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Berdache

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Berdache
The name given by early French explorers to Native Americans who fulfilled mixed gender roles, either as male two spirits or female two spirits


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There are, of course, other such gender nonconformists in cultures around the world: the two-spirit berdaches of Native American peoples, the hijras of India and Pakistan, and the Thai kathoeys.
Many Native American traditions have celebrated homosexuals as healers and shamans, referring to them as berdache or "two-spirited.
179) in 1657 if one does not know the central role the lifelong transvested male berdache had long played in traditional native culture, for presumably, the noteworthy amount of cross-dressing in Garza's documents traces back at least in part to this (by Garza unexamined) institution of the berdache.
 
 
 
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