Some months ago a friend asked me for deeper information about two spirit Native American people. I replied that I knew the term and had some basic knowledge on the subject, but that I would be happy to do some study and expand my knowledge in this area.

Shortly after that I began my investigation for good sources of information. Almost immediately I discovered the following excellent resource:

Brown, Lester B, PhD, Editor. Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women and Gay Men. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.

NOTE: The copyright date for this work is 1997 and is held by The Haworth Press, Inc., Binghamton, NY. It was simultaneously published in the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, Volume 6, Number 2 1997.

I highly recommend this volume to anyone who has interest in knowing more about this topic. This is a very extensive reference source and is also available for Kindle. Following are some brief excerpts from the beginning of the text which I offer here as an invitation for further study of this important subject.

NOTE from the Introduction:  The terms American Indian and Native American are used interchangeably in this volume. They are intended to mean the same, referring to the indigenous peoples of the continental United States.

American Indian tribal groups have a variety of customs unfamiliar to us. One particular occurrence is alternative gender styles for females and males. Gender has always been viewed as a spiritual calling and not determined by a person’s anatomy.

American Indian cultures and societies have had and many presently have a variety of ways in which gender is expressed. Social services professionals need to understand that gender has not always been defined in dichotomies: boy/girl, man/woman. American Indian groups have at least six alternative gender styles: women and men, not-men (biological women who assume some aspects of male roles) and not-women (biological men who assume some aspects of female roles), lesbians and gays.

The early accounts of immigrants to this country from Europe contain many references to the ‘hedonistic’ nature of the way American Indians lived at that time (Angelino & Shedd, 1955). Most of these reports were written after 1700. In these writings newcomers failed to make any effort to understand and appreciate the new cultures they were encountering. In their haste to lay waste to the resources available in this hemisphere, they simply enslaved, killed or shunted aside any tribal groups that got in their way (Weeks, 1988). Those few newcomers who made efforts to observe what they encountered had mixed responses. However, most decided that American Indian groups needed civilization to save them.

Many of the newcomers to this hemisphere were from religious groups (Weeks, 1988). These clerics, of various kinds, and their strict followers very charitably proceeded to try to salvage the souls of American Indians. Although a number of behaviors bothered them, American Indians sexual practices proved to be most disturbing in their sensibilities (Roscoe, 1992).

American Indians had very simple beliefs about human sexuality and those beliefs were based on their experience. Briefly stated, sexual expression between women and men was essential for survival of the group; procreation was important. However, sexual expression was also fun and enjoyable irrespective of the partner’s gender. As a consequence, adults engaged in sexual activities with persons of the same and different gender (Callender & Kochems, 1986). Sexual play was play, and no one could be harmed by it. Children, exploring sexual play as they still do today in most families in this country (American Indian and others), were not punished for trying something adults did in their spare time for pleasure (Crooks & Bauer, 1990). Children grew up and became adults with very few ‘hang-ups’ about expressing themselves sexually (1-3, Kindle version).

The difficulty for Native Americans to be understood and not dismissed as savages is not a new problem. Sadly, it is an ongoing saga dating from the earliest times of this country.

To be continued in the next post . . .

 

Yesterday, July 27,2017, I posted a lengthy status update on my Facebook page. It concluded with these words:

For me, today is a day of both culmination and commencement. These two actions placed two too many straws on the back of the camel – the camel’s back is broken.

But it is also a day of commencement for me as I begin a renewed and stronger time of resistance. It is a day when I once again contemplate the actions that I am called to follow – both in Texas as well as in the nation.

Some will advise that I should not isolate myself in this manner. I am not able to pursue in any other approach at this time. I will repost my return to normal when, and if, this time of crisis is past. I hope you will thoughtfully read the blog posts that I publish, and I invite you to offer your comments to those posts. 

Thank you all for your patience. I covet your prayers and I pray with confidence that God will hear the prayers of all people.

For the foreseeable future this blog will be filled with my words, with the words of writers I respect and enjoy – writers who also provide inspiration and guidance, and comments from readers of this blog who would like to join in conversation. It is my intention to add a new post at least every other day. I hope that you will take the time to read thoughtfully and, if you desire, replay with your own thoughts.

Today I begin with the words of one of my favorite writers – Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Sorry your son’s real sick but … tough’

BY LEONARD PITTS, JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com
June 27, 2017 8:20 PM

He called it a lesson in “How Republicans are born.”

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader, was on Twitter Sunday, recounting how his 8-year-old “has been saving up to buy her first Guitar. Found it for $35. She had 35 exact. Then … sales tax.”

If he could, one suspects Norquist would have accompanied the last two words with scary music. Say, the shark theme from “Jaws” or the shower music from “Psycho.”

