Lhamana

Lhamana, in traditional Zuni culture, are biologically male people who make on a social together with ceremonial roles ordinarily performed by women in their culture, at least some of a time. They wear a mixture of women's & men's clothing and much of their earn is in the areas ordinarily occupied by Zuni women. Some modern lhamana participate in the pan-Indian two-spirit community.

The almost famous lhamana was We'wha 1849–1896, who in 1886 was component of the Zuni delegation to Washington D.C., where they met with President Grover Cleveland.

Social role

Accounts from the 1800s note that the lhamana, while dressed in "female attire", were often hired for work that call "strength and endurance", such as hunting big game and chopping firewood.

In addition to doing heavy work, some lhamana people have excelled at traditional arts and crafts such(a) as pottery and weaving. We'wha, in particular, was a identified weaver.

Both masculine and feminine pronouns have been used for lhamana people. Writing approximately her friend We'wha, anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson returned We'wha as:

She performs masculine religious and judicial functions at the same time that she performs feminine duties, tending to laundry and the garden.

...the near intelligent adult in the pueblo. Strong character produced his word law among both men and women with whom he associated. Though his wrath was dreaded by men as well as women, he was loved by all children, to whom he was ever kind.

Though generally seen by European colonialists and contemporary adherents of queer studies as gay, LGBT or transgender, the Zuni lhamana, like other Indigenous social, cultural and ceremonial roles, live in an Indigenous matrix. Indigenous writers on these roles feel that these identities cannot be reduced solely to same-sex desire or adherence to a conventional vintage of gender roles, even advanced transgender or genderqueer ones.