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Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America
A 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.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. 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.
Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by ��'첹, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. 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.
Drawing 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. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed--and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. 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.
Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by ��'첹, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. 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.
Drawing 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. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed--and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.
332 pages, Hardcover
First published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
April 3, 2024
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Start here, from the author's Prologue:
Many, if not most, languages in the world do not use gendered pronouns. The existence of them, their mere presence, requires duality: like "she" can't exist without "he". Or so we are told in our language classes. The mere notion, like the current drive to accept and use broadly , is causing such a huge amount of angst in those whose world is dualistic, almost Manichean, in its foundations. I tremble (with repressed laughter) contemplating these poor souls (yes, I mean "poor" as in "impoverished") even conceptualizing a world like that inhabited by Diné people with its ! Something we in the so-called Western world can learn from Two-Spirit people is that the male-female gender (not biological sex, in other words) binary is not a natural but a historical invention. And even the biological sex binary isn't anything like as absolute as we're taught in US schools.
Which is something I want to mention to my majority-white readership of all sexual natures: This is a book about Native/Indigenous/First Nations sexual and gender natures and it does not center (in any positive way) our settler/Euro/Judeo-Christian/Muslim world view. It is not meant to. It was not designed to. And that needs to be okay with you before you consider whether you're the audience for this richly textured, information-dense read. Do not go into the book thinking you're going to get spoon-fed some lightly seasoned apologia or even apology for "our" (in quotes because I, too, feel alienated from that culture in its broader outlines) actions towards the first inhabitants of this continent. The identity "Two Spirit," very much centered in this study, is not without contested and resisted facets. There are elders (people my exact chronological age!) who regard this new, "pan-Indigene" term with some caution. Many are the pitfalls on any newly blazed trail. The language of Two-Spiritedness is, like identities always will be, evolving. That being said, I trust you to decide what you want to do next.
I encourage you to read this book because it doesn't center you, or your concerns. It isn't fiction so it isn't here to amuse; it's serious and scholarly, and while it's not obscurantist in writing style, it's not novelistic either.
In a certain way, that's a shame. It's a wide-netted story that begs for a whole corpus of films, books, plays. The story of the American Indian AIDS Institute would serve as a kind of corrective to the damaging myth of "Patient Zero" that gay journalist Randy Shilts blew up into a cultural touchstone with his And the Band Played On bestseller-cum-; something that muddles facts with homophobic stereotypes and racist myths. We need the stories of and , correctives to the anthropological Arabic-language-based and offensive term "berdache" for Two-Spirit people; we need them to reach a wide audience, and it's usually fiction that does that best. I think Catawba Nation queer activist and artist , quoted by Smithers, said it best: "History is not a listing of facts, it's a mythology with citations." No matter that I call history "factual" it is, and of necessity must be, his-story, a story for all its pretensions to scientific rigor.
The fact is I can holler at you all day long and even beg real fancy for you to pay attention to people unlike you, doubly unlike you straight readers. I wish I had the powers of persuasion to make the read sound as fascinating as I found it. It wasn't written by a Native American/Indigenous person. Instead, is Australian, straight, and a scholar; he has, with those Othered-from-Two-Spirit foundations, built a book about Otherness that is culturally sensitive, pluralistic in its aims and outlook, and a finely crafted pleasure to read.
My Review: Start here, from the author's Prologue:
Why was this new terminology needed?...Answering this question requires us to dig deeper; it is therefore one of the main focal points of this book. It requires a reexamination of colonialism's ongoing destructiveness and its different forms of violence—disease, physical acts of war and genocide, the cultural destructiveness caused by boarding scools, and the corrosive impact of corporations and capitalism on Indigenous communities. In spite of five centuries of colonialism, it is still possible for Two-Spirit people to reclaim their traditions, identities, roles and their sacred status. For other Native people the term "Two-Spirit" is a starting point for telling new stories.
Many, if not most, languages in the world do not use gendered pronouns. The existence of them, their mere presence, requires duality: like "she" can't exist without "he". Or so we are told in our language classes. The mere notion, like the current drive to accept and use broadly , is causing such a huge amount of angst in those whose world is dualistic, almost Manichean, in its foundations. I tremble (with repressed laughter) contemplating these poor souls (yes, I mean "poor" as in "impoverished") even conceptualizing a world like that inhabited by Diné people with its ! Something we in the so-called Western world can learn from Two-Spirit people is that the male-female gender (not biological sex, in other words) binary is not a natural but a historical invention. And even the biological sex binary isn't anything like as absolute as we're taught in US schools.
