Bruce Bagemihl - Biological Exuberance

3

Of course these four themes are not discrete or mutually exclusive, since they often overlap or interconnect in a particular culture, nor are they uniform either between or within cultures. They are used here simply as a way of organizing and discussing a wide range of beliefs and practices, thereby highlighting a number of their salient features. Throughout this section the “ethnographic present tense” is used, i.e., indigenous beliefs and practices are described as ongoing, contemporary occurrences even though some have been (or are being) actively suppressed and/or eradicated by colonizer and majority cultures and their legacy of homophobic attitudes (particularly in North America and Siberia). In spite of severe declines and disappearances in the face of nearly insurmountable obstacles, however, many of these traditions continue in altered form or are undergoing wholesale cultural revival; they should be considered neither “dead” nor “lost.”

4

For more information on Native American two-spirit, see, for example, Callender, C., and L. M. Kochems (1983) “The North American Berdache,” Current Anthropology 24:443–70; Williams, W. L. (1986) The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press); Allen, P. G. (1986) “Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures,” in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, pp. 245–61 (Boston: Beacon Press); Gay American Indians (GAI) and W. Roscoe, coordinating ed., (1988) Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology (New York: St. Martin’s Press); Jacobs, S.-E., W. Thomas, and S. Lang, eds., (1997) Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press); Roscoe, W. (1998) Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (New York: St. Martin’s Press).

5

Whitman, W. (1937) The Oto , pp. 22, 29, 30, 50 (New York: Columbia University Press); Callender and Kochems, “The North American Berdache,” p. 452.

6

Cushing, F. H. (1896) “Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths,” pp. 401–2, Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 13:321–447; Parsons, E. C. (1916) “The Zuni La’mana,” p. 524, American Anthropologist 18:521–28.

7

Boas, F. (1898) “The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians,” Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History 2(2):38–40 (reprinted in GAI and Roscoe, Living the Spirit, pp. 81–84); McIlwraith, T. F. (1948) The Bella Coola Indians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press); Gifford, E. W. (1931) “The Kamia of Imperial Valley,” pp. 79–80, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 97:1–94. The names of two other birds encountered by the Kamia two-spirit are also mentioned in this story ( tokwil and kusaul ), but Gifford does not identify which species these are.

8

Haile, B., I. W. Goossen, and K. W. Luckert (1978) Love-Magic and Butterfly People: The Slim Curly Version of the Ajilee and Mothway Myths, pp. 82-90, 161. American Tribal Religions, vol. 2 (Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona Press); Luckert, K. W. (1975) The Navajo Hunter Tradition, pp. 176-77 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press); Levy, J. E., R. Neutra, and D. Parker (1987) Hand Trembling, Frenzy Witchcraft, and Moth Madness: A Study of Navajo Seizure Disorders, p. 46 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press).

9

Wissler, C. (1916) “Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota,” pp. 92-94, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 11:1-99; Howard, J. H. (1965) “The Ponca Tribe,” pp. 142-43, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 195:572-97; Powers, W. (1977) Oglala Religion, pp. 58-59 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press); Thayer, J. S. (1980) “The Berdache of the Northern Plains: A Socioreligious Perspective,” p. 289, Journal of Anthropological Research 36:287-93; Williams, Spirit and the Flesh, pp. 28-29; Allen, “Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest”; GAI and Roscoe, Living the Spirit, pp. 87-89; Fletcher, A. C., and F. La Flesche (1911) “The Omaha Tribe,” p. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 27:16-672.

10

Kenny, M. (1975-76) “Tinselled Bucks: A Historical Study in Indian Homosexuality,” Gay Sunshine 26-27: 15-17 (reprinted in GAI and Roscoe, Living the Spirit, pp. 15-31); Grinnell, G. B. (1923) The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, vol. 2, pp. 79-86 (New Haven: Yale University Press); Moore, J. H. (1986) “The Ornithology of Cheyenne Religionists,” pp. 181-82, Plains Anthropologist 31:177-92; Tafoya, T. (1997) “M. Dragonfly: Two-Spirit and the Tafoya Principle of Uncertainty,” p. 194, in Jacobs et al., Two-Spirit People, pp. 192-200.

11

Kroeber, A. (1902-7) “The Arapaho,” pp. 19-20, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 18:1-229; Bowers, A. W. (1992) Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization, pp. 325, 427 (reprint of the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin no. 194, 1965) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).

12

Pilling mentions the “wolf power” attributed to the well-known cross-dressing Tolowa shaman, also known as Doctor Medicine (Pilling, A. R. [1997] “Cross-Dressing and Shamanism among Selected Western North American Tribes,” p. 84, in Jacobs et al., Two-Spirit People, pp. 69-99). Turner reports the well-known Snoqualmie shaman who, though biologically male, was “like a woman” and had Grizzly Bear and Rainbow powers (Turner, H. [1976] “Ethnozoology of the Snoqualmie”, p. 84 [unpublished manuscript, available in the Special Collections Division, University of Washington Library, Seattle, Wash.]). Another possible association of Bears with sexual and gender variance has been reported (and widely cited) for the Kaska Indians: Honigmann mentions that cross-dressing women who were raised as boys, perform male tasks, and may have homosexual relationships with other women wear an amulet made of the dried ovaries of a Bear, tied to their inner belt and worn for life, to prevent conception (Honigmann, J. J. [1954] The Kaska Indians: An Ethnographic Reconstruction, p. 130, Yale University Publications in Anthropology no. 51 [New Haven: Yale University Press]). However, Goulet has challenged and reinterpreted this example, specifically with regard to the claims of cross-dressing, homosexual involvements, and the uniqueness of the Bear amulet to these supposedly gender-mixing females (Goulet, J.-G. A. [1997] “The Northern Athapaskan ‘Berdache’ Reconsidered: On Reading More Than There Is in the Ethnographic Record,” in Jacobs et al., Two-Spirit People, pp. 45-68).

13

Miller, J. (1982) “People, Berdaches, and Left-Handed Bears: Human Variation in Native America,” Journal of Anthropological Research 38:274-87.

14

Among the Hopi people, a parallel view exists regarding hawks and eagles: these creatures are all thought of as mothers, and individual raptors are sometimes even given names such as Female Bear for this reason (Tyler, H. A. [1979] Pueblo Birds and Myths , p. 54 [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press]).

15

For indigenous views on bears and menstruation, as well as further information on the Bear Mother figure, see Rockwell, D. (1991) Giving Voice to Bear: North American Indian Rituals, Myths, and Images of the Bear, pp. 14-17, 123-25, 133 (Niwot, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart Publishers); Buckley, T., and A. Gottlieb (1988) Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation, p. 22 (Berkeley: University of California Press); Shepard, P., and B. Sanders (1985) The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature, pp. 55-59 (New York: Viking); Hallowell,A. I. (1926) “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere,” American Anthropologist 28:1-175; Rennicke, J. (1987) Bears of Alaska in Life and Legend (Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart).