Are there any accounts of native American homosexuality?

by parst

Was there any writing or other indications describing anything gay?

InsanelyJo

Yes. In many tribes including, but not limited to, the Lakota, Navajo, Hopi, Choctaw, Ojibwe.

These Indengenous North Americans called homosexuals "two spirits" referring to the person having both a masculine and feminine side. These two spirits were actually widely respected in Native American communities. Many people believed that having sexual relations with a two spirit would grant them magical powers, or make them more masculine. Female two spirits often married other females, while male two spirits married other males or sometimes females. Many men preferred to marry a male two spirit after their first wife had died, because the two spirit could focus on raising the male's children, inable to produce his own.

manzana9

Hey there,

Here are some more sources regarding "two spirited" Indigenous people(s) on Turtle Island/North America. Just a little note-- though the term "two spirited" is commonly used in discourse concerning homosexuality of North American Indigenous people(s), it's not historically or culturally ubiquitous (the terminology of it) in Indigenous communities which acknowledged and facilitated gender fluidity, shifting gender roles, multiple genders, etc.

Sources: Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang's collection "Two-spirit people: Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality."

Sabine Lang's "Men as women, women as men: Changing gender in Native American cultures."

Walter L. Williams' "The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture."