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Indigenous Histories

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Specific Traditions, Specific Nations

Indigenous gender diversity is best understood at the level of particular peoples and traditions. Terms that may look similar when translated into English can carry very different cultural meanings, responsibilities, histories, and relationships to community. Rather than treating them as Indigenous equivalents of a single modern identity, we can examine what the surviving evidence tells us within each cultural context.

Zuni: Lhamana and We’wha

One of the best-documented historical examples comes from the Zuni people. We’wha, who lived from approximately 1849 to 1896, was recognized as lhamana and became known as an accomplished weaver, potter, ceremonial participant, and cultural ambassador. Smithsonian records identify We’wha specifically as a lhamana individual and preserve photographs and objects connected with their life.

We’wha also demonstrates the problems created by cultural translation. Nineteenth-century observers variously described We’wha using male and female categories, and during a celebrated 1886 visit to Washington, D.C., outsiders generally perceived We’wha as a woman. Those descriptions tell us something about the observers—but they do not necessarily tell us how Zuni people understood lhamana.

The historically responsible approach is therefore not to decide which modern Western identity We’wha “really was,” but to begin with the Zuni category that existed within We’wha’s own cultural world.

Diné: Nádleehí

Among the Diné (Navajo), Nádleehí represents another culturally specific tradition of gender diversity. The Navajo Nation itself describes Nádleehí as a traditional role reflecting the long-standing presence of gender diversity among Diné people, while explicitly cautioning that modern LGBTQ+ identities are not identical to traditional Diné cultural understandings.

That distinction matters. Describing Nádleehí simply as “transgender,” “nonbinary,” or even “Two-Spirit” may help outsiders establish a rough point of reference, but none of those terms automatically reproduces the cultural meaning of the Diné category itself.

The evidence therefore asks us to do something more difficult—and more accurate—than finding historical equivalents for modern labels: it asks us to understand gender within the cultural systems in which those identities and roles existed.

Sources:

• Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian — We’wha archival materials and identification as lhamana
• National Park Service — additional historical context on We’wha
• Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President — Diné discussion of Nádleehí and gender diversity

Continuity, Disruption, and Reclamation

Colonialism did not affect every Indigenous nation or gender tradition in the same way. Some identities, roles, terms, and forms of knowledge continued within communities. Others became less visible, changed under pressure, were driven underground, or became difficult to reconstruct after generations of cultural disruption.

That complexity matters. Historical continuity should not be assumed simply because a tradition is recognized today—but neither should colonial silence be mistaken for evidence that a tradition disappeared. The surviving record may reflect both cultural change and the conditions under which Indigenous people were able—or unable—to preserve and express their own knowledge.

Reclaiming Two-Spirit

The adoption of Two-Spirit in 1990 was part of a broader movement by Indigenous LGBTQ+ people to define themselves through Indigenous community and culture rather than relying exclusively on terminology inherited from non-Indigenous society. During the 1990s, Indigenous LGBTQ+ groups increasingly incorporated Two-Spirit into their names and organizing, and the term developed into an important contemporary identity and movement.

That reclamation should not be confused with the creation of a single ancient identity called “Two-Spirit.” Two-Spirit is contemporary; the Indigenous histories to which people may connect through it are older, culturally diverse, and Nation-specific. Not every Indigenous LGBTQ+ person identifies as Two-Spirit, and its meaning can differ among First Nations, Inuit, Métis, American Indian, Alaska Native, and other Indigenous communities.

Reclamation is therefore also about authority: who has the right to name these identities, interpret their histories, recover suppressed knowledge, and determine what those traditions mean within Indigenous communities today.

The historical task is not to force the past into either a colonial framework or a modern LGBTQ+ one. It is to recognize what the evidence supports, acknowledge what colonization disrupted, and give appropriate weight to Indigenous voices interpreting Indigenous histories.

Sources:

• Canadian Museum for Human Rights — What Is Two-Spirit? Part One: Origins
• Canadian Museum for Human Rights — The Re-emergence of 2Spirit People in the 21st Century

Reading Older Sources: Colonial Terminology

Older historical and anthropological sources often use terms for Indigenous gender-diverse people that are now considered inaccurate, reductive, or offensive.

