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INDIGENOUS IDENTITY: Reclaiming Two-Spirit roles across Native nations

Two-Spirit people have always existed in Indigenous nations, carrying sacred responsibilities and shaping community life. Today their voices are guiding a resurgence that honors tradition while confronting ongoing colonial harm.

This article is part of an ongoing series of stories by ICT examining the complicated issues of Indigenous identity.

by Luna Reyna

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.
What is Two-Spirit and who can call themselves Two-Spirit?

As the term has grown in popularity and more Indigenous people have begun using it, non-Natives have also become aware of the term and have confused its meaning. Who it represents has become a hot topic online with non-Natives assuming that Two-Spirit is a simple translation of non-binary.

This is incorrect, according to Indigenous Two-Spirit leaders.

“It’s a term by and for Indigenous people,” said Dr. Roger Kuhn, faculty lecturer of American Indian studies at San Francisco State University. Kuhn is also a board member and community organizer of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirit Powwow and previous member of the LGBTQ+ advisory committee of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

“It’s by and for Indigenous people, and then within that it is for people who have variance of gender and sexual orientation,” Kuhn said, who is Muscogee Poarch Creek.

Two-Spirit people may be gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, or occupy identities with no direct Western equivalent, according to Kuhn. The unifying thread is not a particular gender or sexuality, but the shared experience of being Indigenous and navigating gender or sexual variance within communities shaped by colonization.

“This is a term that we use in their colonial language. English is a colonizer’s language,” Kuhn continued. “It’s our unifying term, and it’s a way to let folks know that we are different. We’re different because we have a different lived experience than other LGBTQIA+ people. So Two-Spirit is that term that unifies us.”

For Kuhn, after centuries of dispossession, forced assimilation, and erasure, Two-Spirit stands as a reclaimed word in the colonizer’s language — an act of resistance and re-centering.

“They took everything else from us,” Kuhn said.

He explained that Two-Sprit is a unifying term that allows Indigenous LGBTQIA+ people to articulate their distinct experiences under colonial rule, and to collectively pursue cultural restoration and ancestral connection.

While many non-Native LGBTQ+ people resonate with the term’s beauty, the identity is rooted in Indigenous worldview and ceremonial roles that cannot be separated from their cultural origins, said Elton Naswood, executive director of the Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ Center for Equity, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advocacy resources, violence prevention, and healing in the Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ and broader communities.

To identify as Two-Spirit is not only to name oneself within a spectrum of gender and sexuality, but also to inherit responsibilities passed down through individual tribal traditions, and teachings, Naswood said, who is Navajo.

According to Naswood, without that lineage, the term risks becoming an act of appropriation rather than belonging. He echoes who he calls his Native Hawaiian sister, Kumu Hina, who describes the sacred “mahu magic” of her own people — a cultural knowledge and spiritual understanding that cannot be translated simply by adopting a label.

A major goal of the center is restoring the traditional roles of Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ relatives.

Vaquero Azul, who is Taino, Maya, Otomi, highlights the responsibility that comes with using a term rooted in Anishinaabe tradition. The term exists today because Anishinaabeg leaders chose to share it at a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ and Indigenous organizing, but sharing does not mean universal ownership.

He said social media often flattens the nuance, and points out that people often assume that visibility means invitation, or that quietness means shame. Instead, he emphasizes that Native people relate to the term in different ways, each with their own histories and intentions.

“Sometimes things are just for specific groups of people and that’s okay,” Azul said.

Azul is a trans masculine and Two-Spirit Mesoamerican illustrator whose grandparents migrated here from what is now Mexico. His work focuses on Mesoamerican trans joy. He also does costume designs for the LGBTQ2IA+ folklórico group Danza Monarcas. The dance performance is part of an exhibit called “Nuestra Euforia/Our Euphoria.” The art and the dance are rooted in the celebration of Indigenous and queer identity.

