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Indigenous and Native LGBTQIA+ Communities
In many indigenous communities around the world, cultural concepts about gender and sexuality do not necessarily include binary genders or adhere to traditional Abrahamic understandings of sexuality (heterosexuality and homosexuality) as they arise from this view of gender. Many indigenous cultures have long traditions of third and fourth genders, genderless statuses, and some make no distinction between sexual orientations entirely. The heteronormative, gender binary perspective imposed by Western Powers during the Age of Colonialism, for many reasons, saw these conquered cultures as a threat to their own values and culture, and worked actively to oppress those practicing them and erase them from history. As balance of power has shifted and many indigenous communities have worked to regain different levels of autonomy previous lost under colonialism, individuals in these communities have also started to rediscover and reclaim these lost parts of their culture.
It is important to note that LGBTQIA+ identities as we understand them in a modern sense do not necessarily describe the experiences of these genders and sexualities. In some of these native cultures, being a particular gender or orientation has its own set of social codes, and some are tied to spiritual experiences and roles in their communities that go back thousands of years. Some of these cultures has egalitarian attitudes toward these identities, while others also included elements of oppression or discrimination. Many members of these communities who identify in this way have expressed strong opposition to being categorized under the LBGTQIA+ framework, while others have embraced it.
What does it mean to be "Two Spirits?" or "Indigiqueer"
In North American Indigenous Communities particularly, the history of colonialism saw concerted efforts of genocide and cultural erasure as white colonizers sought to eliminate native tribes to seize their lands. Like in many colonial enterprises, and entire lexicon of offensive terms was employed to further marginalize and stereotype surviving individuals, pressuring them to submit and assimilate. Two-Spirits, or 2S is a term originally coined in the 1990's during a tribal council in Manitoba, in efforts to replace some of these outdated and offensive terms. During this time, many tribal individuals were attempting to reconnect with the traditional gender and sexual identities of their ancestral cultures, in which being indigenous was the most vital component of their experience. For some North American Tribes, their cultural understanding of a third gender was of a person possessing the spirits of two individuals, one of a male and one of a female gender. However, there is a vast amount of difference between the experiences of different tribes, and the amount of cultural diversity between all Native American and First Nations people is often not appreciated due to the centuries of efforts of erasure. While Two-Spirits remains a pan-indigenous North American identity, it does not describe every Native American non binary gender or sexuality. Many tribal members identify exclusively as the gender or role in their tribal society. More recently, the term "Indigiqueer" has begun replacing "Two-Spirits," as many younger tribal members see it as more inclusive to the different native cultural understandings of gender and sexuality.
Where to Learn More
Intersectional Social Justice
Put simply, intersectionality is the concept that all oppression is linked. More explicitly, the Oxford Dictionary defines intersectionality as “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage." Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalize people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc. First coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw back in 1989, intersectionality was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2015 with its importance increasingly being recognized in the world of civil rights.
Opponents to social justice movements have characterized Intersectionality as a "oppression olympics," wrongly purporting that is overlooks their own personal struggles. This straw man argument is built on seeing justice as a zero sum game where there is only "so much" public understanding and change possible.