Two-Spirit

Two-Spirit (also two spirit or, occasionally, twospirited) 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.

History
According to German anthropologist Sabine Lang, cross-dressing of two-spirit people was not always an indicator of gender identity. Lang believes "the mere fact that a male wears women's clothing does not say something about his role behavior, his gender status, or even his choice of partner". Other anthropologists may have mistakenly labelled some Native individuals two-spirit or berdache because of a lack of cultural understanding, specifically around an Indigenous community's worldview, and their particular customs concerning clothing and gender.

When colonizers arrived, they were confused by the sight of Two-Spirit people, who would often wear both traditionally female and traditionally male clothing. They created the word “berdache,” which has a very offensive and homophobic meaning. This word, along with European homophobia, made its way into the Indigenous way of life.

With the creation of Reservations through the Indian Appropriations Act (1851), the colonizers began to control the Indigenous and Two-Spirit communities. They began to force Two-Spirit people to dress as the gender they were assigned at birth, and if they failed to comply, they would kill them, sometimes even feeding them to dogs. Many Two-Spirit people were forced to deny who they were to survive.

In the 1870s, the Catholic Church and Canadian Government created Residential Schools in order to forcefully assimilate the Indigenous communities into the colonizer’s way of life. These institutions forced heteronormativity onto the Indigenous communities and enforced strict female/male gender roles.

Both these major injustices contributed to the creation and elongation of homophobia in Indigenous communities where none previously existed. This forced assimilation caused the loss of Two-Spirit roles and stories, with many Indigenous communities forgetting all their history. Pruden explained how the historical trauma the Indigenous communities had to face has trickled down into each new generation, causing intergenerational trauma and the continuation of this taught homophobia.

Recourses
Two-spirit - Wikipedia