In Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba in Canada, at an intertribal conference of Native American and First Nations people in 1990, Myra Laramee, Cree, coined the term Two-Spirit. A translation of the Anishinaabe phrase niizh manidoowag which means “two spirits,” a contemporary umbrella term for Indigenous people with both masculine and feminine spirits.

Prior to the conference, anthropological, scholarly and academic writings used the term “berdache,” to describe historical accounts of their limited understanding of who they perceived as homosexual, transgender, and intersex people. This derogatory French term translates to “male whore” or a “kept boy.”

The creation of the term Two-Spirit was a reclamation of sacred relatives’ identities. It began as a decolonial remembering of cultural identity that honored the traditional roles and spiritual beliefs among a range of diverse Native peoples that had been violently suppressed and condemned since colonization began.

Full Article