Two-spirit people : Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality

Book

Two-spirit people : Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality / edited by Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang.

Jacobs, Sue-Ellen. (Added Author). Thomas, Wesley, 1954- (Added Author). Lang, Sabine. (Added Author).

Summary:

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, trans-gendered, 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.

Record details

ISBN: 0252023447
ISBN: 9780252023446
ISBN: 0252066456
ISBN: 9780252066450
Physical Description: xiii, 331 pages : illustrations (1 color) ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, ©1997.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Is the "North American berdache" merely a phantom in the imagination of Western social scientists? / Sue-Ellen Jacobs -- The Northern Athapaskan "berdache" reconsidered : on reading more than there is in the ethnographic record / Jean-Guy A. Goulet -- Cross-dressing and shamanism among selected Western North American tribes / Arnold R. Pilling -- Various kinds of two-spirit people : gender variance and homosexuality in Native American communities / Sabine Lang -- Traditions of gender diversity and sexualities : a female-to-male transgendered perspective / Jason Cromwell -- Changing Native American roles in an urban context and changing Native American sex roles in an urban context / Beatrice Medicine (Standing Rock Lakota) -- Navajo cultural constructions of gender and sexuality / Wesley Thomas (Navajo) -- A Navajo worldview and Nádleehí : implications for Western categories / Carolyn Epple -- M. Dragonfly : two-spirit and the Tafoya Principle of Uncertainty / Terry Tafoya (Taos/Warm Springs) -- I am a Lakota womyn / Beverly Little Thunder (Standing Rock Lakota) -- Traditional influences on a contemporary gay-identified Sisseton Dakota / Michael Red Earth (Sisseton Dakota) -- A postcolonial colonial perspective on Western [mis]conceptions of the cosmos and the restoration of indigenous taxonomies / Anguksuar [Richard LaFortune](Yupík) -- Navajo warrior women : an ancient tradition in a modern world / Carrie H. House (Navajo/Oneida) -- I ask you to listen to who I am / Doyle V. Robertson (Sisseton/Wahpeton Dakota) -- A "berdache" by any other name-- is a brother, friend, lover, spouse : reflections on a Mescalero Apache singer of ceremonies / Claire R. Farrer -- Gender statuses, gender features, and gender/sex categories : new perspectives on an old paradigm / Lee M. Kochems and Sue-Ellen Jacobs -- On the incommensurability of gender categories / Alice B. Kehoe -- You anthropologists make sure you get your words right / Clyde M. Hall (Lemhi Shoshoni) -- The dilemmas of desire : from "berdache" to two-spirit / Gilbert Herdt -- Native American genders and sexualities : beyond anthropological models and misrepresentations / Evelyn Blackwood -- Dealing with homophobia in everyday life.