Naswood, Kuhn and Azul make clear that Two-Spirit is far more than a pan-Indigenous synonym for queer or trans. It is a culturally grounded identity, an inheritance, a responsibility, and a form of resistance. It is a term that belongs to Indigenous people and will grow, evolve, and be held in as many different, beautiful ways as the people.
Traditional roles and leadership

The role Two-Spirit people traditionally played in their own communities differs from nation to nation, but Two-Spirit people were always leaders and caregivers in some way in their communities, Naswood said. The histories of Two-Spirit and gender-diverse Indigenous people reveal long-standing traditions of social responsibility, spiritual leadership, and community care.

Naswood explained that in Lakota communities, individuals known as winkté held highly respected ceremonial roles. Their presence was not peripheral but central to cultural life. For example, they were traditionally sought out to select the Sundance pole. Naswood describes this “in-between energy,” as a sacred gift that allowed winkté community members to mediate between the people and the Creator.

Similar histories exist across many Native nations.

Naswood pointed to We’wha of the Zuni Pueblo, who would now be understood as a Native trans woman. We’wha was an accomplished potter, weaver, and cultural diplomat.

We’wha’s community affirmed her significance and role caring for orphans and children who had lost parents, fulfilling a traditional caretaker role often held by gender-diverse individuals. She also served as a community leader, traveling to Washington, D.C., to meet former President Grover Cleveland while wearing traditional women’s regalia, which she was later buried in. Naswood believes that is a clear sign of cultural acceptance.

Another example comes from Navajo history in the story of Hastíín Klah, a renowned nádleehí who served as both a trader and a respected medicine person. Klah held ceremonial authority and was entrusted with weaving designs associated with powerful deities that were typically reserved for women.

Two-Spirit and gender-diverse ancestors held essential, honored roles that contemporary leaders like Naswood are working to revitalize and reclaim today.
Modern roles, leadership, and policies

Across the Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ+ communities, contemporary leadership is emerging in ways that both honor traditional roles and respond to urgent modern needs.

For Naswood, stepping into leadership required first accepting the cultural weight of the term Two-Spirit. Naswood spent years discerning whether he was ready to claim the term because doing so meant committing to cultural service.

“I wanted to make sure that I would allow myself to offer those cultural teachings, those understandings in the role,” Naswood said.

Leadership today also involves navigating generational shifts.

Younger relatives often feel connected to their Native and LGBTQ+ identities but may hesitate to take on the responsibilities associated with a Two-Spirit role. Many use the term Indigequeer to reclaim identity while acknowledging that they are not ready, or not interested, in taking on traditional responsibilities. Naswood celebrates this and said both terms represent cultural reclamation.

But Naswood said he sees Native trans people and gender-diverse relatives already fulfilling essential roles in cultural spaces, grounded in a worldview that understands gender as circular and fluid rather than linear and Western.

As anti-trans policies intensify nationwide, Naswood and other advocates have been called to national spaces, including the National Congress of American Indians, to speak on how tribal leadership can protect Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ members.

Out of the 574 federally recognized tribes, only a handful have inclusive laws, according to Naswood. His organization is now working alongside the University of California in Los Angeles’ tribal law program to assess tribal codes, provide strategies for change, and support tribes in revising their policies.

Revitalizing NCAI’s long-dormant Two-Spirit task force has become part of this work, bringing openly Two-Spirit tribal leaders together to organize, educate, and advocate.

For others, leadership emerges through acts of cultural resurgence rooted in community love.

Kuhn describes witnessing a powwow grand entry spiraling inward, feeling overcome by Vnokeckv, the Muscogee Poarch Creek word for community love.

“I just felt so overwhelmed,” Kuhn said. “And I just thought, this is what that word means. This is it. This is that word in action right now.”

That moment shaped his work as a psychotherapist, activist, and powwow organizer.

