Chapter 16. Gender, Sexuality and Anti-Oppression
GS.7: Deep Dive – Diversity of Indigenous Gender Systems: 3, 4, and 5 genders
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.
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