I understand, as much as I am able to from where I sit, what you are telling me. I don't intend to come across as minimizing or ignoring any of it. It's serious. I take it very seriously.
I am not the type to interrupt someone in the middle of telling a story that important, to start asking questions about who else was there, so unfortunately, I can't answer that question. I don't know the answer. I am merely relating what was told to me that, for once in my life, did not sound like some hoakey, revisionist, romanticized, pan-Indian clap-trap like I might have found in the first books I read about native people when I was a kid (thanks for that, Scholastic book fair). She also told me, the reason the term was adopted at that conference, has to do with an important distinction between indigenous LGBTQs (of whom she is one) and settler LGBTQs -- that my people are fighting for rights we've never had, whereas indigenous LGBTQs are fighting for the return of rights they already had before. No one who has ever spoken with me about what "two-spirit" means has ever made a point of saying that.
As for resisting the assimilation and melting together of hundreds of vastly different cultures, for my part in that resistance, this is why I keep satellite dish ears open listening for the teachings when they do come out. Occasionally I actually have the kinds of relationships with local indigenous folks of a wide variety of ethnicities and cultures, where I can ask important questions. Unfortunately, even in most of them, there are often very strongly misleading ideas about LGBTQs as, for example, innate healers, heyokas, or having the innate right to cross or violate gender boundaries at our whim and fancy or as we see fit to do so. I generally resist blindly accepting every single thing I'm told about "two-spirits". I remain conscious at all times that some of these folks don't have language other than "two-spirit" to try to convey to me, how they feel about how I, as a white queer person, might fit into their cultural paradigm. And I definitely resist the urge to try to correct them about whether or not I even have a right to think of or refer to myself as "two-spirit".
I'd be more than happy to pick up credible literature on the subject of indigenous LGBTQ history, but so far, I haven't heard of any such literature existing specifically about LGBTQs in the period prior to contact or during the early contact period (which I'm sure we can both agree, is a completely different point in time depending on where you're referring to). In some communities, such as the one in which I am most invested, only oral teachings exist. The language does not. People in the community generally know LGBTQs exist, but they can't talk about it in a historical context, because they don't have the words for it. Sometimes they can't even really talk about it in the present context, because they have complex barriers about that (which no reasonable person would try to take away from them). This is all largely because of how complex and devastating European contact was by the time it formally arrived here and changed everything (in the very late 1700s).
As for what I've heard before that one person who seemed to be telling me the truth for the first time, I've sat in a lecture (on invitation) where someone claiming to be native (little did I know at the time, she most certainly is not) told a version of this history that sounds like a white person trying to whitesplain it to a room full of indigenous folks--except the room was full of non-indigenous folks trying earnestly to learn about indigenous culture in an academic environment. This same individual spreads disparaging information about people known as winkte (if you believed what she says, you would form the mental picture that is conveyed by the use of the French slur). She convinces white people of all sexualities and genders to call themselves two-spirited and tries to recruit them to being fully convinced that they are "metis" or some other indigenous identity by virtue of a family myth of a long-ago indigenous ancestor -- to what end, I know not.
This is about where the local "radical" faeries enter from stage left. They pick up all these fictitious stories and run wild with them. They consequently rub shoulders with members of the local queer community who are indigenous (mostly through the drag scene), who then pick up this example and drape themselves in it. White queers who don't know even half as well as I at least hope I do, observing from the audience at these drag shows or from simply being a background figure in the life of these local indigenous folks, then think they've learned something about the culture and about themselves as LGBTQs.
I'm sure you could see why, even though I am a white person, I perceive a problem with this, despite it not effecting me either directly or personally. When my white queer relatives (I say relatives, but not kin, and I don't mean biologically, but culturally) enter indigenous spaces like sweat communities, they make *sses of themselves, anticipating or even expecting exceptional treatment because of their LGBTQ identity when they arrive. When they don't get it, or even worse, someone is just honest with them, they turn to people like the woman where I saw all this ideology entering the perpetual feedback loop for the "radical faeries" to pick it up and run with it.
She then manages to come off as an enormously credible "indigenous" person, because she's just telling these white queer folks the same horse pocky people have been repeating for decades without knowing where it comes from, and they in turn vouch for her to be more present in and representative of the indigenous community, where their good intentions are trying to magically turn into inclusivity. They have no idea what harm they're doing or how much of their *sses they're showing. I've tried to get through to them, to no avail. She could know them for a tenth of the time they've known me, and somehow she's still more credible, because I'm telling them something they don't want to hear that no one else they interact with validates.
Then I have folks like someone I've met on the other side of cutting myself out of that mess, who is full-blood Dakota, who casually told me in the middle of an unrelated conversation that I am winkte. And while I appreciate what he's trying to say, it wouldn't even be fitting or appropriate if I were Dakota. I am not even remotely feminine-identifying.
I'm trying not to change the subject, avoid engaging with what you're telling me, whitesplain anything, or contradict you, and I'm sorry if for all the efforts I'm making, I've somehow managed to fail in one or more (or even all) of these areas. I'm really just trying to say, the so-called radical faeries aren't just coming up with all of this alone. But they are certainly comfortable with putting it on and stripping it off when it suits them to do so.
I don't know what the solution looks like, except learning as much of the history as possible, and trying to do better (including steering my own people--and myself--away from the misleading stereotypes, and the harm they cause, whenever possible).
I also make great pains to be specific when I do have these conversations. I hope I haven't made a regrettable post here. There's a lot going on all at once.
