Aug 08, 2006  |  By: GREG MARZULLO  | COMMENTS     

The history of gay identity on the North American continent is totally absent from the educational system of the United States, and until recent years, the travails of the American Indians have been reduced to the myths of the bloodthirsty Injun or the noble savage.

With “Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo,” gay authors Walter L. Williams and Toby Johnson deftly unveil the great histories of gay people as seen through the mythic and cultural expressions of the Navajo.

The novel is set shortly after the end of the Civil War, when Will Lee, a white Virginian, runs away from home upon being discovered naked with his best friend by his stridently religious father. Will joins up with the Office of Indian Affairs and heads out West to his new post at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

The Navajo were forced to live in the parched desert surrounding Sumner after the U.S. Army drove them from their ancestral lands in what is now northern Arizona. The tribe remained at the fort as prisoners from 1863 until 1867 when they were restored to their homelands.

While there, Will falls in love with Hasbaá, a “two spirit” shaman of the tribe.

“The Navajo as well as many other American Indians honored people — who we today would call gay — as spiritually gifted,” says Johnson. “They were understood to possess both the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman.”

Two spirit people usually displayed signs of gender variance by dressing in clothing that was opposite of their biological gender and engaging in activities that were nontraditional for their gender. They held a spiritual position of honor within the community and worked as healers and intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds.

“The way America thinks of homosexuals is not as spiritual leaders,” says Johnson, 61. I think in the long run it’s more important that gay people change how we understand homosexuality than it is how we get straight people to change their minds about it.”

THE AWAKENING OF gay consciousness, one of the book’s central themes, is nothing new to the writings of either author. Johnson’s nonfiction works “Gay Spirituality” and “Gay Perspective” have become classics in the queer spirit genre, and Williams, currently a senior professor in the gender studies program at the University of Southern California, wrote a seminal book on the two spirit phenomenon titled “The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.”

Both writers seamlessly weave their academic backgrounds into the fabric of Will’s and Hasbaá’s story. Surrounded by the culture and myths of the Navajo people, Will begins to embrace his sexuality as a vehicle toward liberation, happiness and a deepening sense of empowerment.

“One of the great mythological patterns is that people become heroes not because they set out to be a hero, but because they got drawn into it because of personal drive,” says Johnson. “Those personal drives are more sexual most of the time. In writing a gay story, we wanted to be more open about the sexuality.

Researchers like Williams have determined that two spirit shamans regularly engaged in same-sex eroticism and even married their paramours.

“Same-sex marriage is as American as apple pie,” Johnson laughs. “On American soil, there has been same-sex marriage for 5,000 years. It’s the Christians who came along and objected 200 years ago. They’re the new ones.”