Kuhn sees Two-Spirit powwows as sites of cultural healing and decolonial practice, spaces where individuals see themselves reflected in dancers, drummers, vendors and know they belong. His work reveals the deep continuity between pre-colonial Two-Spirit traditions and contemporary leadership. Historically, Two-Spirit people cared for children, carried out naming ceremonies, created art, and tended to the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of their people. Today, Kuhn sees Two-Spirit therapists, community organizers, and artists fulfilling those same responsibilities in modern forms.

He recalls watching a former Two-Spirit student he supported while working in a high school walk into the powwow years later hand in hand with their partner.

“They came back a couple of hours later just beaming with joy, and so happy,” Kuhm said. “To me, that’s what that powwow is about, it’s about folks feeling that love.”

Azul’s leadership emerges through art, fashion, and cultural reclamation. Disturbed by the rising rates of trans femicide — the intentional killing of transgender women or transfeminine people because of their gender identity — in Mexico, and the erasure of Indigenous and Mexican trans artists in queer art spaces, he created Nuestra Euforia, an exhibit that centers trans and queer Indigenous voices, presented in both English and Spanish.

His artistry is deeply tied to heritage. Having learned to sew from his grandmother, cultural fashion is a site of resistance and joy. He designed folklórico skirts featuring pride, trans, lesbian, and bisexual, flags. His leadership also challenges gendered constraints within traditional arts, disrupting assumptions about who can sew, create, or lead in these spaces.

Through exhibitions, workshops, and community education, Azul builds bridges for queer Mexican youth who fear they must choose between family, culture, and identity.

“With a lot of my artwork, I get a lot of queer Mexican youth who didn’t feel like they could be themselves, and when they see my art, they feel very joyous and excited,” Azul said. “But I always hear about the grief and the pain of their own family rejecting them because of their queerness, that they lost community and culture and healing, and that’s where I’m trying to be that bridge to tell people, ‘Hey, you don’t have to lose that. There are community spaces. They do want you to be there, and they do celebrate your queerness.’”
Do all Native people use the term Two-Spirit?

Azul, Kuhn, and Naswood emphasized that because Two-Spirit is an umbrella term that encompasses hundreds of different Native nations, it should not be assumed that every Indigenous person with a gender- or sexuality-diverse identity identifies this way.

The term’s meaning varies from nation to nation, shaped by distinct languages, histories, and ceremonial traditions.

For instance, Naswood doesn’t use the term Two-Spirit in all contexts. When he is home on the Navajo Nation, the English phrase does not translate accurately into Diné language or worldview. A literal translation evokes a duality of “good spirit” and “bad spirit,” a meaning that doesn’t reflect Navajo understandings of gendered or social roles.

Instead, Navajo communities historically recognized people like him with terms such as nádleehí, meaning “the changing one,” which reflects fluidity, transformation, and the longstanding presence of multiple gender identities within Diné culture. He notes that Navajo teachings include six to nine gender identities, each associated with specific responsibilities.

Naswood encourages Indigenous people to reclaim their own nation-specific terms wherever possible.

“Words are powerful,” Naswood said. “We don’t just make up words. They come with stories.”

Rediscovering or revitalizing these terms confirms cultural continuity and gives communities language that reflects their own realities rather than those imposed through colonization.

He points to experiences in Tongva and southern California communities, where Spanish missions suppressed Indigenous identities, yet elders have preserved words for gender-diverse people, including terms specifically for trans women.

The survival of such terminology demonstrates that these identities have deep roots across many tribal nations.

The same applies for Kuhn from his Muscogee Poarch Creek identity. The word he uses for himself is Ennvrkvpv meaning “the middle” or Wednesday expressing gender as a center point.

“What I love about that, then I can go left, right, up, down, I can go around the circumference or the inside of the circumference,” Kuhn said. “It means that my gender, my orientation, is limitless to me.”

He does not know whether the term was used historically for gender-diverse people or if colonization fractured the language and culture in his ancestral homelands.

