Reclaiming Two-Spirits

Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America

De: Gregory Smithers, Raven E. Heavy Runner - foreword

Narrado por: Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Winner of the 2023 Prose Award in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology

Finalist for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.

Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.

Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed—and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

©2022 Gregory D. Smithers and Raven E. Heavy Runner (P)2022 Beacon Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Provid[es] deeper insight into the experiences, cultures, and futures of Two-Spirit communities.”
—Foreword Reviews

"Smithers' book contains a great many citations and tackles that mythology head-on, as it relates to the roles of Two-Spirit persons in the histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. But Smithers...goes much further, elaborating on the term "Two-Spirit" itself." —Bay Area Reporter

“…a carefully documented work in tune with the tremendous resilience, creativity, and community-building of LGBT Native Americans in overcoming centuries of European persecution, misinterpretation, and appropriation of Indigenous cultures in general and Native sexual and gender diversity in particular.” —The Gay & Lesbian Review

Earth-Shaking

"Reclaiming Two-Spirits" revealed the history of gender-fluid, non-binary peoples and tribes in the Americas. It changed the way I view myself, queerness, and Two-Spirit people. I loved the stories and how they filled in broad gaps in my knowledge. The award-winning "Reclaiming Two-Spirits" is one of the year's best non-fiction books.