Tongva Two-Spirit Traditionalist Featured in Article

Search Magazine (formerly called Science & Spirit Magazine) featured an article in its July/August 2008 issue about the decision to grant the naming of one of Neptune’s moons to the Tongva Indian tribe of southern California. Amidst discussion of some of the tribe’s most important deities and internal schisms  concerning the possibility of building a tribal casino, the article mentions Marc Acuna, a Tongva wehepet.

The article says that wehepet is “a term meaning ‘two-spirit’ or ‘two-road’ that was traditionally applied to people we would now identify as gay or lesbian.” This is technically incorrect and ethnocentric on a number of counts. For one, we would identify this person as either a wehepet, a Two-Spirit, or gay, depending on how the person identifies. Secondly, the reason why the term ‘Two-Spirit’ was coined in 1990 was to provide a more gender/role-encompassing term (meant especially for American Indians) than “gay/lesbian” — terms which only speak to sexual preference and limit our understanding of the individual to that aspect of him/her/ze.

Nonetheless, mention of Marc in this article is really awesome in terms of general visibility and understanding of Two-Spirits and the piece even goes on to discuss some of what his role entails with a few direct quotes from him. I love the photo above because it shows him teaching local youth native herbalism. So Two-Spirit!

You can find the full article here. And for a little something extra I dug up, here is an article Marc wrote discussing traditional uses of Mugwort (kwiash) in the Tongva tribe (found on page 4).

In Less Than 24 Hours…

This week has been a busy one with me in relatively intense preparation for a trip I’ve been wanting to take since February of this year. In less than 24 hours, I will be on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, helping build bunk beds and learning about Lakota culture and history with the organization RE-MEMBER.

I don’t think I’ve talked at all about my senior thesis on this blog as of yet, but there’s plenty of time for that later. For now, suffice it to say, I feel blessed to be able to go on this trip and volunteer in one of the most economically impoverished areas of the U.S. of A. And I also feel incredibly privileged that research for my thesis (which focuses mostly on the Lakota third-gender winkte role, the Ghost Dance, and the Wounded Knee Massacre) will not be limited to books and videos. I will get to be on the land and be able to stand as a witness to the lives of those for whom the 1890 massacre is remembered daily — a people who still await reparations for the land and lives that were taken in the 19th century and whose lives today are a testament to endurance and hope in the face of ethnic and environmentally racist bureaucracy. A story with resonance for many peoples on this continent.

Needless to say, the politics surrounding people-of-color goes far beyond mere black/white/latino/asian demographics, but few seem to look at the American frontier of the 19th century as a site that testifies to the interrelatedness of oppressions across class and ethnic boundaries. Splintered groups and sub-groups do not recognize the depths of common experience on this land, America, which I’m only recently realizing I have much greater ethnic and spiritual ties to than I ever thought (or hoped). In my own work (in the long run), I am eager to do more work in the in-between — bridging communities of color, helping to tell all of our stories, and honoring the collective voice that rises to meet both the heavens and the fists of the ignorant and blind. All my relations.

I will not have computer access over the next week, but I am eager to detail my experience upon my arrival back in New England.