Hi, I’ve got a question for you (or your followers, especially if they’re Native American, preferably Cree) regarding people who are Two-Spirit. One of my characters comes from a Cree tribe and is Two-Spirit, and I’ve noticed that different tribes have specific terms of their own to describe Two-Spirit people, so I’d like to use that in my novel as well when this character describes her identity. I came across the Cree phrase “iskwêhkân” which, according to wikipedia, means “one who acts/lives like a woman”, but creedictionary.com doesn’t recognize it as a word, I think, because the site only gives me a similar word, which is “kîskwêhkân” that means “fool, a mentally ill person”. Which, as you imagine, is definitely not what I was going for.
I’m wondering if I should use another word in the book? Also, if it’s possible, can you recommend me another word or even redirect me where I could continue my search? I admit, I haven’t looked further than wikipedia and creedictionary.com yet because I haven’t gotten around to writing the chapter, in which this character is introduced. I’d love some pointers on this topic, though, because I really don’t want to be ignorant or even offensive to either the trans community or to the Indigenous people. (Also if I phrased anything in an offensive or ignorant way, I apologize. I’m not very educated on this topic yet, but I’m trying to get there)
I asked a Cree friend of mine this, and she’s nearly positive that the derogatory meaning was a mistranslation in the ethnography the term was popularized with. This is the thing with ethnographies, where they are often filtered through a white lens, and as a result a lot of nuance is lost.
The word was originally used to describe the sibling of a man named Fine Day, and the translator misgendered them. And the white interpretation seems to have simply stuck.
The thing is, Cree isn’t a gendered language and doesn’t really have the concept of “pronouns”, unless you attach a gender to the sentence (my friend has been called he and she by Cree elders who learned English late in life as a result).
So gender is a much less obvious thing, and any sort of derogatory meaning has a high likelihood of being a colonialist interpretation. And the lack of recognition in any sort of database is also likely colonialist, since two spirit people were a target of eradication.
The term is probably fine, and it’d be nice to see it used in a positive way.
In case you’re afraid that iskwêhkân would be transphobic, no, lemme try to break the words down to show you what’s going on here:
Meanwhile, kîskwew means … I’d call it “made mentally affected, mental state altered” because while yes, it can turn into kîskwehkân it also can turn into words like kîskwesin (stunned, dazed, concussed) or kîskwesiw (dizzy, sick) or kîskwepewin (intoxicated).
Their similarity between these words is either a coincidence (consider words like “dough” vs “doe”, they don’t have anything to do with one another), or it could be kind of like the English word “hysterical” – a word that has a meaning derived from some culturally contextual attitudes towards women regardless of whether they still apply today.
Kân is a suffix you add to a word to denote that it is false (not as in counterfeit, but as in created, not originally natural), and you can see the neutral nature of its connotation in words like mîpitihkâna or “dentures” (false teeth).
Iskwêhkân means, then, “false woman” in a way: it probably would be more suitable to translate it into something like “crafted woman” to reflect its grammatically neutral construction.
-Elaney