Which is something I want to mention to my majority-white readership of all sexual natures: This is a book about Native/Indigenous/First Nations sexual and gender natures and it does not center (in any positive way) our settler/Euro/Judeo-Christian/Muslim world view. It is not meant to. It was not designed to. And that needs to be okay with you before you consider whether you're the audience for this richly textured, information-dense read. Do not go into the book thinking you're going to get spoon-fed some lightly seasoned apologia or even apology for "our" (in quotes because I, too, feel alienated from that culture in its broader outlines) actions towards the first inhabitants of this continent. The identity "Two Spirit," very much centered in this study, is not without contested and resisted facets. There are elders (people my exact chronological age!) who regard this new, "pan-Indigene" term with some caution. Many are the pitfalls on any newly blazed trail. The language of Two-Spiritedness is, like identities always will be, evolving. That being said, I trust you to decide what you want to do next.
I encourage you to read this book because it doesn't center you, or your concerns. It isn't fiction so it isn't here to amuse; it's serious and scholarly, and while it's not obscurantist in writing style, it's not novelistic either.
In a certain way, that's a shame. It's a wide-netted story that begs for a whole corpus of films, books, plays. The story of the American Indian AIDS Institute would serve as a kind of corrective to the damaging myth of "Patient Zero" that gay journalist Randy Shilts blew up into a cultural touchstone with his And the Band Played On bestseller-cum-; something that muddles facts with homophobic stereotypes and racist myths. We need the stories of and , correctives to the anthropological Arabic-language-based and offensive term "berdache" for Two-Spirit people; we need them to reach a wide audience, and it's usually fiction that does that best. I think Catawba Nation queer activist and artist , quoted by Smithers, said it best: "History is not a listing of facts, it's a mythology with citations." No matter that I call history "factual" it is, and of necessity must be, his-story, a story for all its pretensions to scientific rigor.
The fact is I can holler at you all day long and even beg real fancy for you to pay attention to people unlike you, doubly unlike you straight readers. I wish I had the powers of persuasion to make the read sound as fascinating as I found it. It wasn't written by a Native American/Indigenous person. Instead, is Australian, straight, and a scholar; he has, with those Othered-from-Two-Spirit foundations, built a book about Otherness that is culturally sensitive, pluralistic in its aims and outlook, and a finely crafted pleasure to read.
December 11, 2022
As much as I wanted to like this book, I just could not get over how the author chose to represent this book as a reclamation of two spirit identity, despite the fact that he is a cisgender white man. While I did learn a lot from this book, this is not the right person to write it, especially given the fact that he does not acknowledge his place of privilege in being able to “reclaim� the stories of Two-Spirit people. He writes in the prologue that “my positionality as an outside proved an asset because my knowledge of Native culture and languages (and my readings of sources written in Cherokee) wasn’t assumed or taken for granted by the Indigenous people I interviewed for this book. In recognizing my outside status, the people that I spoke to demonstrated a duty of care to their culture, explaining sensitive topics to me with care and levels of detail that might not have seemed necessary had they been talking to another Two-Spirit person.� It’s baffling to me that he could have written this paragraph, and not instead come to the conclusion that perhaps he should not be co-opting and profiting off of these histories. Further, I am not sure what the purpose of stating that he can read Cherokee is - perhaps to give himself a pat on the back and reassure himself that he is “one of the good ones?�
The 3 stars I am giving are all for the emotional labor that Two-Spirit people gave by sharing their stories for this book. Obviously the subject matter of this book is extremely important, and I hope that somebody is truly able to reclaim this history by writing their own story.
The 3 stars I am giving are all for the emotional labor that Two-Spirit people gave by sharing their stories for this book. Obviously the subject matter of this book is extremely important, and I hope that somebody is truly able to reclaim this history by writing their own story.
Want to read
June 11, 2022I just wanna remind everyone that only Indigenous people can be Two-Spirit! I don't want to see any non-natives saying they're two spirit.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1645808644i%2F7494844._UX200_CR0%2C6%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
October 9, 2024
The more I learn, the less I know that I know.
Anywho, a really, really good look at Indiqueer two-spirit culture both now and in the past. Definitely a must-read in how society on Turtle Island was and how it is coming again, and how much Christianity and white supremacy fucked over literally everything.
My main qualm is the title and the theme of reclaiming when written by a non-Indigenous author.
Anywho, a really, really good look at Indiqueer two-spirit culture both now and in the past. Definitely a must-read in how society on Turtle Island was and how it is coming again, and how much Christianity and white supremacy fucked over literally everything.
My main qualm is the title and the theme of reclaiming when written by a non-Indigenous author.
October 22, 2022
The "contemporary historian" might want to talk to the Indigenous people he quotes. The book is promoting something needed but I hope it's legacy is that it provokes an Indigenous person to clean up Smithers' work.
Read
August 29, 2023DNF’d based on the fact that this book called RECLAIMING Two Spirits is written by a cis white man. I prefer to get my Indigenous history from Indigenous people. I don’t understand why the author thinks that he is “reclaiming� anything.
