We-wha of Zuni



This is We-wha, a Zuni lhamana – a man raised as a woman, a ritualized third-gender role in the Zuni tribe. Many Native tribes recognized three genders, men, women, and a third gender. The French called such people berdache, but this term is frequently rejected as offensive by Native Americans because it derives from a French word meaning male prostitute. A better English term, closer to the Native understanding, is two-spirit, denoting a person with a female and a male spirit. The term is translated from Ojibwe. The modern LGBT community might recognize them as gay and/or transgendered, but two-spirits do not fit neatly into any of the categories, and it could be a mistake to characterize them as such.

In the Zuni tribe, lhamanas were non-warriors who were men, but who moved freely between the genders. They were initiated into male religious societies, became crafts specialists, and wore female garb. Two-spirits existed in most Native tribes, were often granted ceremonial spiritual roles, and were often accorded great respect. Among the Lakota, there was one ceremony at the Sun Dance that could only be performed by a Two-Spirit, which the Lakota call winyanktecha, or winkte. In one other account, raiding soldiers of a rival tribe begin to attack a group of foraging women. All run, except for one, who counters them with a stick. This woman is a two-spirit. The soldiers determine that they will not be able to overcome her, and they retreat. Here, We-wha is dressed as Kolhamana. Kolhamana is a kachina, a Pueblo Indian word meaning spirit, or life. The word Kachina refers either to these spirits, which may bring rain, good fortune, or other aid; those who dress and mask to represent them in religious ceremonies, and are believed to actually become the spirit for the ceremony; or masked dolls which are given to women and children of the tribe and are placed at home.

The traditional binary understanding of gender is insufficient in We-wha's case. Several sources I have seen claim that female pronouns are more appropriate for We-wha. The Whites that We-wha spoke with certainly did not understand. We-wha visited Washington, and met President Cleveland and his wife, ‘passing’ as a woman. Later, someone found out that We-wha was biologically a man, and thought that We-wha was a “bold bad man” playing a joke. This person, Clara True, threatened to expose We-wha’s identity. In fact, We-wha was sent, not to play a trick, but because We-wha was the most respected member of the tribe. Now, with the genocide and colonization of the Native Americans, many communities now shun such people.

A dogmatic Christianity that believes that only Christianity holds truth, and refuses to recognize the truth in other religions, is a tool of cultural imperialism. It allows us to pass off our own cultural prejudies as God's will. A Native American friend of mine maintains that many Native tribes would have recognized Jesus as one of their own, had his teachings not been forced upon them in reeducation camps. She also said that Christians had lost out on a great opportunity to learn from Native Americans, and that some Native Americans felt that they should not bother anymore to try to reach out to Christians, since we had never shown any willingness to learn. We-wha and other two-spirits offer non-Natives a chance to broaden our understanding of gender. Let us listen.