MLM indigenous love for pride month. 

Since it's disability pride month and yesterday was burn the American flag day, I just wanna give a shout out to all the native Americans like me who, despite wanting to, cannot keep their hair long because of bad sensory issues.

You are not less native than those who can grow their hair long.

Your ancestors love and understand why you cut your hair.

You are not required to follow traditions you cannot participate in due to your sensory issues.

Having short hair is not a "white thing" or " disrespectful towards the great spirit and our ancestors".

Your hair can look, feel and be as long or as short as you want and you are still just as beloved by your ancestors.

White people can rb but don't clown with info about tribes you had to google.

my 2s repost the links should lead to archive links <3

Hi I want to apologize for taking so long to respond, I wanted to get my thoughts together, to answer this properly. This’ll be long.

First, it is important that I define to you what exactly I know and see two-spirit as/to be. I’ll start with the definition from wikipedia: “Two-spirit (also two spirit, 2S or, occasionally, twospirited) is a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial and social role in their cultures.”

What I know the usage of the term two-spirit to be, yes, it is quite an umbrella term. I find it used all over Canada and America by Indigenous youth who identify as trans, AND by those who are LGB. As it is in usage now, it seems to just be the catch-all for any GNC or LGB indigenous kid. A label. And although I do think it’s wonderful for any LGB or T-identified or gender non-conforming Indigenous child to find a label that makes themselves comfortable and makes it easier to find others who have the same life experiences, I also think it’s wrong.

The intention of Two-spirit is meant, as we see in the wiki definition, as a catch-all describer of “traditional third-gender, ceremonial and social role in their cultures” for anybody who is North American indigenous. Anon I’m sure you know already but for those that don’t, our roles, typically, are heavily appointed by Elders. You don’t just identify yourself into performing traditions, you are appointed it by elders, or else you ask for their, for lack of better word, blessing. But… you’d be hard pressed to find much of our culture that does this for a “third gender” or “two spirit”.

I can’t speak for every indigenous culture as I was raised mainly into the Cree part of my family and not the Saulteaux/Oji-Cree, but in Cree culture the word of our Elders is sacred. Oral history is how we learn of our culture, in part because we were hit hard in the Canadian genocide of First Nations. I can very safely say, out of all the things I learned from my elders, the only thing I ever had to “teach” them was what Two-spirit meant and what a third-gender is. Because they didn’t know. They could tell me what life was like before they were taken away from the reservation, they could tell me tales of creatures, of Wendigo and Little People, they could tell me and teach me what is sacred to us, what our roles as male and female are, but they couldn’t tell me what Two-spirit is. I had to learn that from the white man. Why is that? Well… possibly because it’s not a thing. It’s not sacred. It isn’t part of the history.

And even if it is in any subset of our cultures, all these kids and indigenous youth who use 2S to identify themselves? They were not appointed the term by elders, they label it themselves.

I think it is important to note here that “Two-spirit” itself was a term first (as we know so far according to Wikipedia, so take that as you will) founded and pushed out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which is Treaty 1 territory, home to Anishinaabe. I am not a part of this territory (although I have Elder family members who are from Sandy Bay, who I can confirm also do not know of two-spirit) but one quick search of “anishinaabe third gender” will even only bring up modern day Two-spirit ideas, and the coining of the term in 1990. Same with any search for “(nation) third gender.” I have had a very lovely Anishinaabe anon in the past, and she has also vented her frustration at the use of the term, especially as an umbrella term for any Indigenous kid who is LGB or T, so I do take some assumption there from her that it is also not much of a thing in Ojibwe culture or any of the other Anishinaabe cultures.

What’s most important, and why I oppose it so much (other than the fact that it’s just, as I see, straight up a white man-made concept) is that the term “two-spirit” was created to replace other, more offensive words.

It’s main replacement is for “berdache”, a white (French) word, used against male Indigenous men, particularly homosexual Indigenous men. It is a slur. “Male berdaches did women’s work, cross-dressed or combined male and female clothing, and formed relationships with non-berdache men.”

It is, also, meant sometimes to replace the word, Winkte, or winyanktehca. Lakota meaning ‘wants to be like a woman’. Particularly used against, again, homosexual Lakota men.

It is, also, sometimes used as a replacement for Nádleehi, which was/is used in Diné culture as a word for effeminate males. Particularly used against, you guessed it, homosexual Diné men.

Now, to me, I think it is pretty plain to see that this is a term meant to replace some of our more homophobic terms used in Indigenous communities. But replacing homophobic terms with new ones doesn’t make it any less homophobic. These terms were meant to other homosexual indigenous men, and they were also used by white people. For us to, in this day and age when our culture is shifting to a less homophobic one, use the term two-spirit to continue to other LGB indigenous people? That’s not right to me. There was no reclamation of any of these terms, there was just a white replacement word that doesn’t sound as bad. But it still means the same thing. It’s still as white as a Frenchman calling a gay Indigenous man berdache.

