Post by blackcrowheart on Jan 15, 2008 12:04:33 GMT -5
Views: Remembering Two-Spirits This Weekend
by Rev. Irene Monroe
2007-11-21
As I prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, I am reminded of
the autumnal harvest time's spiritual significance. As a time of
connectedness, I pause to acknowledge what I have to be thankful
for. But I also reflect on the holiday as a time of remembrance
-- historical and familial.
Historically, I am reminded that for many Native Americans,
Thanksgiving is not a cause of celebration, but rather a National
Day of Mourning, remembering the real significance of the first
Thanksgiving in 1621 as a symbol of persecution and genocide of
Native Americans and the long history of bloodshed with European
settlers.
I am also reminded of my Two-Spirit Native American brothers
and sisters who struggle with their families and tribes not
approving of their sexual identities and gender expressions as
many of us do with our families and faith communities.
"Yes, there's internalized homophobia in every gay
community, but as Native Americans we are taught not to like
ourselves because we're not white. In our communities, people
don't like us because we're gay," Gabriel Duncan, member of Bay
Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS), told the Pacific News
Service.
And consequently, many Two-Spirit Native Americans leave
their reservations and isolated communities hoping to connect
with the larger LGBTQ community in urban cites. However, due to
racism and cultural insensitivity, many Two-Spirits feel less
understood and more isolated than they did back home.
But homophobia is not indigenous to Native American culture.
Rather, it is one of the many devastating effects of colonization
and Christian missionaries that today Two-Spirits may be
respected within one tribe yet ostracized in another.
"Homophobia was taught to us as a component of Western
education and religion," Navajo anthropologist Wesley Thomas has
written. "We were presented with an entirely new set of taboos,
which did not correspond to our own models and which focused on
sexual behavior rather than the intricate roles Two-Spirit people
played. As a result of this misrepresentation, our nations no
longer accepted us as they once had."
Traditionally, Two-Spirits symbolized Native Americans'
acceptance and celebration of diverse gender expressions and
sexual identities. They were revered as inherently sacred
because they possessed and manifested both feminine and masculine
spiritual qualities that were believed to bestow upon them a
"universal knowledge" and special spiritual connectedness with
the "Great Spirit." Although the term was coined in the early
1990s, historically Two-Spirits depicted transgender Native
Americans. Today, the term has come to also include lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and intersex Native Americans.
The Pilgrims, who sought refuge here in America from
religious persecution in their homeland, were right in their
dogged pursuit of religious liberty. But their actual practice
of religious liberty came at the expense of the civil and sexual
rights of Native Americans.
And the Pilgrims' animus toward homosexuals not only
impacted Native American culture, but it also shaped Puritan law
and theology.
In the New England states, the anti-sodomy rhetoric had
punitive if not deadly consequences for a newly developing and
sparsely populated area. The Massachusetts Bay Code of 1641
called for the death of not only heretics, witches and murderers,
but also "sodomites," stating that death would come swiftly to
any "man lying with a man as with a woman." And the renowned
Puritan pastor and Harvard tutor, the Rev. Samuel Danforth in his
1674 "fire and brimstone" sermon preached to his congregation
that the death sentence for sodomites had to be imposed because
it was a biblical mandate.
Because the Pilgrims' fervor for religious liberty was
devoid of an ethic of accountability, their actions did not set
up the conditions requisite for moral liability and legal
justice. Instead, the actions of the Pilgrims brought about the
genocide of a people, a historical amnesia of the event, and an
annual national celebration of Thanksgiving for their arrival.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush ironically -- if not
ignorantly -- designated November as "National American Indian
Heritage Month" to celebrate the history, art, and traditions of
Native American people. As we get into the holiday spirit, let
us remember the whole story of the arrival of the Pilgrims and
other European settlers to the New World.
On a trip home to New York City in May 2004, I went to the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to view the UNESCO
Slave Route Project, "Lest We Forget: the Triumph Over Slavery,"
that marks the United Nations General Assembly's resolution
proclaiming 2004 "The International Year to Commemorate the
Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition."
In highlighting that African Americans should not be shamed
by slavery, but instead defiantly proud of our memory of it, I
read the opening billboard to the exhibit that stated, "By
institutionalizing memory, resisting the onset of oblivion,
recalling the memory of tragedy that for long years remained
hidden or unrecognized and by assigning it its proper place in
the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember."
It is in the spirit of our connected struggles against
discrimination that we can all stand on a solid rock that rests
on a multicultural foundation for a true and honest Thanksgiving.
