RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Until Europeans took over North America, there was no gender pattern deemed normal among American ethnic groups. Unlike our society, American Indians had a multiplicity of genders, neither establishing one as a rule nor turning others into abnormalities or something to avoid.
Many possibilities
According to the Indian Country Today digital platform, North America’s native communities recognized the following genders: female, male, female of two spirits, male of two spirits and transgender. According to the Indians, people with both female and male characteristics were regarded as highly gifted by nature, able to glimpse the two sides of everything.
The people in the communities were valued for their contributions, and not for being either men or women. Before the westernization of these peoples, the children’s clothes were gender-neutral, and there was no ideal about how people of a certain sex should behave.
“Each group has its own specific term, but there was a need for a universal term that the general population [of English speakers] could understand. The Navajo refer to Two Spirits as Nádleehí (someone who is transformed)”.
“Among the Dakota ethnicity there is the word Winkté (indicative of a man who is compelled to behave like a woman), Niizh Manidoowag (two spirits) among the Ojíbuas, and Hemaneh (half man, half woman) among the Cheyenne, to name a few,” states the website.
The tradition of the Two Spirits was one of the first things that the settlers wanted to destroy. This way of living had to be eradicated before it could be recorded in books, and it was continuously persecuted during the massacre of these peoples.
The Osh-Tisch Warrior
One of the Two Spirits Indians most recalled was a Dakota warrior called Osh-Tisch. Born a man and then marrying a girl, he lived adorned in women’s clothes and behaved like a woman on a daily basis. On June 17th, 1876, Osh-Tisch became famous for rescuing a member of his community during the Battle of Rosebud Creek.
“The Two Spirits people in pre-contact Native America were highly revered, and the families that included them were considered lucky. The Indians believed that a person capable of seeing the world through the eyes of both sexes was a gift from the Creator,” says Indian Country Today.
As the colonization progressed, religious influences were devastating to these people. In countless cases, people with Two Spirits had to choose between ceasing to be who they were, denying their traditions and customs, or ending their lives. Many of them chose the second option.
Source: Aventuras na História
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