Here's What It Means To Be 'Two-Spirit,' According To Native People

[Behind the Aegis]

You may have heard the term “Two-Spirit”tossed around without actually knowing the meaning behind it — perhaps because it’s often been co-opted by non-Native people.

Two-Spirit is a modern umbrella term to describe Indigenous people who embody both a feminine and masculine energy and have traditionally held a number of important social and spiritual roles in their tribes.

“As it’s been told to me, if the morning is male and the evening is female, then Two-Spirits are the dusk,” Cherokee Two-Spirit musician Tony Enos told HuffPost. “We were then, and are still, the balance-keepers in our living Indigenous cultures.”

The term was coined by Elder Myra Laramee in 1990 at a Native American and First Nation LGBTQ conference in Winnipeg, Canada, (though the concept has existed in Native cultures long before that) to unite the various queer identities and expressions among Indigenous people.

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[TigressDem]

1. Intersting, thanks.

I've read some about the historical tolerance of Native Americans for people who did not feel they fit into the strict Male or Female mode assigned by birth and how those persons were still giving a place in the tribe where they could contribute, but I'd never heard of this specific term for it was Two-Spirit.

I think a fictional novel I read had a Berdache in it, which was a male who identified as female and in his way was a very important person in the tribe.

Then of course once you know something exists, you spot other articles or hear about it in other places.

[brer cat]

2. More:

Two-Spirit is “not a poetic way for non-Native LGBTQ people to express themselves,” as Neptune explained in the Them.com video.

Reed said that non-Indigenous people claiming to be Two-Spirit is “reminiscent of colonizers and conquerors taking our identity away from us.”

“We welcome allys but Two-Spirit is for Indigenous peoples only,” he said. “A non-Native would or should not claim to be of Navajo descent because they felt a kinship.”

[mopinko]

3. i took a history of ceramics class and learned about a famous two spirit potter.

hopi maybe? long time ago. def 4 corners. amazing stuff. and a beauty. there are pics.