Indigenous Literature with

a Queer/LGBT/Two-Spirit Sensibility

 

Taken from the Archives of the University oF Richmond

 

A Note about the List:

This list is a general resource, being neither exhaustive nor authoritative.  Not everyone on this list is LGBT/Queer/Two-Spirit; some are included because of their sensitivity to Queer issues and sensibilities.  Inclusion (or exclusion) of writers from this list should not be construed as verification of their sexual orientations, gender identities, or opinions regarding LGBT issues. 

 

 

kateri akiwenzie-damm (Anishinaabe)

My Heart is a Stray Bullet
bloodriver woman

 

Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene)

            The Toughest Indian in the World

            The Business of Fancydancing (film)

            Old Shirts and New Skins

 

Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo/Sioux)

            Life is a Fatal Disease: Selected Poems 1964-94

The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

            The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

 

Beth Brant (Bay of Quinte Mohawk)

            Writing as Witness: Essay and Talk

            Mohawk Trail

            Food and Spirits: Stories

 

Chrystos (Menominee)

            Dream On

            Fire Power

            In Her I Am

Not Vanishing

 

Qwo-Li Driskill (Cherokee/Osage/Lenape/Lumbee)

Book of Memory: Honor Poems

Burning Upward Flight  

www.dragonflyrising.com

 

Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa)

            Love Medicine

            The Antelope Wife

            The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

 

Janice Gould (Koyangk′auwi Maidu)

            Earthquake Weather

            Beneath My Heart

 

Joy Harjo (Mvskoke)

            In Mad Love and War

A Map to the Next World

            She Had Some Horses

 

Tomson Highway (Cree)

            Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

            Kiss of the Fur Queen

            The Rez Sisters

 

Maurice Kenny (Mohawk)

            Backward to Forward: Prose Pieces

            Tekonwatonti/Molly Brant: Poems of War

 

Janet McAdams (Creek)

            The Island of Lost Luggage

 

Deborah Miranda (Esselen/Chumash)

            Indian Cartography

 

(Rollie) Lynn Riggs (Cherokee)

            The Cherokee Night

The Cream in the Well

The Iron Dish

 

Gregory Sarris (Miwok/Pomo)

            Grand Avenue

            Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts

            Watermelon Nights

 

Gregory Scofield (Métis)

            I Knew Two Metis Women

            Love Medicine and One Song

            Thunder Through My Veins: Memories of a Métis Childhood

 

James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk)

            Combing the Snakes from His Hair

 

Craig S. Womack (Muskogee Creek/Cherokee)

            Drowning in Fire

Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism

           

 

 

 

Other writers

Joanne Arnott (Anishinaabe/Lakota)

Cathie Dunsford (Hawaiian)

Connie Fife (Cree)

Jewell Gomez (Wampanoag/Ioway)

Carole laFavor (Anishinaabe)

Vickie Sears (Cherokee)

Alice Walker (Cherokee)

 

 

 

Selected Secondary Sources

 

 

 

A Note About Terminology:

Indigenous people identify same-sex eroticism and non-dualistic concepts of gender by many names, and we have attempted to respect that diversity here.  Different communities have different terms and understandings—such as winkte and koskalaka (as per Allen) among Lakotas and nádleeh among Navajos—that do not always translate into Eurowestern concepts of sexuality and gender.   As most of these concepts are tribally-specific and thus not universal, we have generally kept with the inclusive acronym LGBTQ, the broader “Queer,” or the contemporary pan-Native “Two-Spirit.”  The latter is a contested term, as it collapses cultural differences into a binary concept that is not equally applicable or relevant to all Indigenous communities.  Nevertheless, many contemporary Native people embrace the concept of Two-Spirit, so we acknowledge it here along with LGBTQ and Queer.  The term “berdache,” however, is a different matter.  It is used by some of the secondary sources (particularly Will Roscoe), but it is strongly disliked by most LGBTQ/Queer/Two-Spirit people, and is generally perceived as an insult.

 

 

Allen, Paula Gunn.  "Beloved Women: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures." Conditions: Seven 3.1 (Spring 1981): 67-87.

Brant, Beth.  “From the Inside – Looking at You.”  Canadian Woman Studies – Les Casiers de la Femme, 14.1 (Fall 1993): 16-17.

- - -.   “Giveaway: Native Lesbian Writers.”  Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 18.4 (Summer 1993): 944-47.

Brown, Lester B.  Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women and Gay Men.  Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park P, 1997.

Cameron, Barbara. "No Apologies: A Lakota Lesbian Perspective." The New Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book. Ed, Ginny Vida. New York: Touchstone, 1996.  234-36.

Carocci, Massimiliano.  “The Berdache as Metahistorical Reference for the Urban Gay American Indian Community.”  Present is Past: Some Uses of Tradition in Native Societies.  Ed. Marie Mauze.  Landam, MA: UP of America, 1997.

Cochran, Jo Whitehorse.  “From a Long Line of Contrary Folks.” The New Lesbian Studies: Into the Twenty-First Century.  Ed. Bonnie Zimmerman and Toni A.H. McNaron.  New York: Feminist P, 1996.

Cornell, Daniel.  “Woman Looking: Revis(ion)ing Pauline’s Subject Position in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks.”  Studies in American Indian Literatures 4.1 (Spring 1992): 49-64.

