News and Events => People news => Topic started by: Shana A on October 11, 2010, 09:26:15 AM Return to Full Version
Title: The 'two-spirit' people of indigenous North Americans
Post by: Shana A on October 11, 2010, 09:26:15 AM
Post by: Shana A on October 11, 2010, 09:26:15 AM
The 'two-spirit' people of indigenous North Americans
This week's guest editor, Antony Hegarty, is a fan of the book The Spirit and the Flesh. He asked its author, Walter L Williams, to write a feature for guardian.co.uk/music on the 'two-spirit' tradition in Native American culture
* Walter L Williams
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010 12.28 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/11/two-spirit-people-north-america (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/11/two-spirit-people-north-america)
Native Americans have often held intersex, androgynous people, feminine males and masculine females in high respect. The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend. Because these androgynous males were commonly married to a masculine man, or had sex with men, and the masculine females had feminine women as wives, the term berdache had a clear homosexual connotation. Both the Spanish settlers in Latin America and the English colonists in North America condemned them as "sodomites".
Rather than emphasising the homosexuality of these persons, however, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts.
This week's guest editor, Antony Hegarty, is a fan of the book The Spirit and the Flesh. He asked its author, Walter L Williams, to write a feature for guardian.co.uk/music on the 'two-spirit' tradition in Native American culture
* Walter L Williams
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010 12.28 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/11/two-spirit-people-north-america (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/11/two-spirit-people-north-america)
Native Americans have often held intersex, androgynous people, feminine males and masculine females in high respect. The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend. Because these androgynous males were commonly married to a masculine man, or had sex with men, and the masculine females had feminine women as wives, the term berdache had a clear homosexual connotation. Both the Spanish settlers in Latin America and the English colonists in North America condemned them as "sodomites".
Rather than emphasising the homosexuality of these persons, however, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts.