Two-Spirits

The older term "berdache" is a generic term used primarily by anthropologists, and is frequently rejected as inappropriate and offensive by Native Americans. This may be largely due to its pejorative etymology as it is a loan from Arabic bardaj meaning "male prostitute" and has widely been replaced with "Two-Spirit". "Two-spirit" originated in Winnipeg, Canada in 1990 during the third annual intertribal Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference. It comes from the Ojibwa words "niizh manitoag". It was chosen to distance Native/First Nations people from non-Natives.