Indigenous American Perspectives on Sexual and Racial Identity

Despite the reationship between sexual and racial identity development presented in European American models, for Indigenous American lesbian, gay, or bisexual people, the effects of racism and homophobia cannot be separated from each other or from the rest of their experiences. The emphasis of the Indigenous American worldview on the interconnectedness of all aspects of an individual's life challenges the compartmentalized structure of developmental stage models. As Pueblo psychologist and educator Terry Tafoya states, "[D]etermination of an individual's identity on the basis of sexual behavior makes no conceptual sense to many American Indians" (1989, p. 288). That is, any presentation of sexual and racial identity development as two distinct phenomena and any analysis proceeding from that assumption cannot adequately describe the experiences of Indigenous American people.

Furthermore, Indigenous Americans may respond to homophobia and racism in markedly different ways than people from other cultures. For example, if she respects the Ethic That Anger Not Be Shown, she may appear not to react to the "-isms" that affect her. If she uses the Conservation-Withdrawal Tactic or the Notion That Time Must Be Right in her response, the strength of her resistance might not be recognized. Also, the Ethic of Non-Interference would require her friends and family to respect and trust the choices she makes.

Two-Spirit Identity Formation

Because there is limited research and few case studies available on the developmental experiences of gay and lesbian Indigenous Americans, in the following section I will use my life experiences to illustrate both the impact of racism and homophobia (including sexism) on identity development, and the ill fit between current identity development theory and an Indigenous American reality.⁵

I grew up in northern Canada in a very small, isolated Cree community that could only be reached by boat in the summer or by plane in the winter. After I was born, as was the custom, elders came to visit, bringing gifts and blessing me as the newest member of their community. We returned to my father's home community, a reserve on the edge of a pulp mill town, before I was five. Some of my first memories of that town are of racism, although at the time I did not have a name for the meanness I experienced. I knew that unfair things were happening to me because I was an Indian, but I couldn't make the conceptual leap required to understand that racism meant, for example, that I was not allowed to play inside the homes of some of my White school friends. My family was a place of strength and support, where we spoke, listened, and answered with respect. I was never made to feel wrong there. As I grew older, I dreamt of hockey and minibikes. I preferred to play with "boy's toys," so my parents sensibly brought me Hotwheels instead of Barbies. Later, I was allowed to hunt with a gun, and moosum, my grandfather, taught me and my brothers how to make snares to trap ermines and rabbits on the frozen creek behind our house. In my family, I was taught what I wanted to learn.

I remember dancing at a gathering when I was ten or eleven. Everyone was dancing around and around the reserve hall to the powwow music that was piped in over the bingo loudspeaker system. Back then the dance was an ordinary thing. Some people wore bits of regalia. Most of us, though, just wore jeans and sweatshirts. I was really enjoying myself, dancing the way that I wanted to. I was picking up my feet and even taking spinning steps at times. The old people were watching from the chairs on the side in encouraging silence, clapping their knees and smiling, inviting us to continue. Everything seemed so natural. I was learning new steps by watching what others were doing and learning the Cree songs in my head.

Then a friend danced up along side of me and told me to quit dancing like a boy. Confused, wondering how I could dance the wrong steps, I stopped. After that evening, I became self-conscious about the toys I wanted to play with. Knowing became not knowing, and the sureness of my experience was replaced by a growing certainty that I could not be the girl that was wanted outside of my family. Being "different" was no longer a gift, and my self-consciousness led me to learn ways to pretend and ways to hide myself. I would play sports with my younger brothers and their friends but was wary around kids my own age. When I was fourteen, I was given the hockey skates I wanted, but when we had skating at school, rather than showing up in "boy's" skates, I pretended that I didn't have any. By that age, I understood that sexist judgments directed at me had a homophobic subtext, but I did not grasp the extent of their effect on me. I sat alone on the sideline benches that winter.

As I grew older, racism continued to erode my self-confidence and pride. Eventually I refused to identify as Cree, acknowledging only my Scottish heritage, although everyone in our small community knew my family. When I was in town I would avoid my relatives. I would even pass right by moosum without saying hi, acknowledging him only out of the corner of my eye. He knew what was going on: I was embarrassed to be related to him. At the same time as I struggled with my Cree identity, I was beginning to realize that I was a lesbian. The combination of racism and homophobia, much of it internalized, was very devastating for me; I didn't finish high school. I moved to the nearest city, in part to get away from the racism of the small town that surrounded our community, and in part to explore my new-found sexuality in a more anonymous way. I was looking for the idealized gay world that I had caught sight of in movies, in books, and on television. Somehow, I had lost my place in my own community as a result of the move, combined with how I felt.

