Contemporary LGBT writing on gender roles in indigenous cultures has often oversimplified, even sentimentalized, this history. The systems of berdache that existed before and after the European invasions were complicated and served different purposes for each tribe. More fluid than European gender arrangements, the creation of nonbinary genders was a different model and not necessarily more liberatory. Some contemporary writers, including LGBT Native Americans, interpret the berdache as equivalent to our contemporary understanding of “gay.” While superficial similarities exist between
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