Deschamps, Gilbert.  We Are Part of a Tradition: A Guide on Two-Spirited People for First Nations Communities.  Mino-B’maadiziwin Project.  Toronto: 2-Spirited People of the First Nations, 1998.

·  www.2spirits.com

Dickinson, Peter. Here is Queer: Nationalisms, Sexualities, and the Literatures of Canada.  Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1999. 

Douglas, Carol Anne.  “Judith Witherow: A Storyteller.”  Off Our Backs: A women’s Newsjournal, 29.2 (February 1999): 14-17.

Driskill, Qwo-Li.  “My Dragonfly Tongue.”  Mavin 6 (2002): 60-61.

Eberly, David.  “Poetry: Two Spirit.”  International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 6.3 (2001): 221.

Elledge, Jim, ed.  Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Myths from the Arapaho to the Zuni: An Anthology.  American Indian Studies Ser. 13.  New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

Gay American Indians and Will Roscoe, eds.  Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology.  New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.

Gould, Janice.  “Disobedience (in Language) in Text by Lesbian Native Americans.”  ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 25.1 (January 1994): 32-44.

Grahn, Judy. "Strange Country This: Lesbianism and North American Indian Tribes." Journal of Homosexuality. 12.3-4 (1986): 43-45.

Holford, Vanessa. "Re-Membering Ephanie: A Woman's  Recreation of Self in Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Owned the Shadows." SAIL 6.1 (1994): 99-113.

Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang. Two Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality.  Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997.

·  A particularly culturally-sensitive and intellectually-rigorous scholarly analysis of Two-Spiritedness in contemporary Native North America.  Much stronger and more respectful to tribal specificity than the works of Brown, Roscoe, or Williams.  Includes numerous Native contributors.

Lang, Sabine.  “Lesbian, Men-Women and Two-Spirits: Homosexuality and Gender in Native American Cultures.”  Female Desires: Same Sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures.  Ed. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa.  New York: Columbia UP, 1999.

Little Thunder, Beverly. "Native American Spirituality." The New Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book. Ed, Ginny Vida. New York: Touchstone, 1996. 185-87.

Medicine, Beatrice.  Learning to be an Anthropologist and Remaining “Native”: Selected Writings.  Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. 

·  In particular, see “Changing Native American Roles in an Urban Context and Changing Native American Sex Roles in an Urban Context” and “Warrior Women”: Sex Role Alternatives for Plains Indian Women.”

Miranda, Deborah.  "Dildos, Hummingbirds, and Driving Her Crazy: Searching for Native American Women's Erotics."  Frontiers 23.2 (2002).

Moon, Michael.  “Whose History? The Case of Oklahoma.”  A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader.  Ed. Martin Duberman.  New York, New York UP, 1997.  

Prince-Hughes, Tara.  The Two-Spirit Heritage: Gender and Social Responsibility in Fiction by Native American and Alternative Gender Writers.  Dissertation Abstracts International, Ann Arbor, MI.  September 1998.

- - -.   “Contemporary Two-Spirit Identity in the Fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant.”  SAIL 10.4 (Winter 1998): 9-31.

Osborne, Karen Lee.  “Swimming Upstream: Recovering the Lesbian in Native American Literature.”  Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies and Cultural Politics.  Ed. William J. Spurlin.  Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.

Roscoe, Will.  Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.

- - -.   “Was We’wha a Homosexual? Native American Survivance and the Two-Spirit Tradition.”  A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 2.3 (1995): 193-235.

Tafoya, Terry.  "Native Gay and Lesbian Issues: The Two-Spirited." Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Among Lesbians and Gay Men. Ed. Beverly Greene. Vol. 3. SAGE Publications, Inc: Thousand Oaks, 1997. 1-9.

Tafoya, Terry and Douglas A. Wirth.  “Native American Two-Spirit Men.”  Men of Color: A Context for Service to Homosexually Active Men.  Ed. John F. Longres.  Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park P, 1996: 51-67. 

Thomas, Wesley and Sue-Ellen Jacobs.  “’…And We Are Still Here’: From Berdache to Two-Spirit People.”  American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23.2 (1999): 91.

VanDyke, Annette.  “The Journey Back to Female Roots: A Laguna Pueblo Model.”  Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Racial Revisions.  Ed. Karla Jay, Joanne Glasgow, and Catherine Stimpson.  New York: New York UP, 1990.

Williams, Walter L.  The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.  Boston: Beacon, 1992.

Wilson, Alex. "How We Find Ourselves: Identity Development and Two-spirit People." Harvard Educational Review. 66.2 (1996): 303-317.

Womack, Craig S.  “Howling at the Moon: The Queer but True Story of My Life as a Hank Williams Song.”  As We Are Now: Essays by Urban Mixedbloods.  Ed. W. S. Penn.  Berkeley: U of California P, 1998. 

- - -.   “Lynn Riggs as Code Talker: Toward a Queer Oklahomo Theory and the Radicalization of Native American Studies.”  Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism.  Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999: 271-303.

- - -.   “Politicizing HIV Prevention in Indian Country.”  Native American Religious Identity: Unforgotten Gods.  Ed. Jace Weaver: New York: Orbis P, 1998.