "the Indian's sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community." In The Erotics of Sovereignty, Mark Rifkin offers a telling perspective on what such a policy of self-determination has meant and looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. Rifkin focuses on four Native writers--Qwo-Li Driskill (Cherokee), Deborah Miranda (Esselen), Greg Sarris (Graton Rancheria), and Chrystos (Menominee)--approaching their fiction and poetry as forms of political theory. Rifkin shows how the work of these queer or two-spirit Native writers affirms the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty. In this way, we come to see how their work contests the homophobic, sexist, and exclusivist policies and attitudes of tribal communities as well as those of the nation-state.
*At Young Research Library & American Indian Studies Center Library

When Did Indians Become Straight? explores the complex relationship between sexual mores and shifting forms of Native American self-representation. It offers a cultural and literary history that stretches from the early-nineteenth century to the early-twenty-first century, demonstrating how Euramerican and Native writers have drawn on discourses of sexuality in portraying Native peoples and their sovereignty.
*At Young Research Library and American Indian Studies Center Library

*eBook (UCLA only). We are all caught up in one another, Scott Lauria Morgensen asserts, we who live in settler societies, and our interrelationships inform all that these societies touch. Native people live in relation to all non-Natives amid the ongoing power relations of settler colonialism, despite never losing inherent claims to sovereignty as indigenous peoples. Explaining how relational distinctions of "Native" and "settler" define the status of being "queer," Spaces Between Us argues that modern queer subjects emerged among Natives and non-Natives by engaging the meaningful difference indigeneity makes within a settler society. Morgensen's analysis exposes white settler colonialism as a primary condition for the development of modern queer politics in the United States. Bringing together historical and ethnographic cases, he shows how U.S. queer projects became non-Native and normatively white by comparatively examining the historical activism and critical theory of Native queer and Two-Spirit people. Presenting a "biopolitics of settler colonialism"--in which the imagined disappearance of indigeneity and sustained subjugation of all racialized peoples ensures a progressive future for white settlers--Spaces Between Us newly demonstrates the interdependence of nation, race, gender, and sexuality and offers opportunities for resistance in the United States.
*Also at Young Research Library and American Indian Studies Center Library

"This book is an imagining." So begins this collection examining critical, Indigenous-centered approaches to understanding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) lives and communities and the creative implications of queer theory in Native studies. This book is not so much a manifesto as it is a dialogue--a "writing in conversation"--among a luminous group of scholar-activists revisiting the history of gay and lesbian studies in Indigenous communities while forging a path for Indigenous-centered theories and methodologies. The collection notably engages Indigenous GLBTQ2 movements as alliances that also call for allies beyond their bounds, which the co-editors and contributors model by crossing their varied identities, including Native, trans, straight, non-Native, feminist, Two-Spirit, mixed blood, and queer, to name just a few. Rooted in the Indigenous Americas and the Pacific, and drawing on disciplines ranging from literature to anthropology, contributors to Queer Indigenous Studies call Indigenous GLBTQ2 movements and allies to center an analysis that critiques the relationship between colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Based on the reality that queer Indigenous people "experience multilayered oppression that profoundly impacts our safety, health, and survival," this book is at once an imagining and an invitation to the reader to join in the discussion of decolonizing queer Indigenous research and theory and, by doing so, to partake in allied resistance working toward positive change.
*At Young Research Library and American Indian Studies Center Library

The Two-Spirit man occupies a singular place in Native American culture, balancing the male and the female spirit even as he tries to blend gay and Native identity. The accompanying ambiguities of gender and culture come into vivid relief in the powerful and poignant Becoming Two-Spirit, the first book to take an in-depth look at contemporary American Indian gender diversity. Drawing on a wealth of observations from interviews, oral histories, and meetings and ceremonies, Brian Joseph Gilley provides an intimate view of how Two-Spirit men in Colorado and Oklahoma struggle to redefine themselves and their communities. The Two-Spirit men who appear in Gilley's book speak frankly of homophobia within their communities, a persistent prejudice that is largely misunderstood or misrepresented by outsiders. Gilley gives detailed accounts of the ways in which these men modify gay and Native identity as a means of dealing with their alienation from tribal communities and families. With these compromises, he suggests, they construct an identity that challenges their alienation while at the same time situating themselves within contemporary notions of American Indian identity. He also shows how their creativity is reflected in the communities they build with one another, the development of their own social practices, and a national network of individuals linked in their search for self and social acceptance.
*At Young Research Library and American Indian Studies Center Library

