GLR November-December 2025

ESSAY ‘Coming In’ as a Two-Spirit Journey C HASE B RYER

I N MAINSTREAM LGBT CULTURE, a person’s iden tity is often defined by the act of “coming out” to fam ily, friends, and others. Many Native Americans who identify as Two-Spirit see it differently. Cree Two-Spirit scholar Alex Wilson describes the Two-Spirit journey as one of “coming in,” a reframing that shifts the focus from public disclosure to a return —a reclaiming of one’s place within family, community, culture, and land. “Two-Spirit” is a contemporary term used by Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada. It denotes an Indigenous LGBT person and embraces traditional cultural identities out side the Western-based binaries of gender and sexuality, ones that existed prior to colonization. Anishinaabe Elder Myra Laramee received the term in a dream and proposed it in 1990 at the Third Annual Inter-Tribal Native American, First Nations,

South Asia. The idea that more than two genders exist is deeply rooted in history, including within the lands now known as the United States. Traditional Navajo culture recognizes four genders. The term nádleehi describes Navajo citizens with a masculine body and a feminine nature and loosely translates to “one who con stantly transforms” or “one who is changing.” Such people are revered in Navajo culture, holding special spiritual roles in the community. In Native Hawaiian culture, the term m ā h ū refers to people who embody both male and female spirits. M ā h ū hold sacred traditional roles as healers, teachers, and cultural keep ers. These identities are based on a person’s gender expression and the roles they fulfill within the community rather than solely on their biological sex. Colonization systematically disrupted traditions honoring gender and sexual diversity and imposed rigid Western norms, sought to dismantle Indigenous kinship systems, and enacted cultural erasure through mechanisms such as Christian boarding schools, bans on ceremonial prac tices, land dispossession, and widespread violence. Set tler colonialism in North America operated on the imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny, a doctrine that held that it was the God-given right of the United States to overspread the continent from coast to coast, and that justified the theft of Indigenous lands and the perpetra tion of genocide. Gender was also weaponized in this process. Cree Métis Two-Spirit Elder Albert McLeod has said that gender too was one such “tool of colo nization,” pointing to the assimilationist agenda of the more than 300 federally backed Christian residential schools established across the U.S. and Canada. At these institutions, Native children were forcibly separated from their families, stripped of cultural ex pressions such as braided hair, and compelled to adopt rigid, binary gender norms unfamiliar to their com munities. The schools functioned as engines of in doctrination, erasing traditions and reshaping Indigenous identities for generations. Human remains of more than 1,000 people, mostly Native students, have been found at three res idential schools in Canada. Despite this, investigations into the legacies of these residential schools remain glaringly absent in the U.S.—a country often more comfortable erasing Native histories than confronting them. The Two-Spirit concept of “coming in” rather than “com ing out” resonates deeply for me. As a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, I grew up with stories of removal, of collective trauma, and of resilience. My family’s history traces back to the Trail of Tears, when our ancestors were forcibly displaced from our tra ditional homelands in the Southeast. I had relatives in federal In dian boarding schools. Yet despite this deep connection to our

Chase Bryer, Landa (Miko) Lakes, and B. Trent Williams at the 37th Annual International Two-Spirit Gathering in Hinton, Oklahoma.

Gay and Lesbian American Conference in Winnipeg, Canada. Since its introduction, the Two-Spirit concept has become a community organizing tool and a pathway for Indigenous LGBT people to return to their tribal communities. Prior to the arrival of European settlers in North America, many Native American communities recognized and embraced multiple genders and fluid roles, and many still do. Plural gen ders like those acknowledged by Native American communi ties are mirrored in cultures worldwide, such as the Zapotec muxe in Mexico, the Bugis bissu in Indonesia, and the hijra in Chase Bryer, a doctoral candidate at Brown University School of Public Health, is a gerontological social worker and host of the Small Town Queers Pod podcast. He dedicates this article to Beverly Little Thunder, who died on July 18th.

November–December 2025

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