Approximate reading time: 2 minutes

Many Indigenous nations worldwide recognise and embrace non-binary, gender-expansive systems, including three-, four-, and five-gender systems.

Three Genders

Where applicable, each nation has their own language to describe, define, and assign special roles to a third gender. For example, let’s consider the Cree, Siksika, Ktunaxa, and A:shwi tribes (Matthews-Hartwell, 2014).

• Cree: napêw iskwêwisêhot (men who dress like women).
• Cree: iskwêw ka napêwayat (women who dress like men).
• Siksika (Blackfoot): aakíí’skassi (men who perform roles typically associated with women, such as basket weaving and pottery-making).
• Ktunaxa (Kootenay): titqattek (females who take on roles traditionally characterised as masculine, including healing, hunting and warfare).
• A:shwi (Zuni): Lhamana (a person who lives as both genders simultaneously).

Four Genders

In Ojibwe (Chippewa) society, described by Halverson (2013), the four genders are:

• okwe (feminine female),
• agowinini (masculine female),
• agokwe (feminine male), and
• inini (masculine male).

Five Genders

The Bugis, one of the three main ethnic groups in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, number around 3 million. They are predominantly Muslim, and still practise many pre-Islamic traditions, including the belief in a gender spectrum (Ibrahim, 2019).

In Bugis society, there are five recognized genders:

• makkunrai (cisgender women),
• oroané (cisgender men),
• bissu (often seen as androgynous or intersex, serving as respected shamans or priests),
• calabai (transgender women), and
• calalai (transgender men).

This rich diversity in Bugis society highlights the complexity of gender identities.