“We don’t know if this was actually traditional or not, but that’s the word we’re using,” Kuhn said. “That’s what I love about being a Two-Spirit person, is that in the reclamation of my identity, I can also reclaim parts of my culture that were taken from me.”

Azul is reconnecting with his Mesoamerican heritage and echoed the idea that Two-Spirit as a meaningful placeholder. He is trying to learn Náhuatl, Otomí, and Mayan languages but has yet to find words for gender-diverse identities within those peoples.

“I’m still seeking the words for the equivalent of Two-Spirit in my cultural languages,” Azul said. “I have the guidance of multiple Two-Spirit, Mesoamerican or Mexican elders who identify as Two-Spirit. We understand it’s a part of our journey with language revitalization. It’s a place holder for me, at this moment that I honor and hold with so much love.”

Many Mexican and Central/South American Indigenous communities have been heavily impacted by colonization, border politics, and lack of tribal recognition, leaving many people “detribalized” or culturally displaced.

For Azul and many others, Two-Spirit provides belonging while they search for nation-specific terminology. He plans to switch terms whenever he finds his community’s own word.

Azul also stressed that many Indigenous people from Latin America lack a tribal ID, and face barriers in U.S.-based Indigenous events, or are folded into broad labels like “Hispanic” that obscure Indigenous identity. This creates obstacles to cultural recognition even as they work to reconnect.
An act of reclamation and remembering

The term Two-Spirit is an act of returning to cultural truth for many Indigenous people. This reclamation reflects both a shared struggle against colonial erasure and a shared commitment to remembering who Indigenous people were before that violence.

For Azul, Two-Spirit identity is a commitment to healing gendered harms and breaking down colonial gender roles within his community. He describes helping women reconnect with their fire and their right to be loud and powerful, while helping men learn that vulnerability, emotion, and accountability are strengths. This reshaping of gender expectations distorted by colonial religion and patriarchy is decolonization.

His artistic practice is another form of remembering.

After his chest surgery, he began depicting in the fullness of his transmasculine identity, blending queer aesthetics with his love of traditional Charro styles. He deliberately creates the representation he always wished existed.

Azul explained that generational religious trauma pushed queer relatives into silence or exile. He hopes that by being visible, by speaking openly, by creating sober and safe spaces outside nightlife, he can help the next generation avoid that isolation.

One of his elders, Ixtlixochitl Salinas White Hawk, told him that the goal is not reconnecting but remembering. That the knowledge survives in small, everyday acts like the medicine made from cactus, embroidery passed down, tamales prepared with care, a drum circle, a healing session, a conversation that lasts five minutes but opens a door.

“The remembering is so vital because we have had it, and it’s been in little ways of survival. I remember my abuelita taking cactuses and pulling them apart and making them into medicine, and I remember the embroidery she taught me being from my cultural backgrounds, and all these details that still survived,” Azul said. “How do I help bring community to find jumping points to start off with on their journey of remembering … My hope is that they can learn something, versus them feeling too scared to ask.”

This resurgence extends far beyond North America, Naswood said.

Indigenous communities in places like Australia, New Zealand, and throughout South America have asked to use the term Two-Spirit because it resonates with their own cultural efforts to reclaim gender and sexual diversity.

Naswood said this is not appropriation but solidarity and evidence of communities remembering that queer and gender-diverse Indigenous people have always existed, even when colonial violence tried to suppress that memory.

At the same time, Naswood acknowledges that many tribes have experienced such deep colonization that their traditional identities and roles for gender-diverse people have not yet been revitalized.

He encourages those nations to begin the work of re-remembering by talking to their elders and to the Two-Spirit people already in their communities.

He has witnessed how powerful this can be during his time at the Red Circle Project in Los Angeles. Displaced Indigenous relatives found grounding and belonging when he introduced the term Two-Spirit to them.