October 1, 2023
4.5/5
I discovered this by chance when browsing in Portland, and I’m very glad I decided to make room in my suitcase to take it home! Using a wide variety of sources, Smithers takes the reader on a chronological journey from first Spanish-Native American contact to the present day, exploring what those sources can tell us about both Native and European views of gender and sexuality at the time. While Smithers isn’t Native (and neither am I) his approach seems respectful. He does a good uplifting Native voices and presenting this history in an accessible way � while still having a full seventy pages of references at the back, for those who want to dig in further!
One thing I do wish we’d gotten a bit more of is perspectives from Central or South America, especially since several native cultures there have written histories of their own � not with a ton of information remaining, after cities were razed and books burned, but some written records. They are referred to at the start, and we even get some pictures of pottery from that region that definitely or possibly depicts same-gender couples, but then the narrative drifts north. I suppose the project might have grown too large, given the somewhat-diverging histories and culture of English and Spanish colonies, and the fact that the term “Two-Spirit� seems to be (as far as I can tell) an umbrella-term chosen by people living in modern-day Canada and the US. It would be interesting to know more about any similar movements to reclaim the role of LGBT+ people in indigenous culture south of the Rio Grande, though!
Some interesting points this book highlights about Two-Spirit people in the pre-colonial and early-colonial Americas:
* Every Native culture had/has different ways of conceptualizing gender roles (including sexuality), categorizing genders, etc. However, there seems to have been a general pattern of viewing gender and sexuality as fluid, and of having third-gender (or fourth- or fifth-gender) categories with their own social roles as a way of reflecting this. These social roles could be quite highly valued, with two-spirit individuals serving as shamans or in other ceremonial/religious roles, or in medicine.
* Many Native languages do not have gendered pronouns � and in some cultures children were not referred to by gendered words at all (calling each other “sibling� rather than “brother� or “sister�) below a certain age, as it was held that people “grew into� a gender. I found this interesting, because I had recently learned that many Asian languages don’t use gendered 3rd person pronouns either but instead use 1st person pronouns (different “I”s) that may or may not indicate the gender of the speaker. It makes me wonder if European languages are the outliers in this (How do African or Indigenous Australian languages handle pronouns?). Certainly language can shape thought, and vice versa - and this book puts a good deal of emphasis on the importance of words.
* What we might call “gay marriage� - though, again, with the various conceptions of gender across cultures, that’s not quite the right term - was recognized in many Native cultures as well. There is one story from (appropriately!) what is modern-day California about a missionary friar who called the military on a couple including a “man dressed as a woman� � who were outraged, pointing out that they were married, and it wasn’t his business what they got up to in private!
* Europeans, of course, viewed all of this through their own concepts of gender and religion, often putting a negative spin on things without evidence (eg. assuming “hermaphrodites� � those of ambiguous gender presentation rather than body, in this case � were low-status because THEY considered the tasks they were doing, such as nursing, to be low status). And because of the important roles many Two-Spirit people played in their communities, attacking them had the double benefit, from the colonist’s perspective, of making those communities more fractured and vulnerable, and cracking down on “sin�.
As we get into the modern era, there are of course many more direct quotes from two-spirit folks with a variety of perspectives. There’s always a certain amount of anger raised by discovering that there are things you should have been told and weren’t. For instance, why hadn’t I heard the name of Phillip Tingley (who raised awareness around the traumatic effects of federal boarding schools before turning his attention to the AIDS pandemic) alongside Larry Kramer (ACT UP) or Fred Martinez (a murdered nadleeh teen whose family made a stand against hate crimes) alongside Matthew Shephard? Well, we know why� Two-Spirt people found themselves marginalized within white gay spaces, and often within Native communities as well when those communities had absorbed homophobic colonial ideas. This part of the book makes a good argument for intersectionality, showing the interplay between LGBT+ and native identities, as well as how recognition of two-spirit people relates to decolonization, tribal sovereignty, water-protection movements and more.
"If, as Nick Estes suggests, history is the future, Two-Spirit people will undoubtedly keep reaching back into the past and reclaiming their place in the circle. Not everyone will agree on what the past means, and people will argue about politics � they always do…What is known, Raven Heavy Runner told me is that ‘there’s a responsibility that goes with that term’…In the future, some Two-Spirit people will find that their communities will embrace them as ‘a gift to the world�, others will encounter prejudice, and still others will search inside themselves and find they don’t need the term Two-Spirit to accept their non-gendered identity. History isn’t always pretty, and the future comes with no guarantees. But that’s the thing about history’s future: it’s not written yet.�
I discovered this by chance when browsing in Portland, and I’m very glad I decided to make room in my suitcase to take it home! Using a wide variety of sources, Smithers takes the reader on a chronological journey from first Spanish-Native American contact to the present day, exploring what those sources can tell us about both Native and European views of gender and sexuality at the time. While Smithers isn’t Native (and neither am I) his approach seems respectful. He does a good uplifting Native voices and presenting this history in an accessible way � while still having a full seventy pages of references at the back, for those who want to dig in further!
One thing I do wish we’d gotten a bit more of is perspectives from Central or South America, especially since several native cultures there have written histories of their own � not with a ton of information remaining, after cities were razed and books burned, but some written records. They are referred to at the start, and we even get some pictures of pottery from that region that definitely or possibly depicts same-gender couples, but then the narrative drifts north. I suppose the project might have grown too large, given the somewhat-diverging histories and culture of English and Spanish colonies, and the fact that the term “Two-Spirit� seems to be (as far as I can tell) an umbrella-term chosen by people living in modern-day Canada and the US. It would be interesting to know more about any similar movements to reclaim the role of LGBT+ people in indigenous culture south of the Rio Grande, though!
Some interesting points this book highlights about Two-Spirit people in the pre-colonial and early-colonial Americas:
* Every Native culture had/has different ways of conceptualizing gender roles (including sexuality), categorizing genders, etc. However, there seems to have been a general pattern of viewing gender and sexuality as fluid, and of having third-gender (or fourth- or fifth-gender) categories with their own social roles as a way of reflecting this. These social roles could be quite highly valued, with two-spirit individuals serving as shamans or in other ceremonial/religious roles, or in medicine.
* Many Native languages do not have gendered pronouns � and in some cultures children were not referred to by gendered words at all (calling each other “sibling� rather than “brother� or “sister�) below a certain age, as it was held that people “grew into� a gender. I found this interesting, because I had recently learned that many Asian languages don’t use gendered 3rd person pronouns either but instead use 1st person pronouns (different “I”s) that may or may not indicate the gender of the speaker. It makes me wonder if European languages are the outliers in this (How do African or Indigenous Australian languages handle pronouns?). Certainly language can shape thought, and vice versa - and this book puts a good deal of emphasis on the importance of words.
* What we might call “gay marriage� - though, again, with the various conceptions of gender across cultures, that’s not quite the right term - was recognized in many Native cultures as well. There is one story from (appropriately!) what is modern-day California about a missionary friar who called the military on a couple including a “man dressed as a woman� � who were outraged, pointing out that they were married, and it wasn’t his business what they got up to in private!
* Europeans, of course, viewed all of this through their own concepts of gender and religion, often putting a negative spin on things without evidence (eg. assuming “hermaphrodites� � those of ambiguous gender presentation rather than body, in this case � were low-status because THEY considered the tasks they were doing, such as nursing, to be low status). And because of the important roles many Two-Spirit people played in their communities, attacking them had the double benefit, from the colonist’s perspective, of making those communities more fractured and vulnerable, and cracking down on “sin�.
As we get into the modern era, there are of course many more direct quotes from two-spirit folks with a variety of perspectives. There’s always a certain amount of anger raised by discovering that there are things you should have been told and weren’t. For instance, why hadn’t I heard the name of Phillip Tingley (who raised awareness around the traumatic effects of federal boarding schools before turning his attention to the AIDS pandemic) alongside Larry Kramer (ACT UP) or Fred Martinez (a murdered nadleeh teen whose family made a stand against hate crimes) alongside Matthew Shephard? Well, we know why� Two-Spirt people found themselves marginalized within white gay spaces, and often within Native communities as well when those communities had absorbed homophobic colonial ideas. This part of the book makes a good argument for intersectionality, showing the interplay between LGBT+ and native identities, as well as how recognition of two-spirit people relates to decolonization, tribal sovereignty, water-protection movements and more.
"If, as Nick Estes suggests, history is the future, Two-Spirit people will undoubtedly keep reaching back into the past and reclaiming their place in the circle. Not everyone will agree on what the past means, and people will argue about politics � they always do…What is known, Raven Heavy Runner told me is that ‘there’s a responsibility that goes with that term’…In the future, some Two-Spirit people will find that their communities will embrace them as ‘a gift to the world�, others will encounter prejudice, and still others will search inside themselves and find they don’t need the term Two-Spirit to accept their non-gendered identity. History isn’t always pretty, and the future comes with no guarantees. But that’s the thing about history’s future: it’s not written yet.�
Read
May 5, 2023I’m not rating this because I don’t feel 100% comfortable gifting a white Australian cis man the privilege he had in writing this when the honor could be bestowed on someone Indigenous. Informative nonetheless.
June 28, 2024
Call me a snowflake if you just, but this was not the person to write this book. You can tell the goal was firstly academic and secondly social. And he did interviews saying that in editing the book, he took out a lot of the criticism that the quoted Native leaders said to him.
A good, watered down intro if you're completely unfamiliar with Native gendered constructs
A good, watered down intro if you're completely unfamiliar with Native gendered constructs
July 28, 2023
There is a lot of good information in here and I learned a lot. I question the organization, and the author's position in this world. I would like in the future to read more by two-spirit individuals, rather than white cis men looking in.
