The Native Americans had an interesting perspective.
Two-Spirit
Though Two-Spirit may now be included in the umbrella of LGBTQ, The term "Two-Spirit" does not simply mean someone who is a Native American/Alaska Native and gay.
Traditionally, Native American two-spirit people were male, female, and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people. In most tribes, they were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status. In tribes where two-spirit males and females were referred to with the same term, this status amounted to a third gender. In other cases, two-spirit females were referred to with a distinct term and, therefore, constituted a fourth gender. Although there were important variations in two-spirit roles across North America, they shared some common traits:
- Specialized work roles. Male and female two-spirit people were typically described in terms of their preference for and achievements in the work of the "opposite" sex or in activities specific to their role. Two-spirit individuals were experts in traditional arts - such as pottery making, basket weaving, and the manufacture and decoration of items made from leather. Among the Navajo, two-spirit males often became weavers, usually women and men's work, as well as healers, which was a male role. By combining these activities, they were often among the wealthier members of the tribe. Two-spirit females engaged in activities such as hunting and warfare, and became leaders in war and even chiefs.
- Gender variation. A variety of other traits distinguished two-spirit people from men and women, including temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles.
- Spiritual sanction. Two-spirit identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural intervention in the form of visions or dreams and sanctioned by tribal mythology. In many tribes, two spirit people filled special religious roles as healers, shamans, and ceremonial leaders.
- Same-sex relations. Two-spirit people typically formed sexual and emotional relationships with non-two-spirit members of their own sex, forming both short- and long-term relationships. Among the Lakota, Mohave, Crow, Cheyenne, and others, two-spirit people were believed to be lucky in love, and able to bestow this luck on others.
People getting outraged about this has been going on for a long time.
Osh-Tisch
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Osh-Tisch (
Crow: "
Finds Them and Kills Them")
[1][2] was a
Crow badé. A
badé (also spelled
baté) is a male-bodied person in a Crow community who takes part in some of the social and ceremonial roles usually filled by women in that culture.
Osh-Tisch fought in the 1876
Battle of the Rosebud, as recounted by
Pretty Shield.
[3] During the battle, Osh-Tisch and a woman named The Other Magpie saved Bull Snake, and Osh-Tisch later shot a Lakota warrior, for which Osh-Tisch received her name.
[3][4]
In the late 1890s, an
American agent named Briskow, tasked with forcing the
Plains Indians to assimilate into the dominant culture, jailed Osh-Tisch and the other
badés, and forced them to get masculine haircuts, wear masculine clothing, and perform manual labor such as
planting trees. The Crow, who considered their
badés valuable members of their community, particularly known for their needlework and cooking,
[5] were outraged, saying this abuse went against their nature.
[6] Chief Pretty Eagle used what power he had to compel the agent to resign and leave
tribal lands.
[2] Crow historian
Joe Medicine Crow, delivering this oral history in 1982 said, "It was a tragedy, trying to change them."
[7]
Osh-Tisch was one of the last known
badés of the Crow Nation, and the institution of the
badé is said to have gone into decline during Osh-Tisch's life.
[8] With modern
LGBT communities providing more options in current society, some contemporary
badé people may participate in a revival of these traditions, or in the modern,
pan-Indian two-spirit or LGBT communities.