One of the most common is “berdache,” a term European and Euro-American writers applied broadly to people whose gender roles, clothing, work, relationships, or social positions did not fit European expectations. The term did not originate within Indigenous cultures and did not accurately represent the many distinct identities and roles it was used to describe. By the late twentieth century, Indigenous people and scholars increasingly rejected it; the adoption of Two-Spirit in 1990 was partly an effort to move away from terminology imposed by outsiders. The National Park Service explicitly notes that berdache reflected European interpretations rather than how Native people understood themselves.

When older sources use such language, however, historians cannot simply ignore it. Those terms may be necessary for locating archival records, understanding how earlier researchers classified Indigenous people, or tracing how colonial attitudes shaped the historical record.

For that reason, this page may reproduce outdated terminology when discussing or identifying a historical source, but it will not use those terms as contemporary descriptions of Indigenous people.

The language of a source is itself historical evidence. It can tell us not only about the person being described, but also about the assumptions, prejudices, and conceptual limits of the person doing the describing.

Sources:

• National Park Service — Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands
• Indian Health Service — Two-Spirit

What Colonial Observers Actually Recorded

Colonial accounts must be read critically, but their biases do not make them historically useless. In some cases, the very confusion or condemnation expressed by European observers provides evidence that they were encountering social roles and gender practices that did not fit their own expectations.

Sixteenth-Century Spanish Accounts

One of the earliest surviving European accounts comes from Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whose travels through what is now Texas and the American Southwest began after his expedition was shipwrecked near Galveston Island in 1528. His account, first published in 1542, describes a relationship he interpreted as a marriage between two men, one of whom dressed or covered themself as women did and performed work Cabeza de Vaca associated with women.

Just as revealing is the language with which he interpreted what he saw. Cabeza de Vaca characterized the practice through a Christian moral framework, treating it as something sinful or diabolical rather than attempting to understand its meaning within the Indigenous society he was describing.

The account therefore preserves two kinds of historical evidence at once:

• evidence that a gendered social arrangement existed, and
• evidence of the colonial worldview through which a European observer interpreted it.

Eighteenth-Century Alta California

More than two centuries later, Spanish military officers and Catholic missionaries in Alta California repeatedly documented Indigenous people whom they described as men who dressed, worked, or lived in ways Europeans associated with women.

Spanish colonists used the term joyas for some of these people. That was an outsider label, however, not a single Indigenous identity. Modern scholarship has shown that the colonial term could collapse distinct Nation-specific roles and traditions into one category created by Spanish observers.

The records are particularly important because they also document colonial reactions. Some Spanish observers recognized that gender-diverse people held respected positions within their communities, while missionaries and colonial authorities viewed those traditions as incompatible with Christian social and sexual norms and sought to suppress them.

What These Records Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

These accounts do not allow us to reconstruct every Indigenous person’s identity, language, social role, or understanding of gender. The surviving descriptions remain filtered through outsiders who often misunderstood what they encountered.

But they establish something historically important: European colonizers were encountering Indigenous gender roles and social arrangements that did not fit European Christian gender expectations centuries before the development of modern LGBTQ+ terminology.

The challenge is therefore not to decide which modern identity label should be placed on every person in these records. It is to recover what the evidence demonstrates while recognizing both the Indigenous cultural systems being observed and the colonial assumptions embedded in the surviving description.

Sources:

• Library of Congress — Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
• Gomez-Galisteo — “Subverting Gender Roles in the Sixteenth Century”
• Jesperson — “Trans misogyny in the colonial archive: Re-membering trans feminine life and death in New Spain, 1604–1821”
• Magaña Mancillas & Balbuena Bello — “Joyas o indios vestidos de mujer en la Alta California colonial”

Who Holds Authority Over Indigenous Knowledge?

For much of colonial history, Indigenous knowledge was treated as something outsiders could collect, classify, translate, publish, display, and interpret. Museums, universities, anthropologists, missionaries, government agencies, and private collectors accumulated cultural materials and records—often with little control remaining in the communities from which they came.

That history raises another question about how Indigenous histories should be reconstructed today:

Who has the authority to determine what Indigenous knowledge means, how it should be preserved, and who should have access to it?

