Native American Heritage Month

Dear Stephen,

November is Native American Heritage Month, so to honor this occasion we would like to bring back some of the articles that we've published over the years that address Indigenous people and places. Links can be found below, but to give a quick rundown:

A recent article by William Benemann ("Genderfluid Master of the Bizarre" - Sept-Oct 2022 issue) is all about one John Randolph, a descendant of Pocahontas and member of Congress beginning in the late 18th century who ignored the gender rules of the day and cut a flamboyant figure that everyone noticed but no one knew what to make of.

And article by Joan Roughgarden that discusses “two-spirit” people titled “What is Sex? What is Gender?” (Jan.-Feb. 2017). And reviews of two books about two-spirit people: A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby, reviewed by Jean Roberta in the Nov-Dec 2017 issue. And Reclaiming Two-Spirits Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal and Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers, reviewed by Vernon Rosario in the July-Aug 2022 issue.

A book review of Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod from the July-Aug. 2019 issue.

An interview with Indigenous gay scholar Daniel Heath Justice, conducted by Neil Ellis Orts, that ran in the Nov.-Dec. 2021 Issue.

And now some big news: Almost all BACK ISSUES of The G&LR are now available for purchase in both print and digital formats. Just click on the facsimile of the associated cover shown below. Or click the button below to peruse and purchase other copies of The G&LR.

If you aren’t already a subscriber, please accept my invitation to subscribe, which you can do so via the SUBSCRIBE button below.

Sincerely,

Stephen

Stephen Hemrick, Publisher

Back Issues

Features

Genderfluid Master of the Bizarre

By William Benemann

A descendent of Pocahontas, [John] Randolph reveled in his mixed-raced ancestry, crediting his Indian blood for the “wildness” in his nature. He felt that it was this untamed Native American spirit alone that allowed him to construct a masculine identity, despite his very feminine appearance. “Indeed I have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, that, but for a spice of the devil in my temper, would have consigned me to the distaff or the needle.”

What Is Sex? What Is Gender?

By Joan Roughgarden

These people include male-bodied individuals living as women and female-bodied individuals living as men. Here, at left, is a 1900 photograph of Osh-Tish, a well-known male-bodied two-spirit person from the Crow Nation of present-day Wyoming/Dakotas who lived as a woman. At right is an 1890 photograph of a female-bodied two-spirit person from the Quechuan area of Northwestern South America who lived as a man, specifically as a warrior. This warrior, dressed in male clothing, presents in a confident, almost jaunty manner, with no attempt to cover or bind the breasts. The middle panel is a painting of another female-bodied warrior from the Plains Indians. Notice the bare breasts. Two-spirited people assume cross-gender occupations. They do not try to hide or modify their anatomy, because in these cultures occupation rather than genital morphology is the marker of gender identity.

Daniel Heath Justice, Indigenous Gay Scholar

An Interview with Indigenous Gay Scholar by Daniel Heath Justice

Justice grew up in rural Colorado, the son of a Cherokee man and white woman. As a little boy, he was always drawn to stories, whether in written or oral form. This impulse led him into literature studies, first as an undergrad at the University of Northern Colorado and then while earning a doctorate in English from the University of Nebraska, where he specialized in Native American literature. ...

... This interview was conducted via Zoom.

Read the Interview

Book Reviews

Reclaiming Two-Spirits:

Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal and

Sovereignty in Native America

by Gregory D. Smithers, reviewed by Vernon Rosario

A SHORT REVIEW of Gregory D. Smithers’ Reclaiming Two-Spirits would report that he presents an LGBT-affirmative history of gender fluid Native Americans and how they had been valued as shaman healers within Indigenous communities. Centuries of European colonization and Christian evangelizing replaced this reverence with homophobia. Since the 1960s, brave LGBT Native activists and artists have battled homophobia within their families and racism in the dominant LGBT movement to reassert their sexuality and culture with its deep spiritual roots in the Two-Spirit tradition among First Nations.

A longer treatment is going to be politically bumpier and conceptually more complicated.

A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder

by Ma-Nee Chacaby with Mary Louisa Plummer, reviewed by Jean Roberta

Canada, like the U.S., has a shameful history of colonizing and systematically decimating its native population. Ma-Nee Chacaby, born in 1950, apparently escaped the forced assimilation of the residential school system, but her childhood in an isolated Anishinaabeg (indigenous) community in northern Ontario is described as far from idyllic, especially after the death of her beloved grandmother. ... Continue Reading

Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age

by Darrel J. McLeod, reviewed by Peter Marino

This memoir by writer and teacher Darrel J. McLeod, which won the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award in 2018, describes, often in graphic detail, the traumas that are probably typical for a Cree boy of his generation. ... Continue Reading