BUILDING BRIDGES AND BREAKING THE GENDER BINARY: INDIGENOUS, TWO-SPIRITIDENTITIES

It all begins with smudging. Before entering ceremony, the tradition of smudging in Indigenous and Native communities is a form of purifying or cleansing yourself with sacred herbs and preparing your heart for connection. David Maes, who lives here in Colorado, is an elder in the Native community, and with the guidance of medicine man, revered community member, and Caddo/Comanche elder Thompson Williams, based out of Oklahoma, is preparing for a Talking Circle. The purpose of the Talking Circle on this evening is to provide a safe and comfortable space for four Indigenous, Two Spirit individuals while honoring the spiritual format of group discussion. By exploring what this identity means to each individual, we will discover how incredibly unique and interestingly universal their experiences are.

Yet, before entering the virtual Talking Circle, each person takes a moment to cleanse away stressful energy, release any stored negativity, and set intention for this sacred space. Traditions and ceremonies are the spiritual foundation within Native and Indigenous cultures; that is what creation stories, societal norms, and entire belief systems are based upon. While every community approaches the nature of ceremony in varying ways from their own spiritual leaders, the traditions honor space, time, and presence of being. First and foremost, the expectation is that of respect. No crosstalk was permitted in this Talking Circle, and there was no scheduled end. Those in the circle tenderly share whatever they feel called to speak about in the moment, and every voice is upheld and valued. Being led by their hearts, their minds are free to wander through stories and experiences freely as they share stories and effortlessly relate back to the topic at hand. It is unrushed, graceful, unifying, and humbling. Myself and OUT FRONT editor Addison Herron-Wheeler were invited into this particular Talking Circle as an extremely generous gift of education on the topic of Two Spirit and LGBTQ identities within Native communities. Through video conferencing, the seven of us engaged in the cherished tradition as a way of honoring their voices and providing a platform for them all to represent their own truths. Elder Williams begins the conversation by explaining to us his allyship with the Two Spirit Society and how it began during his time here in Denver during Pride when Williams was asked to perform a prayer. “One of the things I wanted to make sure we did was to have a prayer for individuals in the society so that they knew they were always in my heart, and they are in the hearts of people in the community,” he explains. Then leading us through a prayer for understanding and guidance through the

conversation, this is a divine invitation to us outsiders who are taking space in their sanctified realm. From initial smudging all the way through the final prayer, the entire experience was a blessing.

TWO SPIRIT Simply defined, Two Spirit is a modern, Indigenous identity in which a person embraces both masculine and feminine spirits and genders, a fluidity through navigating the spiritual realm and cultural roles as well as a queering of gender binary. The English term ‘nonbinary’ at best may serve as a resemblance of the Two Spirit identity in Native cultures, and yet still is not close enough, as it is rooted in the colonialized concept of LGBTQ identities and less in the spiritual sense of life exploration. “In our community, we come from various, different tribes, various, different cultures, and various different offerings of life,” explains Travis Goldtooth, who goes by the name Buffalo Barbie and has earned the title of Miss Montana Two Spirit. “How you carry yourself and how you uphold yourself means a lot as a Two Spirit person because you're a medicine to the community.” Goldtooth elaborates, “Your words have power; your words have strength; your words and actions can either build a bridge or tear it down.”

The way to describe the Two Spiritness of spirituality, gender, or sexual identity is complex, intricate, and innately personal. This identity is not a universal term for every Indigenous language, nor is it how every gender-variant Native person identifies. Just as varying as those who identify within the LGBTQ community, Two-Spirit people are incredibly diverse in how they relate to and differ from one another.

“It's kind of rare between the Navajos to use the word Two Spirit because that is actually a blanket term from the Ojibwe, but that is today's terminology for our LGBT community,” Travis explains. “As Navajos, we have eight gender identifications.”

In addition to how the terminology varies between different Native and Indigenous peoples, how they embrace, understand, and express the umbrella of the Two Spirit label differs. For Goldtooth, expression of Two Spirit derives varying responses from people inside and outside of his traditional, Navajo community. Goldtooth works in construction, and while he considers himself to be masculinepresenting at work, he is often referred to as she/her by coworkers. Finding no fault through any misgendering, he in fact invites the fluid gender perception and willingly chooses not to correct people. “I’ve always been taught that (gender is) in the eye of the beholder, and when you correct the person of who you are and how they see you, then you lose a bit of your medicine, or the identity that you’re trying to be. From there on, after you have corrected the projection of how they see; then from there on, you’re supposed to carry that identity at all times within that person’s sight,” Goldtooth explains. Within the nonbinary and transgender communities, being misgendered is not only hurtful and offensive but can be retraumatizing. For some Two Spirit people, like Goldtooth, the terms used in their Native languages are much more vast and descriptive and live well outside the binary limits. Embracing the fluidity is where Goldtooth finds strength.

“You need to be aware that you are always an object to be criticized, but also you're also an object to be looked upon for directions. Even just the sight of you has so much meaning, has so much medicine, has so much empowerment,” Goldtooth says.

SPIRITUAL GIFTS As a medicine person, Williams is an admired healer and spiritual leader inside his community. In many Native and Indigenous groups, the medicine person is held with the utmost regard and respect, and so to have the blessing of the Two Spirit Society and those within it from someone as revered as Williams, that carries power. “Never allow anybody to tell you you're wrong in who you are,” Williams says during the Talking Circle. “Always look at yourself and say, ‘I am this beautiful person.’