I could keep going on and on, especially about how it is used in current day culture by indigenous youth as a special label, and how none of the people using it seem to actually have talked to their elders about it, but really my biggest problem with it is just how extremely homophobic it is. And how white people use it as “proof” that transgenderism has “always existed” when those same white people don’t even bother to fucking listen when some of us scream at them how wrong they are. And then I could keep going on screaming about how it’s been shoehorned as an acronym onto Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women which is so fucking disrespectful.

I noticed that there was a lack of two-spirit pride designs in the ACNH tag (that i could find anyways), so I made some myself! I don't usually design things but i spent a lot of time on these, hope y'all enjoy them ^^

Creator ID: MA-5823-0272-7127

Indigenous / Native Intersex

for any natives who are intersex. This is exclusive to natives. Please credit if using !

id: an indigenous intersex flag. the colours from top to bottom are dark red, a less darker red, red, white, light green, green, dark green. there's an orange circle in the middle of it /end id

LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History—chapter 09. Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands by Will Roscoe. (final)

Two Spirits Today: Renewal and Change

The section starts and continues by discussing two-spirit activism and cultural renewal being fostered by two-spirits and lgbtq native people. One such event is the intertribal powwows such as the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits Powow which in 2015, drew over 2,000 attendees (09-12). Attendees were asked to define two-spirit, the answers varied; “two spirit means being born with a male and a female spirit”, while another said that the term is “more of a historical reminder that before colonization all of our tribes had multiple genders” (09-12)

Two Spirits in the History of the United States

The author then tells us about four individuals who by our modern standards would be considered two-spirit, all of whom led incredibly fascinating lives. Most of them faced violence and prejudice in their lives. And this remains true for two-spirits today—the author mentions a young two-spirit Navajo named Fred Martinez Jr. who had been bullied and was murdered in a hate crime in 2001.

(Rest in Power, relative...)

Conclusion: History Matters

“Two-spirit/LGBTQ history not only challenges stereotypes and transforms prejudice, it provides the path to self-esteem, empowerment, and community for two-spirit-LGBTQ native people, while the stories of two-spirit males and females in American history teach us all about sexual and gender diversity and the ways in which these differences make distinctive cultural and historical contributions” (09-29)

honoring leslie feinberg also means listening to queercrips by the way. stop burying disabled people, we should fucking know this by now.

Deep blue sea by Taz !

http://ffnd.co/DjbfS3 I need help with top surgery. Please reblog to help support my journey so I can show up for the youth and be a good ancestor!

Putting this here to not derail the other post, but that post about queer goyim using Jewish activism and teachings but not caring about Jewish people reminds me how I feel about some of the people who use 2Spirit without understanding what it means.

I see a lot of non-indigenous people use 2S in arguments about trans history, which is cool to me! I love having Indigenous history and culture recognized, especially pre-contact traditions and knowledge that highlights how different Indigenous is from Euro culture (atleast back then). But it leaves such a bad taste in my mouth when non-Indigenous people use it then don’t care and don’t listen to Indigenous people. This isn’t saying don’t use it in those arguments, I use it myself, but if you don’t care about Indigenous people and culture and don’t want to listen to us about it, don’t cherry pick it and misrepresent us and the term itself.

A misconception I see about 2 Spirit people is 1) applying it to all tribes. We are not a monolith, many tribes historically didn’t have 2 Spirit people, and there is a lot of diversity of the 2 Spirit people who did and do exist. The way each tribe views and interacts with gender is unique and deserves to exist on its own. The diversity of language families alone makes it impossible for the same words and meanings to be shared across all Indigenous people.

2) 2 Spirit is an umbrella term and doesn’t exclusively mean third gender/ multi-gender/ transgender. Those people are absolutely part of 2 Spirit, but 2 Spirit is an umbrella term, and a relatively new one at that (not a new concept however). 2 Spirit, simply put, means any pan-Indigenous identity that did not fit into the colonizers world and was tried to be erased through assimilation. This includes cis gay people. It was coined in the 1990 by the Inter-Tribal Native American Lesbian and Gay Conference to be a very broad, pan-Indigenous term that connects many First Nation people in a cultural way, sometimes even needing protection from other Indigenous people. A huge part of it has always been rejecting the Western binary of two genders, but spirituality and sexuality are an incredibly important part of it too. 

Part 2 for the indigenous love series

being mixed indigenous sucks sometimes lol i hate being so disconnected from my culture. ugh

i was trying to look into resources for potawatomi third genders / two-spirit but it's hard to find reliable ones and even harder to find ones from two-spirit people themselves. i've seen terms like m'netokwe mentioned before that might appeal to me but there's hardly any extensive resources on them out there

Two Spirit pride sweater addition!

I've added a new design to my batch of two-spirit sweaters- the medicine wheel colors!

I've also adjusted/fixed a few of the original designs since posting, so feel free to check them out again! <3

Link to original sweaters listing HERE

Creator ID: MA-5823-0272-7127

Been a while, hello 🖤