Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country

1. Seeking Self- and Social Acceptance

chapter one Seeking Self- and Social Acceptance 3 Any illusions I had about reaching that moment in an ethnographer’s fieldwork when the host population considers you “one of them” came crashing down when I was relegated to the“straight men’s room.”I had been conducting research on Two-Spirit (gay American Indian) men for not quite a year.1 I was visiting Denver, Colorado, to conduct interviews with Two-Spirit men and to attend the Denver March Powwow. Sheila, a key consultant, traveled with me to Denver to see old friends and dance in the powwow. The two people we were staying with, Glen and Pete, were close friends of Sheila’s and had opened their home to any and all comers who needed a place to stay during the powwow. It turned out that 15 people ended up staying with Glen and Pete, including three Polish exchange students who came with Sheila’s cousin from the Rosebud Indian Reservation. The three Polish men were on a “trip of curiosity,” as they put it, visiting various Indian reservations in the United States, and Sheila’s cousin Greg was their host at Rosebud. Greg thought it would be beneficial for them to visit the Denver March Powwow , seeing as it is one of the largest and best attended in the West. When Sheila and I arrived at Glen and Pete’s place, I was told with a snicker that I was staying in the back room with the “other straight guys,” the Polish exchange students. Upon opening the door to the room I was hit with the nauseatingly pungent odor of unwashed human beings. I turned and walked back to the living room carrying my luggage with an obvious look of “no way” on my face. Attempting to contain his laughter, Glen handed me a bottle of Febreze air freshener and informed me that “only queens” were staying “out here” in the living room. I reluctantly went back to the room and placed my sleeping bag near the open window. Unfortunately, the three Polish men were fulfilling American stereotypes about the personal hygiene habits of Europeans. The Two-Spirit men sitting on the couches and the floor burst out laughing as I emerged from the bedroom. Sheila greeted my look of obvious disappointment with the living arrangements by telling me, “You’re one of them, so the smell shouldn’t bother you. All you 4 Seeking Self- and Social Acceptance straight men smell the same,” followed by a burst of laughter from the other men. I sulked the rest of the evening at the opening night of the powwow. When we returned to Glen and Pete’s place, the men began getting ready to go on a circuit of the local gay clubs. As everyone gathered by the door, I noticed that people were acting weird. Sheila, who was forever cluing me in to cultural hints and appropriate behavior, suggested that I might want to hang out at the bookstore café down the street, since they have a “nice Native American book section.” I finally caught on to Sheila’s direction and opted to hang out around the house instead of going along. The Polish students actually never went to the powwow, but instead spent most of the weekend hanging out in the local techno dance bars. However, the presence of their lingering odor in the room was a continual point of humor and incited a seemingly endless bout of teasing me. During that stay in Denver, all gladly granted me interviews, were generous with their time, explaining various aspects of their lives, and invited me to attend a Two-Spirit directed house ceremony and dinner. But I never quite got over the sting of the segregated sleeping arrangements and being excluded from “the fun.” On the drive back to Oklahoma , I asked Sheila why I had been kept away. “Not everyone there knows you, and they don’t know what you’re going to write,” she replied .“Maybe they don’t want you to write about their sex lives or seeing them drunk.Maybe they don’t trust you like some of the other TwoSpirits you know. You know you aren’t one of us, so why would you want to go out with us anyway?” she continued. “Or maybe,” she said, “they want you to see what it’s like to not feel...