Gender Roles In Native American Culture

Many cultures throughout the world have more than two genders. The Native American culture is one of the many who have “third sex” cultures. This term in reference to the Native Americans would mean someone who is two spirited or berdache. The term "two spirited" is for the people who do not just fit into one gender, male or female. The Native American culture sees gender and sexuality as multifunctional; they believe that anyone can have multiple spirits, meaning multiple genders. These genders are not looked down upon but are uplifted from childhood, they are carried into their everyday lifestyle, and they call for different religious activity. It has been researched that the Native American people have had multi-gendered people, even past the two spirited person that already can be seen as “out of the norm” for modern century Americans.
Walter William’s (1986) study found the following:
Among Native Americans, the role of third, fourth, or even fifth genders have been widely documented. Children, who were born physically male or female and yet showed a proclivity for the opposite gender, were encouraged to live out their lives in the gender role, which fit them best. The term used by Europeans to describe this phenomenon is Berdache. "Indians have …show more content…
Other skills attributed to berdaches included the ability to foretell the future and convey luck by bestowing obscene nicknames (Lakota), make love magic (Pawnee), and arrange marriages (Cheyenne). By reputation, many Plains berdaches were sexually active. George Catlin illustrated a Sauk and Fox dance in which a berdache is the central figure surrounded by "her" male lovers. Dakota warriors sometimes visited berdaches before joining war parties in the belief that such encounters augmented their masculine ferocity. Prominent warriors and chiefs, including the Omaha American Horse and the Lakota Crazy Horse, had berdaches among their wives. (p.