American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Since the early 1990s, two-spirit people from a variety of tribal backgrounds have been coming together for social and spiritual meetings. Two-spirit, a term adopted by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Natives, represents an emerging new interpretation of “traditional” Indian identity. Like most mainstream Indian events and ceremonies, two-spirit gatherings emphasize Native traditions, cultural participation, and personal survival. Gatherings offer a way to maintain friendships, find other “Indians like them,” and gain access to cultural experiences that are not available within their tribal communities because of homophobia. Two-spirit gatherings provide a place for the assertion of two-spirit identity within supportive spiritual and social contexts. By transcending contemporary mainstream Native ideological regulations on sexual identity and gender roles, the two-spirit gathering emphasizes the self-acceptance and the gender diversity that were historically a part of American Indian culture. During these events, men mix gender roles by dressing in women’s dance regalia and taking on female ceremonial and social roles. Gatherings not only create an alternative to the masculinized and hetero-focused social structure of tribal and Native American society but also provide a place for two-spirit persons to assume the role of cultural participant. In this article, I examine the ways in which men in the Green Country Two-Spirit Society of Oklahoma use the annual gathering to compensate for the lack of opportunities to express sexual identity and gender difference within mainstream Native cultural contexts. I also explore how the gatherings reveal two-spirit identity as a compromise of one’s sexual, gender, and racial identities. First, I will discuss the development of two-spirit identities, societies, and gatherings. Second, I will look at the manner in which two-spirit gatherings draw on Native cultural traditions. Two-spirit men have developed alternative communal spaces in which to express both their indigenous and their sexual and gender identities. The cultural practices of gatherings represent the crossing of established boundaries, as well as the reconfiguring of what it means to participate in traditional Native practices. Two-spirit gatherings also illustrate the complex role played by sexual and gender identity in the shaping of social identities in public contexts.