April 16, 2025
Good! Really enjoyed this historical look at queerness and Indigineity and two-spirits. Was more purely historical than I was expecting (the author literally reads diaries of colonizers from the like 15th century) but I appreciated the context
September 6, 2023
incredibly, heartbreakingly difficult to listen to/read. written and compiled by a non-indigenous, non-native, non-two-spirit person (addressed at the very beginning of the book). the text is clearly deeply researched; however, it is completely inundated with colonial violences against two-spirits and only sporadically focuses on two-spirits ourselves. i went into this read with a totally different hope of what this book would be about.
April 25, 2025
This was a very informative start to understanding the two spirit movement. Like others, I would have liked part 3 to be longer, and I would have liked more information on the differences between different tribe's traditions regarding two spirit people. Part 1 was particularly heavy to read, as it was mostly pulling from colonizer perspectives, though Smithers does recorrect how the two spirit of those initial colonial excursions are represented by telling us to read between the lines of what these accounts say. It would be nice to not rely on such biased sources, though its understandable that native 1st hand accounts from all the way back then might have been lost or deliberately destroyed. I also appreciate that in part 2 we are shown two-spirit historical figures going all the way back into the 18th and 19th centuries.
And since it is the big elephant in the room, I do think this book would have benefited from at least a two spirit co-author or a different author entirely. I think Smithers seemed to have meant well writing this, and acknowledged and attempted to combat his biases as a white Australian, and he made sure to stuff part 3 with 1st hand accounts from two spirit people, but at the end of the day I think this would have benefited more from being written by an indigenous person. However I don't think the whole book should be written off just because of this. Rather this is a good starting point, but further reading on the subject will need be from indigenous authors.
And since it is the big elephant in the room, I do think this book would have benefited from at least a two spirit co-author or a different author entirely. I think Smithers seemed to have meant well writing this, and acknowledged and attempted to combat his biases as a white Australian, and he made sure to stuff part 3 with 1st hand accounts from two spirit people, but at the end of the day I think this would have benefited more from being written by an indigenous person. However I don't think the whole book should be written off just because of this. Rather this is a good starting point, but further reading on the subject will need be from indigenous authors.
January 24, 2024
Thoughts on this as a reading experience -
Very broad, very repetitious (with reason, because history was repetitious), more academic than really makes good audiobook reading for me, and definitely a bit distanced from its subject (it was written by someone not native or two-spirit). I definitely learned some valuable information but I’m not sure having to dig for it in this book is worth it to a casual reader. Would probably work best in conversation with other works by two spirit individuals, which I would be more interested in.
Very broad, very repetitious (with reason, because history was repetitious), more academic than really makes good audiobook reading for me, and definitely a bit distanced from its subject (it was written by someone not native or two-spirit). I definitely learned some valuable information but I’m not sure having to dig for it in this book is worth it to a casual reader. Would probably work best in conversation with other works by two spirit individuals, which I would be more interested in.
October 8, 2023
I wanted to like this book. It was my first Two-Spirit read, so I felt compelled to like it due to the subject matter. But it felt very much like a white man trying to sound progressive as he described Indigenous cultures, because it was. Not being Native (or even American), Smithers didn’t have any specifics to share besides these buzzwords that he repeatedly fell back on. Being a fellow clueless white person, I don’t have room to talk, but I’m also not writing a book about Two-Spirit people. The information was objectively important, but Reclaiming Two-Spirits could have been so much better. But what it lacked most was an author qualified to write it in the first place.
Read more:
Read more:
April 27, 2023
Such an important read. Loved this one.
January 28, 2025
Critically important
May 31, 2022
“Two-Spirit,� is a word that is heard with increasing attention among the LGTQIA+ community, but one that I wanted to learn more about. It is different than gay, or trans, or queer, it is entirely its own varied, complex identity. Gregory D. Smithers, (who is not Two-Spirit or Indigenous, but is transparent about this and acknowledges it with grace) begins this in-depth book by looking at the term itself. He writes, “…Why was this new terminology needed? Answering this question requires us to dig deeper; it is therefore one of the main focal points of this book. It requires a reexamination of colonialisms ongoing destructiveness and it’s different forms of violence�.In spite of five centuries of colonialism, it is still possible for Two-Spirit people to reclaim their traditions, identities, roles and their sacred status. For other Native people the term, Two-Spirit is a starting point for telling new stories,� there own stories. This book starts from the earliest days of pre-colonial Indigenous societies and nations that had very different and more widely accepted ideas of gender and sexuality, through the conquistadors and later European’s harmful imposition of their gender norms and then later still through the contemporary activism movements of AIM and the reclamation of Two-Spirit identities. This book is crucial for anyone who is interested in either Indigenous sovereignty and/or Two-Spirit histories and stories.
October 28, 2022
I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss.
The information is all new. I have never encountered any of it in the traditional texts that I have had access to before this. It has allowed me to gain an expanded view of early history.
