:en:Lhamana
{{Short description|Zuni gender-nonconforming people}}
File:We-Wa, a Zuni berdache, weaving - NARA - 523796 (cropped).jpg, a notable Zuni lhamana fiber artist and cultural ambassador, weaving on a backstrap loom]]
Lhamana, in traditional Zuni culture, are biologically male people who take on the social and ceremonial roles usually performed by women in their culture, at least some of the time.{{cite book |last=Lang |first=Sabine |title=Men as women, women as men: changing gender in Native American cultures |location=Austin |publisher=University of Texas Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780292747012 }} Page 269 They wear a mixture of women's and men's clothing and much of their work is in the areas usually occupied by Zuni women. Some contemporary lhamana participate in the pan-Indian two-spirit community.{{Cite book |title=Two Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality |last1=Jacobs |first1=Sue-Ellen |last2=Thomas |first2=Wesley |last3=Lang |first3=Sabine |date=1997 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252066450 |oclc=421792266 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/uneasycareersint0000unse }}
The most famous lhamana was We'wha (1849–1896), who in 1886 was part of the Zuni delegation to Washington D.C., where they met with President Grover Cleveland.
Social role
Accounts from the 1800s note that the lhamana, while dressed in "female attire", were often hired for work that required "strength and endurance",Matilda Coxe Stevenson, The Zuni Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies, (BiblioBazaar, 2010) p. 380 such as hunting big game and chopping firewood.Gilley, Brian Joseph (2006). Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country. {{ISBN|0-8032-7126-3}}. p.8
In addition to doing heavy work, some lhamana people have excelled at traditional arts and crafts such as pottery and weaving. We'wha, in particular, was a noted weaver.James, George W. New Mexico: The Land of the Delight Makers. Boston: Page Co.,1920
Both masculine and feminine pronouns have been used for lhamana people. Writing about her friend We'wha, anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson described We'wha as:
{{quote|She performs masculine religious and judicial functions at the same time that she performs feminine duties, tending to laundry and the garden.Suzanne Bost, Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850-2000, (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2003, pg.139}}
{{quote|...the most intelligent person in the pueblo. Strong character made his word law among both men and women with whom he associated. Though his wrath was dreaded by men as well as women, he was loved by all children, to whom he was ever kind.Matilda Coxe Stevenson, The Zuni Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies, (BiblioBazaar, 2010) p. 37 Quote:"the most intelligent person in the pueblo. Strong character made his word law among both men and women with whom he associated. Though his wrath was dreaded by men as well as women, he was loved by all children, to whom he was ever kind. }}
Though generally seen by European colonialists and modern adherents of queer studies as gay, LGBT or transgender, the Zuni lhamana, like other Indigenous social, cultural and ceremonial roles, exist in an Indigenous matrix. Indigenous writers on these roles feel that these identities cannot be reduced solely to same-sex desire or adherence to a conventional set of gender roles, even modern transgender or genderqueer ones.{{cite book|last1=de Vries|first1=Kylan Mattias|editor1-last=O'Brien|editor1-first=Jodi|title=Encyclopedia of gender and society|date=2009|publisher=SAGE|location=Los Angeles |isbn=9781412909167 |page=64 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_nyHS4WyUKEC|access-date=6 March 2015|chapter=Berdache (Two-Spirit)}}Cameron, Michelle. (2005). Two-spirited Aboriginal people: Continuing cultural appropriation by non-Aboriginal society. Canadian Women Studies, 24 (2/3), 123–127.Smith, Andrea. "Queer Theory and Native Studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16.1–2 (2010): 41–68. Web.
Footnotes
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{{Gender and sexual identities}}