“When I introduced the term Two-Spirit, people gravitated to it because it gave them a sense of who they were, an identity that they were able to share. And that is a beautiful thing,” he said.

In a political moment marked by renewed attacks on Indigenous rights, Naswood said this resurgence is part of a larger movement of Indigenous peoples standing up, reclaiming identity, and refusing to be erased.

“Our American government is trying to demean us, take away our rights, but then this is maybe a time where tribal communities can begin to stand up and include us more effectively and aggressively,” Naswood said.

Reclamation is inseparable from decolonization, especially around sexuality and gender, Kuhn said. Through his years of study in human sexuality, anthropology, and psychotherapy, he repeatedly witnessed academia default to European frameworks.

Eventually, he reached a breaking point.

At San Francisco Pride, he marched with a sign reading “Decolonize Sexuality,” even before he had fully articulated what that meant.

“I was still having to dissect Euro ideology and translate that into an Indigenous worldview,” Kuhn said. “And I was tired of it. I was emotionally tired of it. I was academically tired of it. Something had shifted in me as an activist, as a student, as a clinician. From then forward, I really started to think about how we can decolonize sexuality.”

Over time, he realized that decolonization must extend beyond land to include the bodies, genders, and sexualities living on that land. Colonialism weaponized sexuality against Indigenous people, especially Two-Spirit people, by imposing rigid binaries, policing gender expression, and excluding gender-diverse relatives from ceremony.

“If we think about decolonization as this act of land, it’s this land based ideology, though the bodies on that land have been impacted by colonial ideology, and in particular around sexuality, and when we think about Two-Spirit people and how our orientation and how our gender has been weaponized against us through that colonial view, I then have to say, decolonize sexuality, because to me, it’s important to remind folks that land is inclusive of the bodies on the land,” Kuhn explained.

Kuhn argues the parallel task is what he calls, “unsettling,” meaning non-Native people confronting privilege, interrogating inherited power, and refusing to bypass their complicity in colonial systems.
Future hopes

Collectively, Naswood, Kuhn, and Azul share a longing for futures where Two-Spirit and Indigequeer people are visible, safe, connected, and culturally affirmed.

Looking ahead, Naswood hopes for a renewed gathering of the surviving founders of the Two-Spirit term who sat around the fire at the original 1990 gathering and to bring younger generations into that dialogue.

With elders passing and histories at risk of being lost, Naswood dreams of returning to the roots of the term, asking whether it still reflects its intended meaning, exploring how it might grow, and documenting the wisdom of Two-Spirit elders before it disappears. For him, evolving the term must be intergenerational, intentional, and rooted in care.

Kuhn also wants to bridge the gaps between generations.

“When I think about sexuality, one of the things that really impacted a lot of Two-Spirit people was HIV and AIDS,” Kuhn said. “We lost so many folks who are older than us, and so this generation of elders aren’t there.”

He hopes for more intentional collaboration between youth and elders, where stories, skills, and ceremonial responsibilities can be passed forward before they are lost.

“We need that collaborative space, because we need to know who’s available to do that work, who wants to do that work, who can get the education and be brought into that tradition in a good way,” Kuhn said. “If we lose that collaboration, we lose the culture, we lose the tradition. So that’s my hope, is that we build these bridges so that these rolls are not forgotten about.”

Kuhn hopes the future includes political changes.

Anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation is inherently anti-Indigenous, he said, because these laws rely on the same Christian, colonial frameworks once used to attack Indigenous sovereignty and identity.

“It has to be in order for the government to contain their control and domination over us,” Kuhn said. “It has to be anti-Indigenous. It may not be worded that way but that is what it is.”

Azul dreams of a future where Indigenous queer and trans people are safe and welcome.

“I want to be able to see for the future that we don’t have to live in survival mode all the time,” Azul said. “I want us to be able to feel safe in our communities and not go into spaces where we’re not really thought of.”

