My recent viewing of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues and recent talk with a transgender Kutztown University graduate sparked my interest for something greater. Of course, Native American life is always in the back of my mind, therefore I wanted to do some research on this topic within the Indigenous community. As I sift through files upon files of the Standing Rock Syllabus, I came across some articles on gender. Gender is something I am also deeply interested in studying and therefore I decided to collaborate on these issues.
In American society, we have many classifications of gender. I think the terms we use today are still new to many people, but it’s becoming more of a commonality, which is amazing progress from where we were just a few years back. This isn’t to say we don’t still face issues because every step forward, there are two steps back. Although we are still learning about our own society, I think it’s so interesting to look at these terms in Native life.
Two Spirit is a term greatly used and known within Native American culture. In the 1990s this term was created to replace the Native word berdache, which was used to name Indigenous transgender individuals. In a piece written by âpihtawikosisân—she says, “The term was deliberately chosen to be an umbrella term, a specifically pan-Indian concept encompassing sexual, gender and/or spiritual identity” which displays this notion pretty well I think. I like that the Two Spirit term was created for those who can relate to what âpihtawikosisân says because it gives more Natives the space to be who they truly want to be. They don’t need to be confined in a term that doesn’t describe them or the things they feel. They have this freedom and I believe this is what is most important in life.
The topic of gender terms was really brought to my attention more so recently than in the past and I think it’s crucial to not only understand these terms within our own society, but to recognize that in other societies there are other terms that give people the space to be themselves. We should never take this away from an individual no matter the case.