Alternative Gender Roles

Pathfinder #18: Sources on Alternative Gender Roles Among Native North Americans

Scope    back to top

This pathfinder is designed to guide patrons of Delaney and Reed Libraries at Fort Lewis College in researching alternative gender roles among Native Americans. Although this pathfinder does not consist of primary sources, the following is a list of databases, articles, books and websites available at FLC and beyond that may contain valuable articles and information to aid you in your research.

Its scope is limited to Native North Americans and is focused in the Southwest. The sources investigate both historic and contemporary views, lifestyles, societal roles and contemporary fiction. An important note is that in contrast to Western culture, Native American cultures and languages did not historically have distinguishing terms between gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT) persons. For this reason, many of the sources on this list address sexual orientation as well as gender role alternatives, although the focus is primarily on transgender persons.

It is also important to note the use of terms within published materials other than transgender used to describe alternative gendered Native American persons. Two key terms that are used are two-spirit and berdache. Many of the resources listed address the controversial use and origin of the anthropological term berdache. Two-spirit is the often preferred culturally sensitive term that references the traditional role a GLBT individual would have assumed among their tribe prior to colonization. This pathfinder uses both terms according to their usage in the discussed source.

Key Terms    back to top

Key Library of Congress Subject Headings
Berdaches--North America.
Indians--Sexual behavior.
Indians of North America--Sexual behavior.
Sex role--Cross-cultural studies.
Transvestism--Cross-cultural studies.
Two-spirit people--America.
Zuni Indians--Sexual behavior.

Keyword Search Terms
alternative gender
berdache
fourth gender
hova (Hopi)
lhamana (Zuñi)
nádleehí (Navajo)
third gender
tozusuhzooch (Ute)
transgender
two-spirit

Historically Significant Two-Spirit Individuals
Hastíín Klah (Navajo)
Osh-Tisch (Crow)
We'wha (Zuñi)

Key Databases    back to top

Please note you must be a current student to log into these databases.

AnthroSource
Search tip: use the Advanced Search option to search for varying combinations of words or exact phrases. The database will automatically search for words similar to the ones you specify, for example a search for two-spirit will also search for two spirit or two-spirited. Please note that most databases will not automatically search for similar words.

Ethnic NewsWatch
Search tip: use the Topic search option to search for pre-defined topics, such as Native North Americans, Transgendered persons and Gender identity. These topics can be combined using the Boolean AND operator to narrow results.

JSTOR
Search tip: use the Browse tab to see a list of journals by discipline, such as American Indian Studies and Anthropology. The database allows you to limit your search within a specific journal or by discipline.

PyschInfo
Search tip: use the Thesaurus feature to look-up pre-defined subjects to enhance your searching. For example, the thesaurus will let you know that the database indexes articles under the term American Indians rather than Native Americans and Transsexualism instead of Transgendered.

Websites    back to top

The following websites belong to various two-spirit societies united by their struggle to restore the role of two-spirited people in Native American communities. The organizations pursue this goal by providing support for GLBT Native Americans, community outreach and education for Native and non-native communities and by providing a forum for social change and community building. The websites are a resource for recent news, upcoming events, meeting logs, newsletters, photo galleries, links to multimedia resources, news and writings:

The Two-Spirit Society of Denver
NativeOUT
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits
NorthEast Two-Spirit Society

The Fred Martinez Project is a website dedicated to memorializing the death of two-spirit Navajo Fred Martinez who was murdered in Cortez, Colorado. The site discusses and give s a preview of a documentary film about Fred’s life, lists outreach partners, and offers links to resources.

Newspaper Articles     back to top

Listed chronologically, most recent first.

Watson, J. (2005, December 22). The Crying Game; Despite a celebrated history, Native American transgenders struggle in the modern world. Phoenix New Times, 32 (208). Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This article discusses the limited choices, discrimination and violence suffered by Arizona transgender Natives and the passage of the Dine Marriage Act, which barred same-sex marriage within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation. It also highlights the positive contributions of the Native American Pathways Prevention Project, which educates local tribes and promotes tolerance of transgender people, and fundraisers such as the Miss Native American Transgender Beauty Pageant.

Barrett, J. (2001, October 9). Getting along in Cortez. The Advocate, 848, 26. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This article details the aftermath of the death of nádleehí Navajo Fred Martinez Jr. of Cortez, Colorado. It describes the pre-existing tensions between Natives and non-natives and examines the small town’s misunderstanding of transgender individuals.

Florio, G. (2001, July 22). Tribes had role for gay Indians Navajo teen's death highlights new bias. Denver Post, B.01. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This article discusses the understanding that indigenous people of North America have of diversity in gender and touches on the roots of discrimination against two-spirit persons. It also asserts that the term two-spirit is a recent coinage and that organizations to support these individuals were not necessary in Native culture until contemporary times.

George-Kanentiio, D. (1998, November 30). Among American Indians a third gender. News from Indian Country, Vol. XII (22), 5B. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This article discusses the fluidity of gender diversity that was accepted as a natural state in pre-Christian Native American society.

