Hey everyone, and welcome. Today we're going to talk about
something really fascinating. It's a part of history that
gives us a completely different way to think about gender.
A story that was almost lost but is now being brought back to
light. You know, most of us grow up
thinking there are pretty much two options, male or female.
But what if that wasn't the whole story?
What if for centuries, some cultures saw gender as something
way bigger, way more spiritual than that?
And that's where we're going to start.
Let's dive into what the term 2 spirit actually means, because
it really challenges that simple 2 box idea of gender.
So what exactly is 2 spirit? Well, it's a modern English term
that was actually created back in 1990.
It was made by native people, for Native people to describe
individuals in their communities who don't really fit into
western labels like gay or transgender.
It's kind of like an umbrella term that connects who they are
today with a really long and important history.
Let's break that down a little. At its heart, 2 Spirit describes
a person who holds both a masculine and a feminine spirit.
And this is super important. It's not about who a person is
attracted to, it's about their spiritual identity and the
special role they have in their community.
It's an identity that really only makes sense inside of
Native cultures. So what was that role?
This is where the story gets really incredible because for
many, many cultures, being 2 Spirit meant you held a place of
deep honor and respect. Get this, in hundreds of Native
nations all across North America, way before Europeans
arrived, 2 spirit people weren't just, you know, tolerated.
They were revered. They were seen as a bridge
between our world and the spirit world.
Like they had a special balance and a deeper kind of wisdom
because they held two spirits inside them and they were
absolutely essential. They were often the community's
healers and visionaries. They were matchmakers.
They were entrusted with caring for children and maybe most
importantly, with keeping the tribe, sacred traditions and
stories alive. They were woven right into the
fabric of the community. But then everything changed.
That honored place in society came under a direct and brutal
attack. This led to a history that was
very deliberately and tragically erased.
And the term that historians and Native people use to describe
what happened is intense, A cultural genocide.
When European colonizers and churches showed up, they brought
these really rigid ideas about gender and sexuality.
They saw these traditions as a threat, something that had to be
completely stamped out. I mean, the shift was just so
dramatic. For centuries, you have two
spirit people as a respected, integral part of their cultures.
Then, starting in the 1500s, this systematic effort begins to
shame, to punish, and to completely wipe out these
identities. The violence and forced
assimilation left this deep, deep wound that people are still
dealing with today. And that brings us to the
present. The fight today isn't just about
digging up old history. It's about dealing with the very
real, modern consequences of that oration.
Just think about it for a second.
When you lose generations of your own knowledge, outside
ideas start to fill in the gaps. Some of the very views that were
forced on native people, like strict gender roles and the idea
that same sex relationships are wrong, started to take root in
some communities. And this isn't some abstract
idea from the distant past. A really powerful, painful
example of this conflict happened pretty recently in
2005. So in that year, the government
of the Navajo Nation, a people with their own rich traditional
history of multiple genders, passed a law that banned same
sex marriage. And as you can imagine, it
created this incredibly painful debate among their own people.
So you're left with this heartbreaking contradiction.
On one side, you have the traditional view where gender
diversity and the relationships of two spirit people were
respected. And on the other, you have a
modern law that reflects the exact same colonial values that
were used to try and destroy their culture in the first
place. Today, there's a fight led by
young Navajo activists to repeal that law.
And that kind of leaves us with a final question to chew on.
This isn't just a story about the past, right?
It's about identity. It's about resilience, and it's
about the incredible power of history to shape our world right
now. So knowing that gender diversity
was once honored and celebrated in so many places, how does that
change the way we look at today's debates and our own
definitions of who we are? It's definitely something to
think about. Thanks for joining me for this
explainer.