Prior to colonization, gender and sexuality differences were both celebrated and seen as common occurrences in many North American tribes. For the Dakota and the Ojibwe, some of the original caretakers of what is known as Minnesota, gender expressions outside of the western binary were considered just another way of being. The same is true for sexual expression outside of heterosexuality.
I spoke with some of my Two Spirit Dakota friends to gain an understanding of what their tribe’s relationships with gender were like and are like today. For the Dakota people, gender is deeply tied to what role you serve in community. Those who were able to hold roles different from what was traditional were seen as important. Their ability to navigate their roles in a way that was unique meant their way of thinking was crucial to the community. People outside of the binary were considered wapetokeca, loosely translated to “one who has signs, is marked in a good way.”
Much of that thinking was similar for the Ojibwe people, as I have found. Those who were able to serve roles outside what was typical for their assigned gender were seen as talented and able to navigate the world in a different way. Many times people who would be considered LGBTQ today would serve as healers, medicine people, and leaders due to their unique way of seeing the world.
This perspective of sexual and gender difference being held as both important as well as a common occurrence meant that when settlers would interact with tribes, there often wouldn’t be words that would correlate in English to the experience of those outside of Western binaries and sexual understandings. This is why a lot of terms for Native LGBTQ identities in early contact were slurs or derogatory: it carried the weight of settlers' cultural distaste for anything outside of the Western binary.