He imagines a future where intentional spaces for Two-Spirit and Indigequeer healing are not rare exceptions but common, cared for, and year-round. He wants events that extend beyond Pride Month and beyond token representation. Spaces where his community can gather, celebrate, reconnect, and simply exist without explaining themselves.

“I think a lot of people tend to forget that coming out isn’t just a one off, that it is daily wherever we go, because we’re living in such a system that assumes straight and heterosexual,” Azul said. “So that’s my hope, is one day we don’t have to deal with this all the time. We can just exist and be respected.”
Supporting Two-Spirit relatives

Across their stories, Naswood, Kuhn, and Azul offer a collective roadmap for what true support looks like, both within Indigenous communities and among non-Indigenous allies.

Supporting Two-Spirit and Indigequeer relatives requires more than symbolic gestures or celebration during Pride Month. It demands cultural safety, structural change, policy inclusion, and everyday acts of care, they said.

One of the most urgent areas of support is within tribal cultural spaces, where gender expectations can still be rigid, Naswood said.

Issues like binary restroom policies or ceremony leaders enforcing skirt wearing rules can re-traumatize Two-Spirit people and exclude them from spiritual practices intended to heal.

Naswood explained that these protocols often come from misunderstandings rather than tradition and tribal communities can choose to change them.

He recalls a sweat lodge in South Dakota where the lodge keepers invited participants to choose whichever lodge felt right for them.

“It just felt so good to go in the lodge that I prefer,” Naswood said.

Naswood also stresses the responsibilities that Two-Spirit people also carry when entering sacred spaces such as powwow arenas.

As a drag queen and former Miss Montana Two-Spirit, he once struggled with how to enter grand entry without disrespecting ceremony. After seeking guidance from elders, he found a balance that honored both tradition and authenticity.

His presence inspired other Two-Spirit dancers who came forward to thank him for showing up.

“I was able to do the ground entry and afterwards was so amazing,” Naswood said. “After I finished, I had more than a handful of dancers that came up, a majority of them being Two-Spirit and they’re like, ‘We’re so glad you were here.’ That did my heart good.”

Kuhn speaks candidly about the rage born from centuries of violence, erasure, and ongoing political attacks that many Two-Spirit people live with. Instead of turning inward or self-destructing, he channels that rage into community organizing, and building spaces of joy.

“We need the frontline activists as much as we need the power organizers, because without joy, our movements, they don’t happen,” Kuhn said.

Inclusive policy is also a significant consideration in supporting the Two-Spirit community.

Examples of inclusive policies are health clinics having visible signs welcoming Two-Spirit and Indigequeer people, tribal governments recognizing same-sex marriage, allowing Two-Spirit couples to adopt, and ensuring housing for gender-diverse families so that Two-Spirit people can build safe and stable lives in their homelands.

For Azul, who endured harassment, deadnaming, and workplace discrimination, he dreams of a world where Two-Spirit and trans Indigenous people don’t have to live in constant defense, constantly bracing for harm.

“I remember having panic attacks constantly, just for some manager deciding to harass me daily, and I get so exhausted of that,” Azul said. “I want our communities to get to navigate the world with less cruelty.”

All three leaders also shared that direct financial support is one of the best ways to support the Two-Spirit community.

“That’s what’s helping me survive,” Azul said. “That’s what’s helping me not have to force myself to go back into these systems where I’m gonna deal with harassment all the time.”

Not as charity, but as material support that keeps people alive. Small acts accumulate into big impacts.

Kuhn explained that organizations fund Indigenous initiatives but demand paperwork, reporting, and justification in return but true support means trusting Indigenous people to use resources for their communities without policing them.

“I always go back to the notion of being a good relative,” Naswood said. “For us in Native communities, we’re taught to be a good relative to support individuals who are part of our family. And I think if we can encourage our non-Native folks to have that same mentality of acceptance and understanding in a way that we do as indigenous people I think that would strengthen our communities a little bit more.”