In the city, I began a pre-medical study program at a university by enrolling as a mature student.⁶ There were twelve Indigenous students in the program; six of us were two-spirit. However, we did not acknowledge it, and it was only when most of us had quit university that we realized we had experienced the same struggles at the same time. The "coming out" process was not easy for any of us. For example, as an Indigenous woman, I could not find a positive place for myself in the predominantly White, gay scene. I looked there for support in my lesbian identity, and instead found another articulation of racism. Although a large number of gay and lesbian Indigenous people live in the city, the Indigenous community remains segregated from the mainstream, non-Indigenous gay and lesbian community.

Immersion in the White, gay party scene became a way to numb a growing depression. I remember the excitement of getting ready to go out for the evening. I studied the culture: the way people danced, dressed, talked, moved, and even the way everyone greeted each other with a hug. This was all new to me, and I dove into that culture with anthropological zeal, hoping to uncover the secrets of it strangeness. I cut my hair, as though proclaiming a new identity was enough to make me belong in the lesbian and gay community. I know that, in Cree tradition, we cut our hair when we are in mourning. When someone we are related to or someone we love dies, a part of ourselves dies. It is a personal ceremony. The hair, usually a braid, is buried in a quiet safe place where no people or animals can step on it or disturb it. There I was with a flattop, shaved on the sides and short, spiky, and flat on the top. My hair was everywhere on the floor of the flashy salon of a new-found friend. People were stepping on it, walking through it, and eventually it just ended up in the garbage along with everyone else's. A connection with my community was buried in that garbage can.

The support of my family, culture, and spiritual traditions helped me through this period. When I "came out" to my parents, they were not shocked by my confession and told me that they already knew. This puzzled me. How could they know and I didn't? I understand now that they respected me enough not to interfere, and enough to be confident that I would come to understand my sexuality when the time was right. Throughout my life, my family had acknowledged and accepted me without interference: my grandfather gave me hunting lessons and my parents brought me the toys that I would enjoy. As I was told by another child that I danced the "wrong" dance, the elders of my community smiled and clapped, quietly inviting me to continue. My development has obviously been shaped by a traditional Indigenous worldview.

I came to be empowered by who I was, rather than disempowered by who I wasn't. In the context of Native spirituality, I learned about the traditions of two-spirit people. I acquired strength from elders and leaders who were able to explain that as an Indigenous woman who is also a lesbian, I needed to use the gifts of my difference wisely.

Even my "maladaptive" responses to homophobia and racism can be understood as at least in part shaped by traditional values. The Conservation-Withdrawal Tactic and the Ethic That Anger Not Be Shown are both resistive responses that can easily be misread as passive acceptance. In Cree culture, "Silence" does not equal "Death," and to "Act Up" should not lead us to remove ourselves from our community. If it does, we seem most often to quietly find our way back home.⁷ When confronted with racism and homophobia, I had internalized many of the devaluing judgments of the dominant culture. As I struggled with my racial and sexual identity, I had looked for affirmation by immersing myself in the minority cultures to which I belonged. Most significant, though, is the fact that when I sought support in the mainstream lesbian and gay community, it simply was not there.

This struggle is very typical of the "coming out" experiences of Indigenous people. As I reflect on the lives of my Indigenous friends, I realize that those of us who are happy have achieved our presence within the Indigenous American community. Two-spirit identity is rarely recognized in the mainstream lesbian and gay community unless it is accompanied by romantic notions that linger from the concept of the berdache. We are either Spanbauer's "holy man who fucks" or "just a fuckin' Indian."⁸

What this means, then, is that the positive bicultural adaptation that sexual and racial identity development models prize is simply not available to most of us. Although elements of my life could be neatly arranged into these identity models, this partial fit does not mean that a model expresses a life story, or even a simple developmental sequence.

It is possible for psychological theory to illuminate our understanding of the identity development of two-spirit people. Unlike the three theories discussed earlier, Robinson and Ward's (1991) work with African American adolescent girls uncovered an important distinction between strategies for survival and strategies for liberation. While survival strategies move the girls further from their true selves, liberation strategies strengthen their voices because they are "alternative avenues to personal empowerment and positive change" (p. 96). Robinson and Ward place the girls' experiences within a worldview that emphasizes an identity that is strengthened by a sense of interconnectedness with others.

This extended sense of self that Robinson and Ward offer is similar to an Indigenous worldview and includes a sort of timelessness, one that includes not only those of us here now, but also those who have come before us and those who will follow. Within this worldview, the girls' strategies are forms of resistance. Within Robinson and Ward's construct, the choices I made throughout my adolescence and early adulthood could be seen as short-term survival strategies. For two-spirit people, this can emerge from a commitment to community and collective experience, to creative and courageous action, and to an intimately spiritual worldview. This is how I have negotiated my own identity in the distance that stretches between the values of my culture and the values of Western culture.

