I interviewed people for these articles because I believe their stories deserve told.
While I understand that shit happens sometimes, I am not content to just throw out all the people who took the time to respond said. It is difficult to share, especially to a stranger. To share personal parts of your life and opinions deserves respect and honor.
The third and final article was the only one I have been able to salvage- because I was too stupid and trusting to save a copy of the drafts myself. Had I been careful to do so, all that was said would not have been lost. I accept full responsibility for this.
I had some personal reflection in this article. It's long, and I have removed the images the editor added. The writing is intact, and I share it with you now.
I express my respect for all the people who shared their life stories, their opinions, and their valuable time. I apologize for loss of 2/3 of your sharing.
Blessed Be.
The third and final article in this series has taken me a long time.
I e-mailed and quizzed people. Then I pondered. I realized what took me so long is that I was so very disturbed by a few responses, and I just did not know how to write about it because my mind wanted to block this ugly truth out. To write about it, I had to accept it existed, and I was not ready to do that. I’m still not. But I’m doing it anyways.
Some Indigenous Americans are so very pleased they are assimilated because they view the old pre-Christian practices as wicked and sinful and they are grateful they don’t think they are going to hell like they think their ancestors are. Some are ashamed of their ancestors.
As a person who has cast off dominant society’s constraints and even the dominant religion, embracing and reclaiming some of my ancestral traditions, it hurts me to see people being happy their cultural and ancestral ways were crushed. Because they think it is pleasing to god.
As a clergy person in training, and one who acts as clergy, it hurts me that people view their god this way. Granted, YHVH and Jesus are not my gods, but I’ve talked with them both before, and heard their voices. They are actually pretty nice and have been severely misrepresented by many of their followers.
Let me clarify. Jesus does not care how you eat. He does not care how you screw. He does not care about your clothes, and he does not want to take over the world and he does not expect all people everywhere to worship him. And I’m pretty sure he’s upset he’s being misrepresented, and when certain people die, he’s going to make sure there are consequences.
Jesus was furthermore against theocracies, and sought to establish a separation of church and state and that church eventually became the biggest superpower in the modern world, and also a great oppressor of human beings from the takeover of Pagan Europe, to the Inquisition and the Crusades, and finally the genocide of the Americas.
I have also concluded the two Spirit tradition is just one of many casualties of war, assimilation, and cultural genocides we have engaged in as a species since the day we stood up on hind legs, and we may have been just as bad when we scurried around on all fours. The Two Spirit traditions demise and struggle to be reestablished is not a Christian and non-Christian or a white and non-white issue, but it is a part of a greater problem we face as human beings.
We refuse to co-exist and are- excuse the pun- hellbent on overpowering one another as a species in general.
This further proves to me Anton LaVey was right- man is an animal governed by his desires and lusts, and no amount of denying this and trying to do better will succeed for the whole species. The ambitious, greedy, aggressive animal will out like with the men a young LaVey saw, who went to Saturday’s peep shows and then piously sat next to their wives and children in church the next day.
In my interviews, many folks said they had heard of the Two Spirit traditions, but nobody who was not Two Spirited seemed to know anybody who called themselves Two Spirited. They knew plenty of gays, and some gay Native Americans, but none knew anybody who had undergone the training for the sacred responsibilities being Two Spirited entailed.
Some of the Indigenous Christians I interviewed answered we are all beautiful in the eyes of the Creator, and refused to judge anybody period.
Others gave detailed scriptural passages from the Old Testament explaining why they feel it is wrong.
The basic script these people spit out goes as follows.
There is one god, one way to please that god, one way to get into heaven, and only one chance to do so. There is likewise only one way to fuck properly. It is within the institution of Christian marriage, with the man on top of the woman, and only for the sake of having kids. Nobody is supposed to enjoy sex, furthermore, and men have to do only manly things like hunt and fish and women are to do only womanly things like sew and cook. Or else you will all go to hell.
The only way to be religious is to read the Bible, and dress up every Sunday for church. You have to feel guilty all the time and live in constant fear of punishment from this god who loves you so much, that he killed his only son to atone for the fact he is eternally pissed off at you for being the way he created you to be.
You have to cover your bodies in shame, wearing lots and lots of clothes despite the fact we are born naked, and you have to publicly shame everybody who does not do this- or else you will go to hell.
And nobody is allowed to point any of this out, or else Christians will get mad at you, and you will surely go straight to hell.