“Everybody run! It’s … it’s … the sales tax!”

The twitterverse, as you might expect, was only too happy to point out the obvious to Norquist and his traumatized daughter. Namely, that the tax on her guitar — that princely $2 and change — helps pay for the road over which the guitar traveled to the store. And the police who defend the store from being robbed. And the firefighters who respond if it catches fire. And, in whole or in part, the school where Norquist’s daughter learned to count to 35 in the first place.

But at risk of piling on, there is another point that bears making here, a simple and obvious one that tends to get lost in the GOP’s loud acrimony toward this government surcharge. Namely, that we pay taxes as an investment in the common good. It’s a prosaic, unlovely little ritual which is nevertheless more patriotic — and certainly more substantive — than fireworks on the Fourth of July.

That’s not to say it’s fun. Sacrifice seldom is. Nor is this an endorsement of wasteful government spending. To the degree Republicans or anybody else oppose that, no sensible person can disagree.

But as Norquist’s tweet suggests, the contention of many Republicans is not that over-taxing is bad, but that all taxing is bad. And that amounts to a retreat from the very idea of a common good. Exhibit A: the party’s latest proposal to overhaul healthcare, and the “Let ’em eat cake responses” to the idea that 22 million people will be be deprived of coverage in order to finance tax breaks for the very wealthy.

For example, Vice President Mike Pence touted this as a new system based on “personal responsibility.” He did not specify what failure of “personal responsibility” he finds in people with disabilities who won’t be able to get treatment under the Republican plan.

Kellyanne Conway opined that those who lose their Medicaid “can always get jobs.”

Which will doubtless surprise many low-income workers who depend on it. They thought they already had jobs, albeit jobs that don’t offer health insurance.

A woman on Twitter asked what will happen to her son “born at 26 weeks with a serious heart condition.” Another woman replied: “Sorry about your son, but what would he have done 200 years ago things are much better but nothing is promised to anyone.”

“Sorry about your son.”

There is something chilling about that dismissal, something deeply selfish and antithetical to a nation founded upon an ideal of individual human worth. One is reminded of a Springsteen song: “We Take Care of Our Own.”

But do we still believe that? Or are we now a nation where we only take care of ourselves?

“Sorry about your son?!”

No. That’s not good enough.

We pay taxes, fund libraries, schools, fire and police departments and, yes, healthcare, so that her son and all our sons and daughters have the best possible shot at the best possible life. At some point, you have to grow up and realize that you are not in this world only to gratify yourself, that each of us has an obligation to all of us, and that this is where our goodness — and thus, our greatness — resides.

That’s how Americans are born.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article158531204.html

About Leonard Pitts, Jr.

In a career spanning more than 35 years, Leonard Pitts, Jr. has been a columnist, a college professor, a radio producer and a lecturer. But if you ask him to define himself, he will invariably choose one word. He is a writer, period, author of one of the most popular newspaper columns in the country and of a series of critically-acclaimed books, including his latest, a novel called Freeman. And his lifelong devotion to the art and craft of words has yielded stellar results, chief among them the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

But that is only the capstone of a career filled with prizes for literary excellence. In 1997, Pitts took first place for commentary in division four (newspapers with a circulation of over 300,000) in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ Ninth Annual Writing Awards competition. He is a three-time recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Award of Excellence, and was chosen NABJ’s 2008 Journalist of the Year. Pitts is a five-time recipient of the Atlantic City Press Club’s National Headliners Award and a seven-time recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award.

In 2001, he received the American Society of Newspaper Editors prestigious ASNE Award for Commentary Writing and was named Feature of the Year – Columnist by Editor and Publisher magazine. In 2002, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists awarded Pitts its inaugural Columnist of the Year award. In 2002 and in 2009, GLAAD Media awarded Pitts the Outstanding Newspaper Columnist award. In 2008, he received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Old Dominion University.

Twice each week, millions of newspaper readers around the country seek out his rich and uncommonly resonant voice. In a word, he connects with them. Nowhere was this demonstrated more forcefully than in the response to his initial column on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Pitts’ column, “We’ll Go Forward From This Moment,” an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists, circulated the globe via the Internet. It generated upwards of 30,000 emails, and has since been set to music, reprinted in poster form, read on television by Regis Philbin and quoted by Congressman Richard Gephardt as part of the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address.

Leonard Pitts was born and raised in Southern California. He was awarded a degree in English from the University of Southern California at the age of 19, having entered school at 15 on a special honors program. Since 1995, he has lived in Bowie, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC with his wife and family.
From Meet Leonard Pitts, Jr. <http://www.leonardpittsjr.com/Biography.html&gt;