Two-spirit

The two-spirit contingent marches at San Francisco Pride in 2013
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Two-spirit (also known as two spirit or occasionally twospirited)[a] is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) social role in their communities.[1][2][3][4]

Coined in 1990 as a primarily ceremonial term promoting community recognition, in recent years more individuals have taken to self-identifying as two-spirit. Two-spirit, as a term and concept, is neither used nor accepted universally in Native American cultures. Indigenous cultures that have traditional roles for gender-nonconforming people have names in their own Indigenous languages for these people and the roles they fill in their communities.

The initial intent in coining the term was to differentiate Indigenous concepts of gender and sexuality from those of non-Native lesbians and gays[5] and to replace the pejorative anthropological terms that were still in wide use.[6] Although the term "two-spirit" has been controversial since its adoption,[7] it has experienced more academic and social acceptance than the term berdache, which it was coined to replace.[6][8][9] The government of Canada officially uses 2SLGBTQI+[b] as an alternative to the established acronym of LGBTQI+,[10] sometimes shortened to 2SLGBT or a similar variant.

Early adopters stated that a two-spirit identity does not make sense outside of a Native American or First Nations cultural framework[3][2][11] and its use by non-Natives is seen as a form of cultural appropriation.[12]

The gender-nonconforming or third-gender ceremonial roles traditionally embodied by some Native American and Indigenous peoples in Canada that may be encompassed by modern two-spirit people vary widely, even among the Native individuals or cultures that use the term. Not all of these cultures have historically had roles for gender-variant people, and among those that do, no one Indigenous culture's gender or sexuality categories apply to all Native people.[13][14]


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  1. ^ Estrada, Gabriel (2011). "Two Spirits, Nádleeh, and LGBTQ2 Navajo Gaze". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 35 (4): 167–190. doi:10.17953/aicr.35.4.x500172017344j30.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference NYT2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Pruden, Harlan; Edmo, Se-ah-dom (2016). "Two-Spirit People: Sex, Gender & Sexuality in Historic and Contemporary Native America" (PDF). National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-07-08. Retrieved 2017-10-01.
  4. ^ Hauser, Raymond E.; Roscoe, Will (1993). "The Zuni Man-Woman". Ethnohistory. 40 (1): 126. doi:10.2307/482173. ISSN 0014-1801. JSTOR 482173.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jacobs2-3,221 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Pember1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kehoe was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "Two Spirit 101 Archived 2014-12-10 at the Wayback Machine" at NativeOut: "The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, 'passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.'" Accessed 23 Sep 2015
  9. ^ Medicine, Beatrice (August 2002). "Directions in Gender Research in American Indian Societies: Two Spirits and Other Categories". Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. 3 (1). International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology: 7. doi:10.9707/2307-0919.1024. ISSN 2307-0919. Archived from the original on 2012-12-08. Retrieved 2016-06-25. At the Wenner Gren conference on gender held in Chicago, May, 1994... the gay American Indian and Alaska Native males agreed to use the term "Two Spirit" to replace the controversial "berdache" term. The stated objective was to purge the older term from anthropological literature as it was seen as demeaning and not reflective of Native categories. Unfortunately, the term "berdache" has also been incorporated in the psychology and women studies domains, so the task for the affected group to purge the term looms large and may be formidable.
  10. ^ What is 2SLGBTQI+? Government of Canada
  11. ^ Vowel, Chelsea (2016). "All My Queer Relations - Language, Culture, and Two-Spirit Identity". Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada. Winnipeg: Highwater Press. ISBN 978-1-553-79680-0.
  12. ^ Borresen, Kelsey. Here's What It Means To Be 'Two-Spirit,' According To Native People, via Huffington Post. 8 September 2022.
  13. ^ de Vries, Kylan Mattias (2009). "Berdache (Two-Spirit)". In O'Brien, Jodi (ed.). Encyclopedia of gender and society. Los Angeles: SAGE. p. 64. ISBN 9781412909167. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
  14. ^ Pember, Mary Annette (October 13, 2016). "'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes". Rewire. Retrieved October 17, 2016.