Scholarly Journal Articles    back to top

Listed chronologically, most recent first.

Gilden, A. (2007). Preserving the seeds of gender fluidity: Tribal courts and the berdache tradition. Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, 13 (2), 237-273. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This article compares Native American and Euro-American gender systems. It discusses early encounters with Europeans and the cultural and physical subjugation of Native Americans as the force that eroded a fluid conception of gender. The rise of sovereign tribal courts after the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 is noted as a chance for reintroducing and preserving traditional notions of gender that were lost due to colonial assimilation.

Holmes, M. (2004). Locating third sexes. Transformations Journal, 8. A theoretical article that explodes the dichotomy of male/female gender roles and distinguishes between the recognition of a third gender and the valuing of individuals who are neither male nor female. The author interprets the berdache as a liminal state between male and female and critiques the major works on Native American two-spirit people by respected authorities on the subject including Roscoe, Herdt, Weston, Trexler and Epple.

Thomas, W. & Jacobs, S. (1999). "... And we are still here": From berdache to two-spirit people. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 23 (2), 91-107. Available in the print periodical collection at Reed Library. This article, written by two of the field’s prominent researchers, makes the case for replacing the term berdache with two-spirit. It explains the origin of the word berdache and its literal translation as meaning "kept boy" or "prostitute," as well as its use by anthropologists to describe multiple gender systems in Native North America since the 1500s.

Epple, C. (1998). Coming to terms with Navajo nádleehí: A critique of berdache, "gay," "alternate gender," and "two-spirit." American Ethnologist, 25 (2), 267-290. Available in the AnthroSource database. This article assesses the categories of berdache, alternate gender, gay, and two-spirit and discusses their relevance to the Navajo construction of the alternate gender known as nádleehí. The author sheds light on the terms’ usage in response to political and historical events and their collective inability to accommodate the distinctness and fluidity of the term nádleehí.

Prince-Hughes, T. (1998). Contemporary two-spirit identity in the fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant. Studies in American Indian Literature, 10 (2), 9-31. The author discusses the fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant, whose works investigate the complexities of two-spirit and culturally-mixed ancestry identity as central issues for the protagonists.

Callender, C. & Kochems, L. (1983). The North American berdache. Current Anthropology, 24 (4), 443-470. Available in the JSTOR database. This scholarly article is a broad account of the history of the North American berdache including the definition of the term, interpretations by European observers, models of becoming berdache, berdache social status, occupation, sexual orientation and prevalence. Responses by 15 respected scholars are included at the conclusion of the article.

Angelino, H. & Shedd, C. (1955). A note on berdache. American Anthropologist, 57, 121-125. Available in the JSTOR and AnthroSource databases. This mid-twentieth century article was one of the first published that addresses the need to further study and document the gender fluidity of the North American berdache. The article details prior correlation of berdaches to transvestites and asserts that the social role of berdache reaches beyond cross-dressing. It also includes an etymological investigation of the word berdache.

Dissertations & Theses    back to top

Listed chronologically, most recent first.

Hemmilä, A. (2005). Ancestors of two-spirits: Representations of Native American third gender males in historical documentation. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä. This in-depth thesis asserts that historical representations and observations of Native American third genders are colored by the social practices of their time and place and Western biases of the European authors. It uses a method known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine contradictions in the attitudes of these early accounts. This thesis focuses on third gender males only and is an excellent review of prior writings regarding Native American third genders.

Basaldu, R. (1999). Hopi hova: Anthropological assumptions of gendered otherness in Native American societies. Phoenix: The University of Arizona. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. This thesis explores the meanings of the terms homosexual, berdache and transvestite in relation to understanding the Hopi word hova. Related terms such as the Navajo nádleehí and the Zuñi lhamana are also analyzed for cross-cultural purposes. The author asserts that the current anthropological literature is inadequate in understanding Hopi hova and calls for future research in the field.

Epple, C. (1994). Inseparable and distinct: An understanding of Navajo nádleehí in a traditional Navajo worldview. (Vols. 1-2). Chicago: Northwestern University. Available in the Ethnic NewsWatch database. The dissertation discusses the Navajo nádleehí in the culturally-relevant context of the Navajo worldview. Examining these individuals in this context reveals limitations in previous works which present the berdache from a worldview that includes only two categories of gender. The paper is based on interviews the author conducted with Navajo individuals, including sixteen Navajo nádleehí and three Navajo with expertise in traditional culture.

Books & Chapters in Edited Books    back to top

Listed chronologically, most recent first.

