Two-Spirit
by Susan Stryker, Director, GLBT Historical Society
In honor of American Indian Heritage month, it seems only fitting to
point out the inspiration that the GLBT movement has drawn from the native
"two-spirit" tradition for more than 30 years. Pictured here is Harry Hay, a
Euro-American man who founded the pioneering "homophile" organization, the
Mattachine Society, in Los Angeles in 1950.
As a child on his relative's
western Nevada ranch, Hay had had a life-altering encounter with Wovoka, the
legendary Indian spiritual leader credited with originating the Ghost Dance
religion in the late 19th-century. According to Hay's biographer, Stuart
Timmons, the conceptual framework Hay developed for understanding
homosexuality was patterned on the American Indian "berdache"
institution, in which individuals in some tribes adopted social gender roles that
contradicted European cultural expectations for people of their
particular biological sex.
Hay later became directly involved in the Native
American political movement, helping establish the Committee for Traditional
Indian Land and Life in 1967. He spent several years in the 1970s living in the
pueblos of New Mexico, an experience that deepened his long-held
conviction that saner, healthier, life-affirming alternatives to modern capitalist
society cold be found in traditional Native American cultures.
Native American and white gay influences spread in both directions.
Building on ties with the national gay liberation and feminist movements that Hay
had helped forge, Randy Burns and Barbara Cameron founded Gay American
Indians in San Francisco in 1975. Hay became involved with the Radical Faeries, a
gay men's spiritual movement that drew its inspiration in part from Indian
ideas about humanity's relationship to the natural environment, as well as from
anti-patriarchal Goddess worship. In the accompanying photo by Walter
"Butterfly" Blumoff, Hay wears a sacred Faerie shawl.
|
|
| PlanetOut Direct |
News to You
Get PlanetOut News headlines mailed directly to you now!
|
|
Search