The creator created me, so that makes me important. Each person is gifted and brings certain gifts to the world, and we have to give them a chance to express those gifts.” Alvin Chee describes that by virtue of being Two Spirit, he is able to better advocate for holistic healing practices through compassion and a greater, spiritual connectedness that drives his work. He talks of how his identity has led him to his career as an HIV medical case manager at The Grand Rapids Red Project in Michigan. “I feel that, for me, being Two Spirit, there's a responsibility to it,” Che emphasizes. “I kind of fell into that role, but it was such a wonderful, honorable role because my sacred deity is a Changing Woman. I’m already connected to this beautiful deity, and maybe I do have some sort of power to insert into the world, some sort of force that if I tried and dedicated time and energy to it, I could make some impactful change.” As a way of providing context for us who are outsiders to the well-known, Two-Spirit story of his tribe, Chee tells us of a gender war that divided the women from the men by a river. The story goes that whomever was to cross the river would be proven to be the greater sex, yet for years and years, no one crossed the river. The male and female genders used the river as a divide to stay apart with an understanding that should one gender cave to the pressure of not receiving the support of the other, then the gender that lasted the longest without caving was the greater sex. A new responsibility of those Two-Spirit individuals had developed in order to meet the needs of their sides, so there was no reason for the genders to rejoin. As time went on, however, the Two-Spirit people understood that the tribe would not continue in this way of separation, and it was then the Two Spirit people who brought these two genders back together. In a lot of ways, Che found his own Two Spirit identity in that story, as he has become more developed in his career. “I love the work that I do, and every job I’ve ever had has been one form or another advocating and helping people, those people who were underrepresented, forgotten, left out when policies were written,” he says. While Che has had familial conflict in the past due to his being gay, it is through the adversity that he finds his empowerment, his courage to advocate for others, and ultimately solidifies his belief in his own spiritual and physical gifts. “My dad, a medicine man, called me a TwoSpirit person, and he said it's needed in this world. It feels so good when someone says you're needed in the world, when the world doesn't seem like they want you there. It meant a lot to me; it kind of shaped the way I viewed the world after that,” Che reveals.

INTERSECTIONS “I realized pretty early on that somewhere inside of me spiritually there was some nonbinary-ness,” explains Tezcatli Diaz. “I'm very, very femme-forward; I claim my femininity and my womanhood with pride and dignity, but at the same time, how I present on the outside isn't in full alignment with how I feel inside.” For Diaz, who works for the youth leadership development organization Project VOYCE, her identities lie along a complex, intersectional spectrum. Identifying as a queer, Afro-Latina, Indigenous woman, and also being Mexica, a culture that does not include two-spiritness, as well as being raised with Lakota ideals, she says it is those intersections that inform how she moves through her work, through her parenting, and how she navigates the world. Unlike Che, her Two Spirit and bisexual identities were not ones that she struggled to accept about herself and express to her friends and family members. “I was probably a teenager when I realized that I didn't just like boys, and that I liked girls too, and it didn't feel like a secret to me. I didn't feel like there was a coming out that needed to happen for me,” Diaz tells the group. “There was some deep guilt after being raised in a world where queer youth are so closeted. Growing up with stories of Matthew Shepard on the news,

I just didn't understand how hard it was for folks to navigate identity and sexuality the way I understood it from the Lakota community.” Yet, Diaz says she fumbled around for a long time, not knowing how to show up in queer spaces or spiritual spaces, until she had a conversation with her deceased mother’s good friend around the time of Standing Rock. “She’s like, ‘It doesn't matter what's between your legs; it doesn't matter what is your sexual preference; it's about what's in the spirit. You're telling me that you've got these female and masculine energies, living and existing within you; that’s Two Spiritedness.’ It was like a light bulb went off.” Though each individual describes their personal connection to identifying as Two Spirit differently, a common thread begins to weave a connection through the cloth of their experiences: they are bridge-builders in their communities.

“In my life, I've always been called the mediator, the mother in the group. The one always trying to heal relationships, the one that's always trying to find connections that nobody else sees,” she explains. “I see synapses in my brain just firing and connecting things that don't off the surface seem like they make sense, but spiritually, they do for me. And so I try really hard to establish those connections.”

The shared emotion within the Two Spirit community is one of deep empathy, a connectedness to compassion in which Diaz believes to be the route in which Two Spirit folks can build those necessary bridges.

SPECIALNESS “I remember when I was a child, my mom would tell me that since the first time she held me in her arms, I was special. She would repeat that as I was growing up, and I never knew what that meant,” Maes says with reminiscence in his voice as he speaks into the small camera atop his laptop. The Talking Circle is now entering its third hour of sharing, and the intimacy; openness, and vulnerability of the group is no less powerful than it was at the smudging. The sacred stories that flow so freely from the lips of these beautiful, Two-Spirit souls transcends any barriers due to virtual communication and social distancing. “I never felt like I was in any box or in any group; I always felt like I was outside of everything,” Maes continues. “I always knew I was different, and I always felt rejected. When I heard about Two Spirit, it all came together; my whole life came together.” Feeling like he is neither spiritually male nor female, he describes himself as having more masculine energy than feminine energy, and the opportunity to have another option that incorporates more of his spiritual gender provides Maes with something that feels intrinsically authentic. “It represents my sacred center, that center of my true self, my higher self. The essence of who I am, where I'm one with creator,” he says with a sure delivery of internal peace. Admitting that identifying as queer, or anything that falls under the LGBTQ umbrella, doesn’t feel truly accurate to his experience, Two Spirit envelopes something much larger than sexual attraction or gender expression. It is down to the core and essence of who he is.

As bridge-builders, the connecting force between mediating not only the world of gender understanding but also being a conduit between Mother Nature, Father Sky, and all the creatures and spiritualities that roam the in-betweens, is as close to a “definition” of Two Spirit as we are likely to get, and we are honored to have gotten it.