This shirt and badge were created by the WeWah & BarCheeAmpe organisation, a group of Two Spirit people founded in New York City in 1989. The group was named after two famous Two Spirit individuals.
Wewah (or We’wha) was a lhamana - a Zuni gender including both masculine and feminine roles. In 1885, We’wha travelled to Washington DC as a representative of the Zuni people, where they worked with anthropologists and the Smithsonian museum to demonstrate and share information about Zuni crafts and culture. You can learn more about We’wha in our podcast!
BarCheeAmpe, a Crow woman, appears in the memoir of fur trapper James Beckwourth, where she’s described as serving as a warrior and chief, both traditionally masculine roles. We talked about BarCheeAmpe, and Crow gender roles more generally, in our podcast on Bíawacheeitchish, another female Crow chief and warrior.
[Images: source; Yellow badge with an image of a person dressed half in feminine and half in masculine clothing, text reads ‘WaWah & BarCheeAmpe Native 2 Spirits in NYC’; t-shirt printed with an image of We’wha and text reading WE WAH & BAR CHEE AMPE NEW YORK CITY’]