American Indian Gay/Lesbian Topics
Books:
Brown, Lester. Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women and Gay Men. Haworth
Press, 1997.
In Two Spirit People Brown seeks to understand the unique place that American Indian
lesbian women and gay men have in American society. The author presents new views of
a gay, lesbian, and bisexual Indians through the lens of American Indian spirituality.
Deschamps, Gilbert. We are Part of a Tradition: a Guide on Two-Spirited People for First
Nations Communities. Toronto: 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations, 1998.
Driskill, Qwo-Li, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley, Scott Lauria Morgensen, eds. Queer
Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Polotics, and Literature. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 2011
“This book is an imagining.” So begins this collection examining critical, Indigenouscentered approaches to understanding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and
Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) lives and communities and the creative implications of queer
theory in Native studies. This book is not so much a manifesto as it is a dialogue—a
“writing in conversation”—among a luminous group of scholar-activists revisiting the
history of gay and lesbian studies in Indigenous communities while forging a path for
Indigenouscentered theories and methodologies.” –From the Press
Gilley, Brian Joseph. Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian
Country. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Becoming Two Spirit is a sociological insight into Native gay culture and identity, with
an emphasis on the problems and difficulties of being gay and American Indian. Gilley
uses oral histories and interviews for an in-depth understanding of how Indian gay men
shape their identity, and confront continual misrepresentations and prejudices.
Horswell, Michael J. Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean
Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Horswell provides a fascinating insight into pre-Hispanic Andean culture by exploring
notions of gender identity and the use of symbolic ritualistic ceremonies, which involved
cross-dressed men creating an androgynous third gender. Decolonizing the Sodomite is
primarily focused on the Spanish colonizers which enforced their views of sexuality on
the Andean people.
Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang, eds. Two-Spirit People: Native American
Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
This is a series of essays written by anthropologists seeking to deal with their field’s
inability to properly investigate the gay, lesbian, transsexual, and transgendered
American Indians. The essayists consist of Indians and non-Indians attempting to
deconstruct sexual identity within Indian society.
Lang, Sabine. Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures.
Translated by John L. Vantine. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Men as Women, Women as Men looks at the role of the “berdache” in several North
American Native cultures. Lang explores the roles of womanly men and manly-women in
Native cultures, how the gender-role change was made, and what place these individuals
had in secular, spiritual, and mythology of the different Native cultures.
Rifkin, Mark. When did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, The History of Sexuality, and Native
Sovereignty. Oxford University Press, 2010.
“When Did Indians Become Straight? explores the complex relationship between
contested U.S. notions of normality and shifting forms of Native American governance
and self-representation. Examining a wide range of texts (including captivity narratives,
fiction, government documents, and anthropological tracts), Mark Rifkin offers a cultural
and literary history of the ways Native peoples have been inserted into Euramerican
discourses of sexuality and how Native intellectuals have sought to reaffirm their peoples'
sovereignty and self-determination. [This is the] first study to combine queer theory and
Native studies in ways not focused on 'two-spirit' or 'third gender'.” – From the Press
Roscoe, Will. Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1998.
This is a theoretically and historically based work that explores alternative gender
construction within Native North American cultures. Roscoe examines the role of
“berdaches” in historical records and reviews contemporary gay Indian issues.
_____, ed. Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1988.
“Joining a reclaimed past to a vibrant present, this work provides a broad view of male
and female homosexuality in Native American cultural history through anthropological
reports, biography, mission records, photographs, oral literature, diaries, interviews,
essays, autobiographical excerpts, poems, and selections from novels.” --excerpt from
Library Journal
_____. The Zuni Man-Woman. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
“This book focuses on the life of We'wha, perhaps the most famous berdache (an
individual who combined the work and traits of both men and women) in American
history. Through We'wha's exceptional life, historian Will Roscoe creates a vivid picture
of an alternative gender role whose history has been hidden and almost forgotten.” -From the Publisher
Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European
Conquest. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995.
“A historical account of the berdache--biological men who performed the offices and
work of women, including sexual service--in Europe and America at the time of the
Conquest. Trexler examines the sexual culture of both early modern Iberia and the native
American world of that era.” --Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
A study of the berdache culture of Native Americans. Williams examines the customs
and social roles that the berdache had throughout many North American Native cultures.
Williams also explores the impact that contact with Europeans had on Native views of
sexuality.
Indian Gay/Lesbian Topics
Articles:
Gutierrez, Ramon. “Deracinating Indians in Search of Gay Roots: A Response to Will Roscoe's
‘The Zuni Man-Woman’.” Out/Look 1: 4 (1989): 61- 7.
Pilling, Arnold R. “Northwest California Indian Gender Classes: ‘Those who could not marry,’
‘Those men who have never been near a woman,’ and ‘Women who do men's things’.” Society
of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Newsletter 14: 2 (1992): 15- 23.
Towle, Evan B. “Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the ‘Third Gender’
Concept.”GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8: 4 (2002) 469- 97.
Updated by: Meaghan Heisinger, 2011
Originally Compiled by: Monica Butler, 2008
Originally Annotated by: Cody Marshall, 2008