By Katie Redmiles, via First Peoples Worldwide

“Since the Indigenous people of America focused more on a person’s spirit to define their character, sexual orientation was not an identity factor. Instead what spirit, male or female, they embodied determined who they were. If both were present, they were seen as especially gifted.

What is quite unfamiliar to dominant culture today is that Native Americans not only raised these “Two-Spirit” members above others, but they understood them as existing not of either gender- as a transcendence of the two.”