A Word Coined in 1990

Two-Spirit is a modern English umbrella term, adopted at an intertribal Native American and First Nations gay and lesbian gathering held in Winnipeg in 1990, coined to give Indigenous North American communities a term of their own choosing for gender and spiritual roles outside the settler binary, replacing berdache, an older anthropological term derived from a French word with origins in a slur for a kept male sexual partner, which Indigenous participants at the gathering rejected as inaccurate and offensive.

Two-Spirit was deliberately constructed as a pan-Indigenous, English language umbrella, intended for use in intertribal and public contexts such as advocacy, health services and cross community organizing, rather than as a replacement for the many distinct terms individual Indigenous nations and languages already held, and continue to hold, for their own gender and spiritual traditions. The word entered wider use through Indigenous LGBT organizing in the 1990s and has since become a standard term in North American discussions of Indigenous gender diversity, including in government, healthcare and academic contexts, without displacing nation specific vocabulary within individual communities.