Gloria Anzaldua (1990), in the introduction to her collection of writing by women of color, calls such survival strategies "making face," the way that we must become "like a chameleon, to change color when the dangers are many and the options few" (p. xv). Quick fixes, like wishing away my skates, dropping out of school, and walking past moosum, were strategies that pushed me away from my sense of self and my sense of community. Did racism force me out of my home town, or did I choose to distance myself from my community? When confronted with racism and homophobia, I internalized many of the devaluing judgments of the dominant culture. Leaving my home community was an attempt to leave behind my devalued status, to become "raceless." However, it removed me from the strength and support I found in my community. I was even more of an "other" in the city than I was at home, even farther from a place where my self could be found.

Returning Practice to Theory

Last summer, I was part of a gathering of two-spirit people. When I first arrived, I was cautious. Everyone seemed cautious, as though we were all unsure of how we should act. On the wall of the main cabin a sign was posted; it said, "pow-wow, Saturday night." When I read it, I felt dizzy, overwhelmed by my imagining what the dance might be. Two-spirit people dancing. I have lived with dreams of dancing, dreams where I spin around, picking up my feet. I have many feathers on my arms and my body and I know all the steps. I turn into an eagle. Arms extended, I lift off the ground and begin to fly around in big circles. Would this be my chance?

For the rest of the week I listened for tidbits about the pow-wow. I learned that a local drum group would be singing. I heard about a woman who was collecting her regalia �?"Her regalia . . . " �?and wondered, did that mean men's? I waited patiently for Saturday night to come. Listening.

When the drumming started, I was sitting still, listening and watching. The first people to dance were women. They had their shawls with them. Next, some men came in; they were from different Nations, but still danced in distinctively male styles. I watched with disappointment in my heart but said to myself that I would still enjoy the pow-wow. And then a blur flew by me and landed inside the circle of dancers that had formed. It was a man in a jingle dress. He was beautiful and he knew how to dance and he danced as a woman. It was a two-spirit dancing as it should be. After that, more two-spirits drifted into the circle. I sat and watched, my eyes edged with tears. I knew my ancestors were with me; I had invited them. We sat and watched all night, proud of our sisters and brothers, yet jealous of their bravery. The time for the last song came. Everybody had to dance. I entered the circle, feeling the drumbeat in my heart. The songs came back to me. I circled the dance area, in my most humble moment, with the permission of my ancestors, my eleven-year-old two-spirit steps returned to me.

The aspect of my own experience (and that of my two-spirit friends) that current sexual and racial identity development models cannot encompass is that my strength and identity, along with the strength and identity of my peers, is inseparable from our culture. Educators and school counselors need to acknowledge that this is the reality for our community. This means that we need to stop assuming that all lesbian and gay people can find support in mainstream gay culture, and that we make a point of creating opportunities for two-spirit indigenous people to find their place in their traditional communities. There has been little research done on the developmental experiences of Indigenous American people, and there is almost no research on the experiences of two-spirit people, despite grim statistics that reveal the urgency of addressing the needs of these groups. Gay and lesbian youth are two to six times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual teens (Kroll & Warneke, 1995), and Indigenous Canadians have the highest suicide rate of any racial group in the world (York, 1990).

Whenever possible, we need to ensure that two-spirit youth have access to the history and unwritten knowledge of their community, and that it is available to them in a culturally congruous way. Educators can also easily access written texts by important Indigenous American leaders, such as Beatrice Medicine (1983), Terry Tafoya (1989, 1990), Chrystos (1988, 1991, 1993), Connie Fife (1992, 1993), and Beth Brant (1985, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1995). These authors ground their work in their identities as Indigenous Americans, and they offer insight into the historic and present-day realities of two-spirit people. Tafoya's work as a psychologist and educator has made invaluable contributions to an effective approach to AIDS education for Indigenous American people. Two-spirit writers such as Chrystos, Connie Fife, and Beth Brant provide stories and narrative texts that record the contemporary life of two-spirit people. Their body of work is a rich resource for identity development theorists, and an invaluable affirmation for two-spirit youth.

Educators and developmental theorists need to study the resistance, strength, and liberation strategies two-spirit people employ as part of their development of an empowered identity. By examining the meaning of these strategies relative to an Indigenous American worldview, educators and theorists can increase their awareness in a way that will inevitably have a spill-over effect. They will learn to look beyond the limits inscribed by mainstream lesbian and gay culture and into the lives of the women, men, and children who are lesbian, gay, and two-spirit. We, whether educators, Indigenous Americans, or two-spirit people, must abandon the assumptions of a European American worldview in order to understand the identity development of two-spirit Native American and Canadian First Nations people, and to develop our theory and practice from within that understanding.