One problem that I have with the book is the way the information is organized. While the information does fit into the broad categories like Sin and Strange, it is a loose fit. I feel like the book would have benefited from a time period organization with emphasis or note given to the themes. One helpful thing would be to have subthemes or titles in the main chapters. It would benefit the organization and the presentation of the information.
The information can not be faulted.
The information is all new. I have never encountered any of it in the traditional texts that I have had access to before this. It has allowed me to gain an expanded view of early history.
One problem that I have with the book is the way the information is organized. While the information does fit into the broad categories like Sin and Strange, it is a loose fit. I feel like the book would have benefited from a time period organization with emphasis or note given to the themes. One helpful thing would be to have subthemes or titles in the main chapters. It would benefit the organization and the presentation of the information.
The information can not be faulted.
June 3, 2023
I wanted to listen to this audiobook because I came across the term "two-spirit" and wanted to learn more. While I did learn more about this history, Reclaiming Two-Spirits was a bit disappointing because I didn't get a good sense of what was being reclaimed. I realize there are not a lot of reliable historical records but I don't think I understood what are Indigenous conceptions of gender and sexuality, only that they did not conform to the Western binary ideas of male and female. Nonetheless, I did learn that the term two-spirit is a recent term that has resonance. I am glad that I was able to finish this during Pride month.
May 15, 2024
Wow. What a wonderful read. I can’t believe that in all my time on this earth, reading gender-abolitionist and feminist work, I’ve never come across ANY of this history. I’m disappointed both in myself for failing to seek out this information, and in the alleged decolonial gender abolitionist writers I’ve had previous experience with who never mentioned any of this. I’m truly shocked by how seemingly ubiquitous non-Western gender presentation seemed to be in Indigenous American cultures, and by how recently it seems these practices and beliefs were extinguished. This book was unbelievably eye-opening, especially considering that previously I thought that the term Two-Spirit specifically referred to Indigenous non-binary people, rather than the broader and more ambiguous meaning that it seems to have. My heart aches for what has been lost, but I’m equally as hopeful for what we may all be able to recover. In particular, I was fascinated by the claim that Western gender roles become more extreme and solidified as a reaction to the fluidity of Indigenous America, in order to establish hostile distinctions between white settlers and their Native counterparts. To me, this explanation makes a hell of a lot of sense. I was, however, disappointed by the lack of Indigenous sources in the book. Most of the historical citations come from accounts written by European colonizers, which are of course both offensive and unreliable. I understand that Indigenous sources may be difficult to find, or may potentially not exist, but it seems to me that no effort was really made to uncover them. The author begins each chapter with a barely related quote from an Indigenous person, but that’s more or less the extent of their participation in this work, aside from the last few chapters. I would have loved to see a lot more of their perspective in the historical chapters, even if said perspective isn’t primary source material. I’d love to read more on this subject with heavier influence from Indigenous sources.
October 27, 2024
I think it's important to note, first and foremost, that Gregory Smithers is not Indigenous. He is forthright in the fact that he is, in fact, a white man from Australia. But in this book, he does centre Indigenous voices, having spoken with two-spirit people from nations all over North America, and claims that his whiteness may have been a boon in some regards: no one he spoke to assumed he had culture knowledge, and so they were careful to explain specific nuances that they may have taken for granted that he understood otherwise. I can't say for sure how accurate this assessment might be, but I'll roll with it until I have evidence to the contrary.
This book begins with colonial and pre-colonial history, examining written colonial accounts of, to use an anachronist term, queer indigenous people and then taking those colonial accounts (which were beyond degrading) and attempting to filter them through indigenous cultural knowledge and beliefs. He discusses how quickly homophobia spread across North America in the 19th/20th centuries, and discusses too how Two-Sprited people have worked to reclaim this part of their culture and history.
The Two-Spirit movement is a pan-tribal movement -- queer Indigenous folks have worked across nations to bring it to what it is -- but Smithers doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that means that it's a universal experience across nations. He makes sure to talk with people from a variety of different nations to gather their individual experiences as people, and also to discuss the specific terms used in their own languages and the traditions in their own nations. He speaks with a great deal of people, and had those conversations help shape the book he wrote. He speaks about queer and Two-Spirit indigenous leaders, and the people who helped bring the movement to where it is now, and how they have been working to decolonize their identities.
Overall, this seems to be a very well-researched and thoughtful book.
I listened to at least part of this book on audio, and the audiobook was very listenable.
This book begins with colonial and pre-colonial history, examining written colonial accounts of, to use an anachronist term, queer indigenous people and then taking those colonial accounts (which were beyond degrading) and attempting to filter them through indigenous cultural knowledge and beliefs. He discusses how quickly homophobia spread across North America in the 19th/20th centuries, and discusses too how Two-Sprited people have worked to reclaim this part of their culture and history.
