16.06.2009
Among the Native Americans, the Sioux are one of the biggest tribe which existed before the arrival of the settlers. They used to live in symbiosis with nature. They used to hunt and to leave in big villages in traditionnal tipis. These tribes defined a very specific social organisation with roles for every member of the community. They also used to work on leather and on wall.
In opposition with the western vision of a reduction of a person to his sexual or gender orientation, Native American tribes attach more signification to the spirit of the person. This data is important not to misunderstand the different social roles existing in Indian societies.
This role was not only reserved for homosexuals. If many berdaches are homosexual and and get married with men, heterosexual berdaches are also present in the Sioux society. The social judgement consider more the spiritual behaviour of the berdache rather than his sexual behaviour among the Sioux. Thus homosexuals are accepted as well in the current roles of the Sioux society. Among hunters and warriors, the traditionnal social roles for men, we count openly gay men.
This ability to integrate gay but also transgender people to the society is especially due to the existence of a third gender in the Sioux society which goes beyond the binary representation of genders. This third gender includes many different people including the berdaches and often refers to two-spirit people.
The principle of two-spirit people consists in the separation of the biological sex and the gender, which constitutes a social construction. In fact, two-spirit people are acting in their daily lives as if they belong to the opposite sex, like berdaches. This different approach of society allows the Sioux to integrate transgender people, who were totally accepted in the tribes.
However, this acceptance was only limited to a few people. Among the different Sioux tribes, many of them try to control the number of two-spirit people in order to maintain the growth of the tribe and its power. Thus the number of warriors and heterosexual couples have to stay high for the future of the tribe. A particular attention was given to the boys’ education not to see too many of them experiencing an inversion, that is to say becoming two-spirit.
Nevertheless, the existence of this third gender, reveals the spiritual differences of these tribes which give much interest to the integration of every member with his differences in the community.
In 2008, another tribe, the Coquilles decided to legalize same-sex mariage in their community, showing the sensitivity of Native Americans on this issue.
Thomas Prado pour www.buddhachannel.tv
