"Three Spirit" gender matters in Navajo country explored in new film

Border towns vis-a-vis Indian Country are always laced with various Anglo forms of discrimination -- primarily, but not exclusively, racial.  All of this is certainly pronounced in the Southwest.  And, in that context, Gallup, New Mexico, ranks high in infamy.  Traveling back and forth on Highway 66 in the old days, my father would never stop in Gallup, not even to buy gas.  Things have improved generally in the border town situations -- waves of Native activism being the prime reason -- but "things" can still be bad in those settings.  When my own family and I were living at tiny Tsaile, deep in the Navajo country in the late '70s and beginning of the '80s. we'd sometimes go the 95 miles to Gallup for a weekend, get a motel, swim, watch the Dukes of Hazzard on color television, and enjoy MacDonald's -- and buy a few things in discount stores.  But we were always glad to get back onto the reservation, and our remote corner at that.

This piece and the film it discusses obviously provides a very interesting perspective on Gallup and Navajoland. (H)


Indianz.Com. In Print.
http://www.indianz.com/News/2013/011523.asp 

Blog: 'Drunktown's Finest' explores Navajo lives in border town
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment 
More on: border towns, film, navajo, new mexico
    


      Navajo filmmaker bases Drunktown's Finest in life in Gallup, New Mexico, a border town near the Navajo Nation: 
        Drunktown's Finest is a movie about finding hope in the bleakest of circumstances. Director Sydney Freeland grew up in the real Drunktown: Gallup, N.M. Or at least that's what ABC's 20/20, the cable newsmagazine that gave her hometown that dreadful moniker in 1990, would have her believe. Instead of resigning herself to a life of addiction, Sydney found a source of hope in her Navajo culture. She wrote Drunktown's Finest to share that hope with the world, and to show that the wisdom of Navajo tradition can be a powerful force for good in our modern society. 

        An important tenet of this Navajo wisdom is respect for the Nadleeh, or third gender. Since long before the LGBT movement, the Navajo have had a sensitivity for people born with gender identities across the entire spectrum of possibility. They reject the notion of dyadic gender and view relationships in terms of gender identity first, then in terms of sex, meaning that a man in a relationship with a male-bodied Nadleeh is not considered homosexual. This seemingly postmodern concept of gender is actually hundreds if not thousands of years old and still informs Navajo culture today. 

      Get the Story:
      Jasper Zweibel: Native American Transsexual Actress Stars in New Film (The Huffington Post 10/23) 
     


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See WITCH HUNT STUFF on our website (a number of pages 
including FBI, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission):
http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm

See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
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introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual: 
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
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