Sexual Revolution in Early America by Richard Godbeer

But Smithers.goes much further, elaborating on the term 'Two-Spirit' itself.' 'Smithers' book contains a great many citations and tackles that mythology head-on, as it relates to the roles of Two-Spirit persons in the histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. “Provid deeper insight into the experiences, cultures, and futures of Two-Spirit communities.” Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed-and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.ĭrawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.īefore 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. Winner of the 2023 Prose Award in Cultural Anthropology and Sociologyįinalist for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay NonfictionĪ sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.

Sexual Revolution in Early America by Richard Godbeer