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GAL'QUOG'/SEVEN: GOING HOME
 After the sun rises and we return to our homes, we carry
the power of community with us. Cherokee Two-Spirit
folks are telling each other stories as we weave
ourselves back together. We pull together the strands
that our elders have given us, the traditions that have
ensured our survival, carefully replace the beads that
have become lost or broken, and re-imagine the pattern
of our lives. We carry the memory of who we are, the
memory of our songs and dances, back to our homelands
and throughout the Cherokee diaspora.
Many Cherokee Two-Spirits live away from Cherokee lands,
and many of us are not involved with ceremonial
communities. Further, many Cherokee Two-Spirits (like most
Cherokees) are Christians. And, I've talked to many
Cherokee Two-Spirit people who—while they love our
people and want to remain connected to our
communities—have no desire to live in the conservative
areas of the country where our homelands are located.
Perhaps just as important as being home is to find ways
to honor our traditions away from home. Regardless of
where we are, we can certainly learn our language, learn
our traditional arts, and learn our songs. And we can
work to ensure that we walk duyuktv in our own
lives through intentional and careful work to dismantle
sexism, transphobia, and queerphobia from our psyches
and lives. We can teach other Two-Spirit people how to
come home to themselves and each other, shaking the
shells of resistance and healing in order to repair the
world. We can bring our story back together. Each of us
has a piece.
Crickets. Heartbeats. Healing. Fire. Turtle shell
shackles shake stories.
We sing.
We dance.
We heal.
We remember.
Wa’do we say as
dawn's light touches the tops of trees. Wa’do we
say to the shell shakers, to each other, to the fire, to
the song leaders, to Creation…
Wa’do.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Wa'do to the People of the Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa,
Potawatomi), the
Duwamish Nation, and the Nisqually Nation on whose
lands this essay was written.
Wa'do to all of the Two-Spirit folks whose friendships
and love help sustain me.
Wa'do to everyone at the Tulsa Two-Spirit Gathering,
particularly to the Cherokees who are part
of ceremonial communities. You are shell shaking
and singing for all of us.
Wa'do to Robin McBride Scott for teaching me to weave
wampum and for helping me think about re-imagining
ancient patterns through her work with rivercane.
Wa'do to Angela Haas and Malea Powell for their
ongoing scholarship on wampum rhetorics, and to Louis
Esmé Cruz for being my Two-Spirit wampum-nerd buddy.
Wa'do to Colin Kennedy Donovan for hir enormous
assistance in revising this essay, to both Colin
and william maria rain-shadid for helping me think
through this essay aloud and providing ideas and
feedback, and to Trevor Hoppe for his insight and
feedback on various versions of this piece... (continue to reference list)
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14 COMMENTS ON THIS ESSAY:
Siyo Oginali Wado for this great essay! While I am not a twospirit ,I too believe that acceptence of and re-intigration of two spirit people into our society is essential to the recovery of the harmony of all our people. I live in NE Oklahoma and have found it encouraging to see more open twospirits taking part in dances and ceremonies.I have yet to see any adopt the others clothes but have seen several participate in cross gender activities.I believe your comments on pre-colonializing (Round here we refer to it as de-Yoneging) our selfs to be pertinant to all Cherokee folks. Again Wado an Happy Trails, Jisdu
ᏏᏲ ᎣᎩᎾᎵ! ᏩᏙ for your comment. So glad to hear from another Cherokee supportive of 2spirit folks. And I *love* the term "de-Yoneging." ᏩᏙ for that!
Qwo-Li
I'm a non-Cherokees and non-Two-Spirit person, but I must say I enjoyed just sitting, watching and listening as you sing and shell shake. Very interesting experience. Tnx :)
Good post! Very interesting experience. Thanks :)
nice post!!!
as a two-spirit native jew i found myself telling everyone about shell-shaking. it shapes my metaphor when i preach gender preach. baruch hashmah.
I am almost ¼ Cherokee my granddad was almost full on my mother’s side. I am as I know it to be two spirited. I very much agree that America’s balance has been disrupted. In an odd way I feel my granddads blood is calling me to find out more and restore balance in my beautiful to be America. I know very little about Cherokee ways. I need inner peace. My granddad loved me very much and he died when I was 15. They took my granddad away when he was a small child. They sent him to school and college. He Converted to Christianity but he still had some of his Cherokee beliefs. I remember him doing stuff when I was a kid. I want to learn as much as I can about Cherokee spiritual beliefs. I want to relate them to modern day America. I feel many Native spirits still thrive in the America we now live in. If you know the tradition about bringing people from other tribes to the Cherokee tribe. I would very much like to know about them.
There's a proofreading error here--I want to make clear that I meant to write "Further, many Cherokee Two-Spirits (like most Cherokees) are Christians." not "Further, Cherokee Two-Spirits (like most Cherokees) are Christians."
My apologies!
Qwo-Li
Fixed it, hon! xoxo
Wa'do sugar!
Si-yo,
Wa-Do!!!!! Awesome article. Touched me very deeply. I am a Cherokee two spirited person, and I believe that in order to restore complete balance to our earth mother, the roles of the Two Spirited person must be restored. The two spirit concept is fairly new to me: Growing up in Northeast Oklahoma it was just "being gay" and I tried for years to keep that part of me hidden. Even after I quit hiding and "came out", and began to hear the term "two spirit" and began to learn a little about it, I didn't really think of myself that way. I still thought of myself as a "man who is attracted to other men". But the more I have become involved in our Ceremonial Ground, the more I am realizing that I am two spirited: I am naturally drawn to do things that are traditionally the role of the woman. Then i look at my life, and it is the same thing: I am an artist, and I make baskets, which there are "straight" men who weave baskets, however it is and from my research has pretty much always been the domain of the Cherokee woman. And it is like that in other areas as well, and the more I think back, I realize it has always been that way. The past couple of years its kind of been like a second "coming out" experience...lol. I have yet to shake shells, and am nervous about doing that because so many people around here are so conservative and I don't want to offend anyone. But maybe one of these days....
Didn't mean to type all that. Just wanted to say what a great article this was, and how much it touched my heart.
Ki-la,
Mike Dart
Cherokee Artist
While I know it is the nature of our world to catagoize everything - I never have bought into the idea that I am two-spirited. I am of one spirit, but that spirit is many things. I believe in the traditional ways (be it noted the traditional ways that I grew up with, as opposed to the traditonal ways which in a broader scope as belonging to all Cherokee people). My traditional upbringing tought me several things about being a gay person. One, that I am unique and empowered and embodied by a special gift; two, in order for that gift to remain unique and to reach its full potential I would be given attention by our family medicine person; third, I would have several 'treatments' from age 7 until that Medicine person died; fourth, and lastly, I would be who I was born to be, and that is that. If you want to call me gay, that is okay. I don't mind if you call me two-spirited, but I will cringe a little when you do. The only catagory I have is my nationality: Cherokee. I'm not convenced that as Cherokee we need to adopt the modern identity of "two-spirits." Why, for me it is because I am a tradtional Cherokee, and I know my responsibilities, my roll, my lifeways, and from that I understand myself. I have no need to expand myself to others and their expectations that I will "be" or "act" in a certain way. I'm a Cherokee - my story ends there. The rest is collatoral mataerial to support that fact. Wado Sgi (p.s. No offense to Mr. Qwoli; and, this is very well written)
siyo ToTiDi,
I agree. A lot of don't use the word "two-spirit" to describe ourselves, and I'm not suggesting we should. I'm using it as a umbrella term "knowing that not all of us use this term for ourselves any more than all of us use any of the other terms available to us in English." Wado for telling a bit of your story!
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