(1796–1872) while on the
Great Plains among the
Sac and Fox Nation. Depicting a group of male warriors dancing around a male-bodied person in a woman's dress, non-Native artist George Catlin titled the painting
Dance to the Berdach. Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men. ~ Mary Annette Pember (
Red Cliff Ojibwe) According to German anthropologist Sabine Lang, cross-dressing of two-spirit people was not always an indicator of gender identity. Lang believes "the mere fact that a male wears women's clothing does not say something about his role behavior, his gender status, or even his choice of partner". Other anthropologists may have mistakenly labelled some Native individuals two-spirit or
berdache because of a lack of cultural understanding, specifically around an Indigenous community's worldview, and their particular customs concerning clothing and gender. According to non-Natives including author Brian Gilley and anthropologist
Will Roscoe, the historical presence of male-bodied two-spirits "was a fundamental institution among most tribal peoples", with both male- and female-bodied two-spirits having been documented "in over 130 North American tribes, in every region of the continent". However,
Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember argues that this depiction threatens to homogenize diverse Indigenous cultures, painting over them with an excessively broad brush, potentially causing the disappearance of "distinct cultural and language differences that Native peoples hold crucial to their identity". Although gender-variant people have been both respected and feared in a number of tribes, they are not beyond being reproached or, by traditional law, even killed for bad deeds. In the
Mojave tribe, for instance, they frequently become medicine persons and, like all who deal with the supernatural, are at risk of suspicion of
witchcraft, notably in cases of failed harvest or of death. There have been instances of murder in these cases (such as in the case of the gender-nonconforming female named Sahaykwisā). Another instance in the late 1840s was of a
Crow badé who was caught, possibly raiding horses, by the
Lakota and was killed. Lang and Jacobs write that historically among the
Apache, the
Lipan,
Chiricahua,
Mescalero, and southern
Dilzhe'e have alternative gender identities. One tribe in particular, the
Eyak, has a single report from 1938 that they did not have an alternative gender and they held such individuals in low esteem, although whether this sentiment is the result of acculturation or not is unknown. Among the
Iroquois, there is a single report from
Bacqueville de la Potherie in his book published in 1722, ''Histoire de l'Amérique septentrionale'', that indicates that an alternative gender identity exists among them. Many, if not all, Indigenous cultures have been affected by European
homophobia and
misogyny. Some sources have reported that the
Aztecs and
Incas had laws against such individuals, though there are some authors who feel that this was exaggerated or the result of acculturation, because all of the documents indicating this are post-conquest and any that existed before had been destroyed by the
Spanish. The belief that these laws existed, at least for the Aztecs, comes from the
Florentine Codex. Evidence exists that Indigenous peoples produced many codices, but the Spaniards destroyed most of them in their attempt to eradicate ancient beliefs. Some contemporary
Zapotec peoples in Mexico embody the traditional
third gender role known as
muxe. They consider themselves to be "
muxe in men's bodies", who do the work that their culture usually associates with women. When asked by
transgender researchers in 2004 if they ever considered surgical transition, "none of the respondents found the idea interesting, but rather strange" as their essence as
muxe is not dependent on what type of body they are in.
Berdache Before the late twentieth century, non-Native (i.e. non-
Native American/
Canadian)
anthropologists used the term
berdache (), in a very broad manner, to identify an Indigenous individual fulfilling one of many mixed gender roles in their tribe. Most often these anthropologists applied the term to any male whom they perceived to be
homosexual,
bisexual, or
effeminate by Western social standards, though occasionally the term was applied to
lesbian, bisexual and
gender nonconforming females as well. This led to a wide variety of diverse individuals being categorized under this imprecise term. At times they incorrectly implied that these individuals were
intersex (or, "hermaphrodites"). The term
berdache has always been repugnant to Indigenous people. De Vries writes, "Berdache is a derogatory term created by Europeans and perpetuated by anthropologists and others to define Native American/First Nations people who varied from Western norms that perceive gender, sex, and sexuality as binaries and inseparable." or even "
boy prostitute". Spanish explorers who encountered these individuals among the
Chumash people called them
"", the
Spanish for "jewels". Use of
berdache has now been replaced in most mainstream and anthropological literature by
two spirit, with mixed results. However, the term
two spirit itself, in English or any other language, was not in use before 1990. == Media representation ==