The first article in this series started off by saying, "Well, this hasn’t gone so smoothly," and the trip down the rabbit-hole continues. You think you understand what ‘two-spirit’ means now? I bet you don’t.

Admittedly the GC publishers, in their great wisdom, have let their token straight white writer tackle this topic about non-white, mixed-gender oppression, but the confusion’s not simple naiveté. Check this out:

"Two-spirit people were considered our genders. In my Cree ways, we had four genders, and they were all heterosexual-normative, being that it was a taboo to have sex with someone in your own gender. Therefore I, as a male assigned 2S (two-spirit born with male body), could not take another male-assigned 2S person as a spouse or partner. I would take a heterosexual (straight) male as my husband (he being from another gender). My husband would do all that was socially expected, including having sex, but if our relationship would end, he would return to the pool of eligible (ST8, straight) bachelors. The same held true for our female-assigned 2S people, and [her prohibition against] taking 2S woman as a wife."

Are you still with us? Harlan Pruden, the Cree gentleman messing with your head above, is an activist, researcher, speaker and co-founder of the New York City based NorthEast Two-Spirit Society. He is also on the Honourary Committee of The Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the U of A, serves on two different American substance-abuse prevention and treatment boards, and is the sole First Nations member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. So he has got the cred to mess with your head.

He has been doing this work for over a decade, giving presentations to help educate Turtle Island (an Aboriginal term for North America) about the historical and contemporary life of the First Nations’ Two Spirit community: it is distinctly different from the non-Native concept of the Rainbow spectrum. And it’s made more challenging as a direct result of the colonization that has occurred.

As Harlan described, on the phone from an Edmonton two-spirit event, "I think there is a lot that is going on... There hasn’t been a seamless transfer of knowledge within First Nations populations on the two-spirit tradition, because it’s all very dependent upon who you’re asking, and how it’s asked. . . So if I go to a ‘colonized’ Indian, or a ‘Christian’ Indian, the same stigmatized, narrow-minded, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ commentary is what you’ll hear."

"But, at the same time, if you were to go to one of our ‘traditional’ Elders, [they] still might not tell you. For myself, as a leader, and someone who is First Nations Canadian Cree, I have to work so hard to win their trust, and build that relationship with these gatekeepers of our indigenous knowledge. It is only after I have proven myself, that I’m not going to pervert or misuse this information, that they will choose what they want to impart onto me."

In describing this cautious information sharing, only made more so by the colonizing reverberations, he points out the ‘information uploading’ that still occurs today. A Maskwacis (formerly Hobbema) Elder was chosen by a two-spirit predecessor to take that knowledge, even though it would normally have only gone to another 2S Elder. So the ST8 Elder will hold the 2S histories until he finds someone suitable to take that information from him.

And then Harlan, the activist, academic, presidential advisor and, at the end of the day, full-time government employee, takes the reins of this narrative, as it were.

"I think about this way too much . . . There is a tension with the broader LGBT movement and us as two-spirit people, but also as indigenous people to this land: the broader LGBT community’s struggle for equality is done within a settler or colonialistic frame. That fight and struggle is built upon other social movements; look at the civil rights movement . . . look at the feminist or women’s rights movement."

"For the LGTB community, what they’re doing is drawing upon those experiences and building upon it. For us in the two-spirit community, we’re not trying to build something, we’re trying to restore and to reclaim that which was taken from us. That is a completely different conversation than the settler organized LGTB community."

Oh, hang on; Harlan is just getting warmed up.

"As a two-spirit activist, what kind of ‘hurts my teeth’ is that the broader LGBT community is very comfortable to ignore the two-spirit experience . . . If you were trying to fight for equality and human rights, wouldn’t you want to go back and understand a time and a place in which there were people who were engaged in same-sex sexual relations, that had full citizenship, full equality, and were honoured and respected within their nations?"

At this point, GayCalgary readers may want some further clarification for such claims. During his third annual presentation at the Drexell University’s pride celebrations, Harlan describes how historically, in many nations, not only were the two-spirit people given positions of honour as healers or social counsellors, but also as military catalysts. It has been documented that when some nations went to war, the two-spirit approval was required regarding a battle’s possibility, and on the eve of battle the assembled warriors would dance to catch the two-spirit’s eye. Whichever warrior (who were all straight-identified) was chosen would get to have sex with the two-spirit, acquiring the good fortune and prestige that goes with such an activity.

As Harlan quips during the Drexell presentation, "Of all the traditions I want to bring back, I want to bring back this one!"

But, most importantly, "the system allowed for people to honour, acknowledge and to express their full sexual identity."

As Harlan reminds his listeners elsewhere in the academic environment, understanding the difference between ‘gender roles’ and ‘sex roles’ is vital. To paraphrase him, in the ’50s it was expected that US and Canadian women generally wore dresses, stayed home and raised children, and men were the pants-wearing breadwinners, generally working outside of the home in a ‘successful’ family dynamic. Your GC author’s mother, as an unwitting feminist, worked full-time her entire adult life, performing the more transitional ‘supermom’ role of still caring for children (with babysitters) while working, while dad’s full-time job was never an option in his life path.

Now it is no longer considered unnatural for fathers to stay home with paternal leave – caring for infants is a regular occurrence – with pants-wearing women paying the mortgage.

All of the above are expected, however, to be intimate with the opposite sex. The gender roles have changed, but not the sex roles. Like the Cree two-spirit, they are expected to engage in sex only with those in the other gender, just like mom and dad.

Ew. Sorry.

Except, the Cree had four genders, not two. Harlan also mentions that, in all of his research on this topic, he has not encountered a two-spirit community that was not ‘heterosexual’. It’s just a different kind of heterosexuality.

So, Billy, that’s why two-spirit are not gay!