The meaning of life is to be eternally sorry that we, as humans are born so filthy, and our only hope is to get into heaven by suffering a whole lot here.
When Europeans, who had basically been assimilated, themselves, came to the Americas, they found half naked- and sometimes naked people who were worshiping in ways they never heard of, who screwed however they saw fit, and who owned vast cities with great wealth. They found delicious foodstuffs that grew no place else, and found people practicing medicine the Europeans could not rival and who had elaborate systems of writing when most Europeans were illiterate. They could read the stars and forecast the weather for agricultural purposes sans telescopes and other instruments, and used this to calculate intricate mathematics used in architecture, many structures still usable hundreds of years later. Europe was, on the other hand, over populated, decimated by disease, the masses starving and crushed under the yoke of tyrannical rulers, and everybody was literally, dying to get out of there. They could not understand why these “savages” seemingly had everything, because they were sinful, and were not gods people.
These Europeans decided they must have everything there, which did not belong to them- despite the fact their god said “Thou shalt not steal” and they methodically began to destroy these people so they could take it all. They, not surprisingly, with their mindset they were the chosen people of god, justified every atrocity because they had their missionaries there, and it was better for these “savages” to suffer greatly with their bodies, rather than to burn in hell forever because they did not worship the one true god. They took everything the natives had, and “gave” them their religion in exchange.
Who was once a hated god of the conquerors has now become “The Creator” and is sometimes referred to as “The Great Spirit and his son, Jesus Christ.”
You cannot tell me people cannot be Two Spirited because Jesus is against it. You cannot tell me it is because his father is against it. His father made a covenant with the Israelites. Everybody else was an outsider. The god of the Old testament was uninterested in taking over the world and making everybody worship him. He was interested in advancing HIS people and doing for them.
How did this sudden change in focus occur?
Rome.
They initially persecuted Christians, and then extolled Christianity to a great political superpower. Before Christianization, Rome sought to rule the world, and afterwards, still did. Instead of Jupiter, king of the gods, they now had the Israelite god, who is actually a reincarnation of the Caananite El. His son, who adapted a lot of the qualities of Persian/Roman Mithra, became their battle standard.
The religion early political Christians constructed did not resemble the one the rabbi/carpenter who was supposedly divinely conceived had followed and taught, and today it still doesn’t. It resembles the Pagan theocracies and the Abrahamic theocracies.
Furthermore, since the Old Testament declared homosexuality as sin, surely we should too. Right?
People conveniently forget the Old Testament likewise outlawed ingesting shrimp and pork, and in another passage states you can eat whatever you want. The Old Testament also calls for offering animal sacrifice by fire. Know any Christians who do this? Me neither. It calls for specific amounts of oxen you are to give to your clergy persons as payment, and also all the reasons you can stone people to death in the streets.
In the New Testament, Jesus says to disregard that.
Let’s face it. None of us are Iron Age Abrahamics. The cultural and holy laws ascribing a way of life do not apply to us. They likewise were not practical to impose on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, but conquerors don’t care about what is fair or correct. They care about what will advance the cause, and theirs was to take over.
This is all conveniently forgotten by conquered people who adopted their conquerors god and the conquerors way of life. It happened in Europe and it happened in North and South America.
The Two Spirit tradition is just one of many practices discarded, and now condemned by the very people who used to hold it and other practices sacred. Because their conquerors told them to.
Assimilation accomplished.
Thankfully, the Two Spirit tradition is being reclaimed beautifully, despite what the dominant culture did and despite how some say the old ways are sinful and wicked and dead and should be forgotten.
In closing, I have a wish for all of you reading this.
Hold fast to your traditions and honor the ways of your ancestors. Your dead speak through you, and you are the living embodiment of all your kin who have gone before you. All the good they did breathes through you. All the joys they had show when you smile. All the love they shared is expressed when you express love. Your children are their children.
When people who are not like you come, and try to make you like them, resist. Likewise, do not seek to make others be just like you. Do not discard your own ways to follow the ways of other people.
We may be citizens of one world, but we are not all exactly the same. Respect this, and the fact others need to be who they are even if you don’t understand all that they do. Do not seek to be understood by everybody, and seek to be who and what you are in the fullest way.
Harmonize with others well, beholding the beauty in them, and sharing the beauty in you.
Walk the life you were born to walk, and let others peaceably walk theirs.
Love one another.
And stop making your god out to be a fucking asshole. He’s pissed off about that!
Blessed Be.
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