The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

considerable stature on Native American subjects, characterizes
the ritual institutions of homosexuality as “the most repugnant of
all their practices” and “a shameful custom.” 8
Then there is George Catlin, the renowned painter and
chronicler of what he took to be the “vanishing” Indian way of
life. Catlin was invited to attend a feast given to honor Sac and
Fox “berdaches” (berdache was the word of choice for gay
males at the time Catlin wrote in the late nineteenth century—an
unhappy choice as the term signifies Arab love boy or sex-slave
boy and as such is entirely inapplicable to the homosexuality
practiced among the Sac and Fox or other tribal peoples). Catlin
remarked in summarizing his visit among the “berdache”: “This
is one of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs that I
have ever met in Indian country.” He continues, in the words
used over and over by whites as a justification for the removal,
assimilation, or destruction of native tribes: “For further account
of [the berdache feast] I am constrained to refer the reader to the
country where it is practiced, and where I should wish that it
might be extinguished before it be more fully recorded.” 9
But the pattern of colonized psychology and social valuation
among Indian people may be being reversed. Recently, Russell
Means of the American Indian Movement—a man not always
noted for his liberal attitudes toward women and other devalued
individuals—said, in defense of homosexuals and their anciently
valued place among the people: “The Indian looked upon these
unique individuals as something special the Great Mystery
created to teach us. These people had something special to tell
us.” 10 And the Oglala Sioux holy man John (Fire) Lame Deer
said, “To us a man is what nature, or his dreams, make him. We
accept him for what he wants to be. That’s up to him … There
are good men among the winktes and they have been given
certain powers.” 11
It is significant, I think, that those who are homophobic are