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Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in by Brian Joseph Gilley PDF

By Brian Joseph Gilley

ISBN-10: 0803271263

ISBN-13: 9780803271265

The Two-Spirit guy occupies a unique position in local American tradition, balancing the male and the feminine spirit whilst he attempts to combination homosexual and local id. The accompanying ambiguities of gender and tradition come into brilliant reduction within the strong and poignant Becoming Two-Spirit, the 1st ebook to take an in-depth examine modern American Indian gender variety. Drawing on a wealth of observations from interviews, oral histories, and conferences and ceremonies, Brian Joseph Gilley offers an intimate view of ways Two-Spirit males in Colorado and Oklahoma fight to redefine themselves and their groups.

The Two-Spirit males who seem in Gilley’s ebook communicate frankly of homophobia inside of their groups, a continual prejudice that's principally misunderstood or misrepresented by way of outsiders. Gilley offers unique bills of the ways that those males adjust homosexual and local id as a method of facing their alienation from tribal groups and households. With those compromises, he indicates, they build an id that demanding situations their alienation whereas even as situating themselves inside modern notions of yank Indian id. He additionally exhibits how their creativity is mirrored within the groups they construct with each other, the advance in their personal social practices, and a countrywide community of people associated of their look for self and social acceptance.

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Additional info for Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country

Example text

It is not uncommon for regional gatherings, such as those of the gcs and Denver Society, to draw 50 to 60 people of multiple tribal backgrounds who have traveled over a thousand miles. At the gatherings, people meet other people with whom they share the similar experience of being gay and Indian, but they also participate in the shaping of what it means to be Two-Spirit. Andy and others often used the Lakota term mitakuye oyasin [We are all related] in reference to Two-Spirit people. Gatherings reflect this idea because it is there that connections are made between societies and individuals that last for years.

For the most part, the Denver men enjoyed a freedom that the gcs men were less reluctant to explore within their tribal communities. This difference inevitably influences the perspective on what being Two-Spirit means, and how the men go about being Two-Spirit. Gathering One afternoon at the Oklahoma annual gathering, Andy told me that he saw such events as historical memory in the making. He went on to explain that he imagined Two-Spirit people gathered in the same way as 42 From Gay to Indian they were at that moment before the arrival of Europeans.

Denver has both a thriving Indian community and gay community, which are both large enough and diverse enough to provide varied degrees of participation. Unlike the gcs members, most Denver men lived great distances from their families and tribal homelands and reservations. This lack of access accounts for the central role the society played in the men’s spirituality and social lives. Those men who grew up in metropolitan areas – “city Indians” as people called them – were more familiar with powwow culture than they were with ceremonial culture.

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Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country by Brian Joseph Gilley


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