LGBTQ Agenda: Historian looks at queer Native history in Two-Spirit book
If anything describes what the discerning historian encounters on a day-to-day basis, it might be this quote from Gregory Smithers' |new book>, "Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America." "History is not a listing of facts," Smithers writes, quoting Catawba Nation queer artist and researcher DeLesslin George-Warren. "It's a mythology with citations."Smithers' book, published in April by Beacon Press, contains a great many citations and tackles that mythology head-on, as it relates to the roles of Two-Spirit persons in the histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
But Smithers, originally from a small coastal community in Australia's New South Wales but now an American citizen and history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, goes much further, elaborating on the term "Two-Spirit" itself.
It is, as many non-Native readers might be surprised to learn, a modern term. However, it's a modern term with very deep roots.As a historian Smithers, who is straight, is "attracted to topics most other historians have historically not touched, or handled pretty shabbily," he told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview. "I view the type of history I do as contributing to the indigenization of the American landscape ...