And in so doing, it helps us to remember, respect, mourn and
give thanks to the struggles not only our LGBTQ foremothers and
forefathers endured, but also the ongoing struggle our Native
American Two-Spirit brothers and sisters face everyday -- and
particularly on Thanksgiving Day.
by Rev. Irene Monroe
2007-11-21
As I prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, I am reminded of
the autumnal harvest time's spiritual significance. As a time of
connectedness, I pause to acknowledge what I have to be thankful
for. But I also reflect on the holiday as a time of remembrance
-- historical and familial.
Historically, I am reminded that for many Native Americans,
Thanksgiving is not a cause of celebration, but rather a National
Day of Mourning, remembering the real significance of the first
Thanksgiving in 1621 as a symbol of persecution and genocide of
Native Americans and the long history of bloodshed with European
settlers.
I am also reminded of my Two-Spirit Native American brothers
and sisters who struggle with their families and tribes not
approving of their sexual identities and gender expressions as
many of us do with our families and faith communities.
"Yes, there's internalized homophobia in every gay
community, but as Native Americans we are taught not to like
ourselves because we're not white. In our communities, people
don't like us because we're gay," Gabriel Duncan, member of Bay
Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS), told the Pacific News
Service.
And consequently, many Two-Spirit Native Americans leave
their reservations and isolated communities hoping to connect
with the larger LGBTQ community in urban cites. However, due to
racism and cultural insensitivity, many Two-Spirits feel less
understood and more isolated than they did back home.
But homophobia is not indigenous to Native American culture.
Rather, it is one of the many devastating effects of colonization
and Christian missionaries that today Two-Spirits may be
respected within one tribe yet ostracized in another.
"Homophobia was taught to us as a component of Western
education and religion," Navajo anthropologist Wesley Thomas has
written. "We were presented with an entirely new set of taboos,
which did not correspond to our own models and which focused on
sexual behavior rather than the intricate roles Two-Spirit people
played. As a result of this misrepresentation, our nations no
longer accepted us as they once had."
Traditionally, Two-Spirits symbolized Native Americans'
acceptance and celebration of diverse gender expressions and
sexual identities. They were revered as inherently sacred
because they possessed and manifested both feminine and masculine
spiritual qualities that were believed to bestow upon them a
"universal knowledge" and special spiritual connectedness with
the "Great Spirit." Although the term was coined in the early
1990s, historically Two-Spirits depicted transgender Native
Americans. Today, the term has come to also include lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and intersex Native Americans.
The Pilgrims, who sought refuge here in America from
religious persecution in their homeland, were right in their
dogged pursuit of religious liberty. But their actual practice
of religious liberty came at the expense of the civil and sexual
rights of Native Americans.
And the Pilgrims' animus toward homosexuals not only
impacted Native American culture, but it also shaped Puritan law
and theology.
In the New England states, the anti-sodomy rhetoric had
punitive if not deadly consequences for a newly developing and
sparsely populated area. The Massachusetts Bay Code of 1641
called for the death of not only heretics, witches and murderers,
but also "sodomites," stating that death would come swiftly to
any "man lying with a man as with a woman." And the renowned
Puritan pastor and Harvard tutor, the Rev. Samuel Danforth in his
1674 "fire and brimstone" sermon preached to his congregation
that the death sentence for sodomites had to be imposed because
it was a biblical mandate.
Because the Pilgrims' fervor for religious liberty was
devoid of an ethic of accountability, their actions did not set
up the conditions requisite for moral liability and legal
justice. Instead, the actions of the Pilgrims brought about the
genocide of a people, a historical amnesia of the event, and an
annual national celebration of Thanksgiving for their arrival.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush ironically -- if not
ignorantly -- designated November as "National American Indian
Heritage Month" to celebrate the history, art, and traditions of
Native American people. As we get into the holiday spirit, let
us remember the whole story of the arrival of the Pilgrims and
other European settlers to the New World.
On a trip home to New York City in May 2004, I went to the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to view the UNESCO
Slave Route Project, "Lest We Forget: the Triumph Over Slavery,"
that marks the United Nations General Assembly's resolution
proclaiming 2004 "The International Year to Commemorate the
Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition."
In highlighting that African Americans should not be shamed
by slavery, but instead defiantly proud of our memory of it, I
read the opening billboard to the exhibit that stated, "By
institutionalizing memory, resisting the onset of oblivion,
recalling the memory of tragedy that for long years remained
hidden or unrecognized and by assigning it its proper place in
the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember."
It is in the spirit of our connected struggles against
discrimination that we can all stand on a solid rock that rests
on a multicultural foundation for a true and honest Thanksgiving.
And in so doing, it helps us to remember, respect, mourn and
give thanks to the struggles not only our LGBTQ foremothers and
forefathers endured, but also the ongoing struggle our Native
American Two-Spirit brothers and sisters face everyday -- and
particularly on Thanksgiving Day.