The Two-Spirit movement is a pan-tribal movement -- queer Indigenous folks have worked across nations to bring it to what it is -- but Smithers doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that means that it's a universal experience across nations. He makes sure to talk with people from a variety of different nations to gather their individual experiences as people, and also to discuss the specific terms used in their own languages and the traditions in their own nations. He speaks with a great deal of people, and had those conversations help shape the book he wrote. He speaks about queer and Two-Spirit indigenous leaders, and the people who helped bring the movement to where it is now, and how they have been working to decolonize their identities.
Overall, this seems to be a very well-researched and thoughtful book.
I listened to at least part of this book on audio, and the audiobook was very listenable.
November 20, 2023
Religion is one of the greatest purveyors of violence in our world: Jews and Muslims in Israel/Palestine, the Sunni and the Shia in Islam, the Catholics and the Protestants in Europe, the hatred of the white Protestant Ku Klux Klan against American Catholics in the 1920s, the Buddhist complicity in the massacre of Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar.
Smither’s book emphasizes the hostility of Spanish Catholic conquerors and the European Protestants against Indigenous Americans, which he attributes largely to the whites� abhorrence of Two-Spirit people, who cross-dressed, committed sodomy, changed traditional gender roles, had same sex marriages, and performed other acts that were not in keeping with expected European practices.
He begins his attempt to “craft historical knowledge� in 1500. He decolonizes the preferred European terms “discovery,� “right of conquest,� “exploration,� “settlement,� and “sharing of Christianity� with what truly occurred: an “invasion.� He continues by undermining the derogatory European terminology “hermaphrodite� “berdache,� “sin,� and “effeminacy,� by contrasting these foreign terms with what was natural, accepted, and even respected behavior among the Indigenous. Throughout the book, Smithers cites specific language differences between Europeans and Indigenous people: many tribes used gender terms that were neutral, non-binary, gender-fluid, or named multiple genders. He chronicles American explorers� and ethnologists� use of prejudicial language that misrepresents native cultures and their attitudes toward gender.
Finally, the book describes resilient efforts of indigenous Two-Spirit people starting in late the 20th century to reclaim their cultural heritage after 100s of years of Christian influence on tribes. They continue today, fighting tribal homophobia and the dominant white culture.
Smither’s book emphasizes the hostility of Spanish Catholic conquerors and the European Protestants against Indigenous Americans, which he attributes largely to the whites� abhorrence of Two-Spirit people, who cross-dressed, committed sodomy, changed traditional gender roles, had same sex marriages, and performed other acts that were not in keeping with expected European practices.
He begins his attempt to “craft historical knowledge� in 1500. He decolonizes the preferred European terms “discovery,� “right of conquest,� “exploration,� “settlement,� and “sharing of Christianity� with what truly occurred: an “invasion.� He continues by undermining the derogatory European terminology “hermaphrodite� “berdache,� “sin,� and “effeminacy,� by contrasting these foreign terms with what was natural, accepted, and even respected behavior among the Indigenous. Throughout the book, Smithers cites specific language differences between Europeans and Indigenous people: many tribes used gender terms that were neutral, non-binary, gender-fluid, or named multiple genders. He chronicles American explorers� and ethnologists� use of prejudicial language that misrepresents native cultures and their attitudes toward gender.
Finally, the book describes resilient efforts of indigenous Two-Spirit people starting in late the 20th century to reclaim their cultural heritage after 100s of years of Christian influence on tribes. They continue today, fighting tribal homophobia and the dominant white culture.
August 15, 2023
There is still a paucity of books dealing with the two-spirit community and this books fills a gap. Smithers groups the text into three components, one is a history, largely drawn from colonial sources, of diverse genders and sexualities among sovereign tribes in Turtle Island at the time Europeans arrived. The second looks at the movement for queer liberation and Indigenous rights from then to the 1990s - from a mix of sources - and the final section, largely drawing on two-spirit sources, looks at the development of a two-spirit label and what it means.
It is obviously a significant challenge that Smithers is neither Indigenous nor queer, and is writing in an age where the usefulness of outsider narratives that describe marginalised communities is rightly under question. Perhaps equally significantly, the book draws largely on colonial voices for much of the text, making this feel even more like a "peering in" in ways that can be uncomfortable. Smithers does balance this in the latter chapters, with strong coverage of contemporary voices and debates. His approach is consistently cautious and specific, avoiding too many generalisations or conclusions, which tempers some of his position.
To add to the challenges, much of the text is concerned with explaining the basics of Indigenous history, and to a lesser extent, queer history. I don't doubt this is necessary - there remains much less awareness than is ideal within America about the realities of dispossession and invasion - but at times it did feel frustratingly slight on the focus topic.
All up, this isn't the book that perhaps I had hoped it would be, but I learned stuff, which is what it is all about.
It is obviously a significant challenge that Smithers is neither Indigenous nor queer, and is writing in an age where the usefulness of outsider narratives that describe marginalised communities is rightly under question. Perhaps equally significantly, the book draws largely on colonial voices for much of the text, making this feel even more like a "peering in" in ways that can be uncomfortable. Smithers does balance this in the latter chapters, with strong coverage of contemporary voices and debates. His approach is consistently cautious and specific, avoiding too many generalisations or conclusions, which tempers some of his position.
To add to the challenges, much of the text is concerned with explaining the basics of Indigenous history, and to a lesser extent, queer history. I don't doubt this is necessary - there remains much less awareness than is ideal within America about the realities of dispossession and invasion - but at times it did feel frustratingly slight on the focus topic.
All up, this isn't the book that perhaps I had hoped it would be, but I learned stuff, which is what it is all about.
December 6, 2023
This was an incredibly informative book. I feel that I learned a lot about Indigenous history. One of the things I appreciated the most was the acknowledgement that sometimes marginalized people groups alter history themselves as a way to protect themselves and the most vulnerable in their community. It forced me to pause and reflect on who benefits from which stories we tell and repeat.
Smithers is a white cishet man, which is important to note. I thought that he was thorough and respectful; he recognized that this is an important history to excavate and thoroughly researched it. My one critique is that Smithers doubled down on describing the violence that Native folks experience, particularly during the "Doctrine of Discovery" period of history. While it's incredibly important for us to understand the scope of that violence, reading story after story of violence against marginalized people, to me, puts the focus on the ones enacting the violence. The volume of violent stories made the book slow to read, as I had to keep putting it aside to take a breather.
Perhaps the resources were too limited, but I would have liked to see more on the actual lives of queer Natives during that time.
Overall, I think this is an important book that I plan to keep as a reference.
Smithers is a white cishet man, which is important to note. I thought that he was thorough and respectful; he recognized that this is an important history to excavate and thoroughly researched it. My one critique is that Smithers doubled down on describing the violence that Native folks experience, particularly during the "Doctrine of Discovery" period of history. While it's incredibly important for us to understand the scope of that violence, reading story after story of violence against marginalized people, to me, puts the focus on the ones enacting the violence. The volume of violent stories made the book slow to read, as I had to keep putting it aside to take a breather.
Perhaps the resources were too limited, but I would have liked to see more on the actual lives of queer Natives during that time.
Overall, I think this is an important book that I plan to keep as a reference.
December 30, 2024
This was an incredibly eye-opening and frankly a life-changing read for me. Not only did it help me along on my own journey towards cultural reconnection, but it also put into context so much of my own life, as well as our country's history in dealing with ideas of sexuality and gender expression.
I recommend this to anyone that is wanting to expand their mind, deepen their own relationship with gender identity, and who wants to learn a thing or two along the way.
WARNING: I got viscerally angry multiple times while reading this book. It took me longer than usual to complete because of this, but it was very worth the anger to have the knowledge I now hold.
I recommend this to anyone that is wanting to expand their mind, deepen their own relationship with gender identity, and who wants to learn a thing or two along the way.
WARNING: I got viscerally angry multiple times while reading this book. It took me longer than usual to complete because of this, but it was very worth the anger to have the knowledge I now hold.
October 13, 2023
Excellent read. Informative and fascinating. I recommend to anyone interested in indigenous sexuality studies. My only dislike is the book is extremely repetitive. I Listened to the audiobook and feel like after 2.5 hours in, the same things were repeated over and over and over. I'd like to hear more personal stories instead of constantly repeating how the European and Spanish colonisers found indigenous cross dressing, homosexual, intersexed, etc was disgusting and disturbing to them. After the 4 hour mark, however, more interesting information was provided.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 7, 2025
This thoroughly-researched and wide-ranging book is filled with names of people, places, tribes, and traditions that may be unfamiliar to non-natives. This makes reading it a bit of a slog in places (think of reading the Old Testament). Nevertheless, I am glad I spent some time with it, and hope many other people do too, as it treats topics that should interest us all: human rights, environment, colonialism, etc. The present political and social climate of the United States makes books like this more important now than ever.
February 1, 2024
This is an excellent primer of American Two Spirit history. While the authors suggest a North American viewpoint, it explores Canadian history, influencers and issues very little.
While Canadian and American issues in this context are similar, the deficit if information provides yet another example of pan-indigenous viewpoints used by scholars to make their point.
Still worthy of 4-stars, as it is a great place to start an education about our Two Spirit relatives.
While Canadian and American issues in this context are similar, the deficit if information provides yet another example of pan-indigenous viewpoints used by scholars to make their point.
Still worthy of 4-stars, as it is a great place to start an education about our Two Spirit relatives.
February 18, 2024
This was an interesting book on the history of two-spirit identity and the origins of discrimination and exclusion from the native community before some embraced it again. The flow and pacing of this book is pretty even and easy to listen to. This is history I was unaware of so I do not know how it compares to a native telling of the history since the author is 1) Australian and 2)white. Overall I found it easy and understandable.
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