In many Native American tribal societies, it was not uncommon for some men to live as women and some women to live as men. In this land, the original America, men who wore women's clothes and did women's work became artists, ambassadors, and religious leaders, and women sometimes became warriors, hunters and even chiefs. Same-sex marriages flourished. Berdaches--individuals who combine male and female social roles with traits unique to their status as a third gender--have been documented in more than 150 North American tribes. By looking at this aspect of non-Western culture, Roscoe challenges the basis of the dualistic way most Americans think about sexuality, and shakes the foundation of the way we understand and define gender.
*At Young Research Library and American Indian Studies Center Library

As contemporary Native and non-Native Americans explore various forms of "gender bending" and gay and lesbian identities, interest has grown in "berdaches," the womanly men and manly women who existed in many Native American tribal cultures. Yet attempts to find current role models in these historical figures sometimes distort and oversimplify the historical realities. This book provides an objective, comprehensive study of Native American women-men and men-women across many tribal cultures and an extended time span. Sabine Lang explores such topics as their religious and secular roles; the relation of the roles of women-men and men-women to the roles of women and men in their respective societies; the ways in which gender-role change was carried out, legitimized, and explained in Native American cultures; the widely differing attitudes toward women-men and men-women in tribal cultures; and the role of these figures in Native mythology. Lang's findings challenge the apparent gender equality of the "berdache" institution, as well as the supposed universality of concepts such as homosexuality.
*At SRLF and American Indian Studies Center Library

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.
*At Young Research Library & American Indian Studies Center Library

Two Spirit People is the first-ever look at social science research exploration into the lives of American Indian lesbian women and gay men. Editor Lester B. Brown posits six gender styles in traditional American Indian culture: men and women, not-men and not-women (persons of one biological sex assuming the identity of the opposite sex in some form), and gays and lesbians. He brings together chapters that emphasize American Indian spirituality, present new perspectives, and provide readers with a beginning understanding of the place of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Indians within American Indian culture and within American society. Traditionally, American Indian cultures showed great respect and honor for alternative gender styles, since these were believed to be part of the sacred web of life. If the Great Spirit chose to create alternative sexualities or gender roles, who was bold enough to oppose such power? If one's spiritual quest revealed one's identity to be that of not-woman, not-man, gay, or lesbian, who should defy their calling?The interpretation of contemporary American Indian religions that gay American Indians retain sacred rights within Indian cultures, and that they can share this gift with others, have implications for therapy, identity formation, social movements, and general human relations.
*At Young Research Library & American Indian Studies Center Library

In Writing as Witness: Essay and Talk, Brant hopes to convey the message that words are sacred. Belonging to a people whose foremost way of communicating is through an oral tradition, she chooses her words carefully, aware of their significance, truth and beauty.
*At Young Research Library

The Zuni Man-Woman focuses on the life of We'wha (1849-96), the Zuni who was perhaps the most famous berdache (an individual who combined the work and traits of both men and women) in American Indian history. Through We'wha's exceptional life, Will Roscoe creates a vivid picture of an alternative gender role whose history has been hidden and almost forgotten.
*At Young Research Library & American Indian Studies Center Library

Winner of the: Gay Book of the Year Award, American Library Association Ruth Benedict Award, Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Award for Outstanding Scholarship, World Congress for Sexology. "An extraordinary perceptive study of the berdache and the most comprehensive treatment of this controversial topic to date."--American Historical Review