Two Spirit
Hawaii’s Bishop Museum revisits its history of gender-fluid healers
More than 500 years ago, Hawaiians placed four boulders on a Waikiki beach to honor visitors from the court of Tahiti’s king who had healed the sick. They were “mahu,” which in Hawaiian language and culture refers to someone with dual male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits. A new…
Queerguru’s Ris Fatah reviews WILDHOOD a beautiful ‘two-spirit’ coming of age story
Wildhood is a beautiful queer coming of age story set within Canada’s first nation Mi’kmaq people, a community over 14,000 years old, based in rural Nova Scotia. The road movie introduces us to Link, (Phillip Lewitski), a Two-Spirit, half Mi’kmaq teenager, and his younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony). The term Two-Spirit loosely refers to…
The definition of Two-Spirit and the traditions behind it
Two-Spirit is a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial and social role in their cultures. The term was created in 1990 at the Indigenous LGBTQ international gathering in Winnipeg, and “specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples.” The…
Being Thunder : the story of an indigenous Two Spirit Teen
French filmmaker Stéphanie Lamorré’s heart-touching documentary on teenage Sherenté Mishitashin is another very welcome contribution to the burgeoning dialogue about the transgender community. Sherenté is a gender-queer Two-Sprit teenager and a member of the Narragansett Tribal Nation in Rhode Island and this is their story. Lamorré’s very discreet camera captures a very determined and…