Williams, W. & Johnson, T. (2006). Two spirits: A story of life with the Navajo. Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe Press. Available through ILL from Rangeview Library District in Thornton, Colorado. This award-winning work of historical fiction is co-written by anthropologist Walter Williams and novelist Toby Johnson. The story revolves around the love affair between an Anglo male and a Navajo nádleehí and the plot follows the reality of what actually happened to the Navajo Nation in the 1860s and the forced Long Walk.
LC Call#: PS3623.I5664 T89 2006

Elledge, J. (Ed.). (2002). Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender myths from the Arapaho to the Zuñi: An anthology. New York: Peter Lang. Available in Prospector. A collection of GLBT tales of Native North America that provides visual proof of the myths and verifies that there were tribes that accepted a range of gender diversity before colonization.
LC Call#: E98.R3 G38 2002

Medicine, B. (2002). Directions in gender research in American Indian societies: Two-spirits and other categories. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Unit 3, Chapter 2). Bellingham, Washington: Western Washington University. An examination of the term berdache and the emergence of the all encompassing term two-spirit in relation to indigenous social role categories that represent third and fourth gender persons. The author focuses on Lakota terminologies that signify aspects of gender identity and the homophobia emerging in some Native North American communities.

Lang, S. (1998). Men as women, women as men: Changing gender in Native American cultures. Austin: University of Texas Press. Available in the Fort Lewis OPAC. This book elaborates on the gender role changes of both male and female berdache in Native American cultures. The author asserts a view of gender-mixing, represented by a combination of masculine and feminine gender statuses, rather than a view of changing from one gender to the other. A distinction is made, and supported by various references, between gender category (biological distinction) and gender status (dependant on cultural construction).
LC Call#: E98.S48 L3613 1998

Roscoe, W. (1998). Changing ones: third and fourth genders in Native North America. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Press. Available in Prospector. This book, written by an authoritative expert of the field, thoroughly accounts for the past of gender diversity in Native North America and speculates on its future. In addition to detailing the lives of notable berdache figures, such as Hastíín Klah (Navajo) and Osh-Tisch (Crow), the author also discusses alternate identities and genders available to Native American women, provides a bibliography of Native GLBT literature and a tribal index that indicates which tribes identified specific alternate gender roles.
LC Call#: E98.S48 R67 1998

Brown, L. (1997). Two spirit people: American Indian, lesbian women and gay men. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press. Available in Prospector. Despite its non-inclusive title regarding transgender individuals, the book discusses six gender styles in traditional Native American culture: men and women, not-men and not-women (defined as persons of one biological sex assuming the identity of another sex in some form), and gays and lesbians. The book goes further in identifying gender alternatives to discussing social services for urban GLBT Native Americans, the implications of Native American GLBT literature and AIDS prevention and services for this community.
LC Call#: E98.S48 T84 1997

Carocci, M. (1997). The berdache as metahistorical reference for the urban gay Indian community. In M. Mauzé (Ed.), Present is past: Some uses of tradition in native societies (Chapter 8). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Available in Prospector. Although this chapter has not been examined, it is included in this pathfinder because it could have potentially useful information for researchers seeking information specifically on the urban GLBT Native American community.
LC Call#: E98.S7 P74 1997

Jacobs, S., Thomas, W., & Lang, S. (Eds.). (1997). Two-spirit people: Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Available in the Fort Lewis OPAC. This landmark book contains authoritative and influential papers by anthropologists that explore gender and sexuality issues as they relate to lesbian, gay, transgendered and other "marked" Native Americans that were presented at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meeting entitled "Revisiting the 'North American Berdache' Empirically and Theoretically." It includes Is the "North American Berdache" Merely a Phantom in the Imagination of Western Social Scientists? by Sue-Ellen Jacobs and A Navajo Worldview and Nádleehí: Implications for Western Categories by Carolyn Epple. The book represents two-spirit people as those whose behaviors or beliefs are interpreted by others as uncharacteristic of their sex and includes an intimate look at the life stories of two-spirit people.
LC Call#: E98.S48 T86 1997

Trexler, R. (1995). Sex and conquest: Gendered violence, political order, and the European conquest of the Americas. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Available in the Fort Lewis OPAC. This book analyzes early European writings, mostly of Spanish conquest, and aims to provide a historical context based on age, politics, and economics in the analysis of the ontogeny of the berdache. Its perspective is from the early observations of Europeans who viewed the berdache as feminized and sexually dominated. This perspective has considerable weight in understanding the historical literature on transgender Native Americans, but Native cultural systems and gender roles essential for effective cross-cultural analysis are largely absent from the text.
LC Call#: HQ18.S7 T74 1995

Roscoe, W. (1991). The Zuñi man-woman. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Available in the Fort Lewis OPAC. This book describes the life of We’wha, the famous Zuñi lhamana who lived from 1849-1896. The author establishes We’wha as perhaps the most well-known berdache who visited Washington D.C. and shook the hand of the president. In addition, the book attempts to clarify the anthropological research of the berdache and presents We’wha as a role model for contemporary GLBT Natives.
LC Call#: E99.Z9 R78 1991

Williams, W. (1986). The spirit and the flesh: Sexual diversity in American Indian culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Available in the Fort Lewis OPAC. This book is a comprehensive survey by authoritative anthropologist Walter Williams on the sexual and gender diversity of Native North America. It attempts to arrive at an understanding of the character and social status of the berdache before colonization and the changes in the berdache tradition after the arrival of Europeans. The book is notable because it includes a chapter on female gender variance, of which there is significantly less research.
LC Call#: E98.S48 W55 1986