Access Is Not the Same as Entitlement

Not all historical or cultural knowledge is necessarily intended for unrestricted public circulation. Depending upon the Nation or community, particular knowledge may belong to specific families, clans, ceremonial societies, knowledge holders, genders, or other culturally defined groups. Some information may be sacred, restricted, seasonal, private, or appropriate to share only under particular circumstances.

This creates an important distinction for historians and educators: the absence of information from a public archive does not necessarily mean that the knowledge has been lost. It may remain within a community while being intentionally protected from broader circulation.

Indigenous control over knowledge is also increasingly recognized as a matter of rights and self-determination. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes Indigenous peoples’ rights to maintain, control, protect, and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and cultural expressions, as well as to transmit their histories, languages, and oral traditions to future generations.

From Ownership to Stewardship

Archives and museums have also begun reconsidering older assumptions that legal possession automatically grants unlimited authority over Indigenous cultural materials.

Contemporary archival standards increasingly emphasize consultation, culturally appropriate access, shared stewardship, repatriation, and the authority of originating communities. Some institutions restrict images or information identified by Indigenous communities as culturally sensitive. Others return cultural materials or develop arrangements in which communities participate directly in decisions about their care, interpretation, and use.

These practices reflect a larger change in historical method: Indigenous peoples are not simply subjects from whom evidence is extracted. They are communities with living relationships to the histories, objects, languages, traditions, and knowledge being studied.

For this page, that means giving substantial weight to Nation-specific Indigenous sources, contemporary community knowledge, and Indigenous scholars and cultural authorities, while remaining clear about disagreement, change over time, and gaps in the surviving evidence.

Respecting Indigenous history therefore sometimes requires asking not only “What can we discover?”

It also requires asking:

“What are we entitled to know, who should interpret it, and whose permission or authority matters?”

Sources:

• United Nations — United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• Society of American Archivists — Protocols for Native American Archival Materials
• National Museum of the American Indian — Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns
• National Museum of the American Indian — Statement on Online Collections and Culturally Sensitive Collections

Evaluating Claims About Indigenous Gender History

Claims about Indigenous gender diversity appear in academic writing, museums, advocacy materials, social media, political debate, and popular histories. Some are carefully grounded in Nation-specific evidence. Others flatten many Indigenous cultures into a single story, repeat outdated colonial interpretations, or present uncertain historical conclusions as established fact.

A useful starting point is therefore not simply “Does this claim support what I already believe?” but “What evidence supports it, and how was that evidence interpreted?”

Questions to Ask

• Which Indigenous nation, community, or people is being discussed? Broad statements about what “Native Americans believed” should immediately invite closer scrutiny.
• What terminology is being used, and where did it come from? Is the term Indigenous and Nation-specific, a modern pan-Indigenous identity such as Two-Spirit, a contemporary LGBTQ+ label, or terminology imposed by colonial observers?
• What is the source of the evidence? Is the claim based on Indigenous oral or community knowledge, language, material culture, colonial writing, later anthropology, contemporary scholarship, or some combination of these?
• Who interpreted the evidence? A colonial observer, missionary, anthropologist, Indigenous scholar, community knowledge holder, or modern writer may approach the same evidence from very different cultural assumptions.
• How certain is the conclusion? Does the evidence establish a specific identity or role, or does it demonstrate only that a person or practice did not fit European gender expectations?
• Is absence being mistaken for proof? A missing written record may reflect cultural disruption, suppression, restricted knowledge, poor documentation, or archival loss rather than historical nonexistence.
• Does the interpretation respect Indigenous authority? Where contemporary Indigenous communities or cultural authorities have addressed their own histories and terminology, their perspectives deserve substantial weight.

Precision Matters

Responsible history does not require certainty where certainty is impossible. It requires being clear about:

• what the evidence establishes
• what remains uncertain
• whose terminology is being used
• whose cultural framework gives the evidence meaning

That standard protects against two opposite errors:

• using gaps in colonial archives to erase Indigenous gender diversity
• overstating fragmentary evidence in order to construct a simplified or romanticized version of the past

The strongest historical argument is not the one that makes the broadest claim. It is the one that can show readers where the evidence comes from, what it can reasonably tell us, and where its limits remain.