Recommended listening: The Offering by Mary Youngblood (Seminole and Aleut)
Story
For thousands of years, the Unangan people have lived in the Aleutian islands. Making their home alongside birds, seals, foxes and whales, they spread out across all of the islands in this volcanic chain at the far northern edge of the Ring of Fire. They brought with them a rich culture full of art forms such as jewellery and clothing. By the year 1000, some of their communities were becoming increasingly hierarchical, with chiefs building larger homes than the rest. Others remained relatively egalitarian, with everyone sharing access to the abundant resources that surrounded them in their wet and windy home. Some of the Unangan (or Aleut, as they're sometimes known) still live in their ancestral island communities to this day, in spite of all the forced attempts to remove them over the centuries. Their name Unangan means "coast people", pointing towards their deep connection to the island landscape.
Like many of the peoples indigenous to the Americas and Siberia, the Unangan had room for a lot of gender variance in their worldview. Gender was not strictly determined by how someone was born, but could change based on how they lived their life as they grew older. Children who were originally interpreted as young boys sometimes came to live as women instead. These people were known as ayagigux', or literally "man transformed into woman". According to the earliest European accounts of the Unangan, some children would be brought up "entirely in the manner of girls". When their beards started to grow in, their family members plucked the hairs out for them. For most girls, the onset of menstruation was often the time when they received their first facial tattoos. These tattoos on their chins and cheeks marked them as women to the rest of their community and to the spirits. But for an ayagigux', it was the time her first facial hair was plucked out that she received women's tattoos. Once she was an adult woman, she would typically marry a man and live as one of his wives.
The decision for someone to live as an ayagigux' was supported by their families. There were some Europeans who speculated that mothers chose their favourite male children for this role so as to protect them from warfare. It's hard to know if this is really true, or if it is just the theory Europeans came up with to try to justify a practice which was so foreign to them. Sadly, much of what we could know about the ayagigux' is lost due to European colonialism's hostile attitude towards transgender people. In a pattern which was repeated in many places across the world, transgender Indigenous people were forced to conform to their colonizers' gender binary under threat of violence. Such a violent approach to transgender people was completely alien to the Unangan, who considered it completely normal that some people would end up in a gender role different than the one they were assigned at birth. The transmasculine equivalent of the ayagigux' was the tayagigux', the "woman transformed into a man". These people were so well-integrated into Unangan society that sometimes Europeans didn't even realise the person they were talking to was transgender.
An ayagigux' woman lived life in a pretty similar manner to her cisgender women counterparts. Unangan women had many active roles to play in their community's survival. While their husbands hunted the largest game, they hunted smaller animals like birds. They took these animals and transformed them into food and clothing to keep their families alive. Clothing was particularly important for survival in the cold and windy climate of the winter months in the Aleutian Islands. Special waterproof parkas were made for hunters who ventured out into the waters on kayaks to hunt seals and whales. Women and men also cared a great deal about personal ornamentation. They tattooed their bodies for decoration and also practiced therapeutic tattooing, which has a similar underlying principle to Chinese acupuncture. Tattoos could tell you a person's gender, social standing, and family connections. Women also wore amber and bone jewellery, from labrets pierced under their lips to earrings studded around their earlobes. Some Unangan people even wore feathers pierced into their ears. Red feathers were particularly admired, whether worn in the ears or sewn into clothing.
Birds also held great spiritual significance to the Unangan. They are often associated with burials, particularly those of children, in the archaeological record. Unangan people across the Aleutian Islands believed that birds could transcend many boundaries, such as that between life and death, and also between human and animal. Many Unangan people carried birdskins around with them with the understanding that if it became necessary, they could transform into birds themselves. There are many Unangan stories about birds who transformed into humans and vise versa. Some of the birds most known for their transformative abilities were hawks, bald eagles, whiskered auklets, song sparrows, winter wrens, and northern fulmars. Humans who transformed into one of these birds gained their powers while maintaining their human consciousness. Birds were seen as fundamentally sentient beings who shared much in common with their human hunters.
Because of their history of transforming from one gender into another, transgender Unangan people like the ayagigux' were more likely to become shamans. One European observer noted that not only were trans women not looked down upon, but they were held in high esteem in their communities and often performed sacred duties. Like the birds who could move between the human and animal worlds or the worlds of the living and the dead, transgender Unangan people were often seen as having special knowledge of the permeability of barriers that defined the natural and supernatural worlds. Many Siberian cultures had similar approaches to transfemininity and shamanism, with transgender women disproportionately represented in these roles. The belief that transgender people held a unique combination of masculine and feminine experiences was quite common across the Indigenous Americas. That's part of the reason these people are often known in English today as "Two Spirits".
The ayagigux' in this illustration lives on Akun Island at the Surf Bay site, a location positioned near several large bird and seal colonies. Her community has already been living here for countless generations, making their living on the rocky and windy but resource-rich island. She is married to a man who hunts large game for their family, perhaps even the chief himself who could often afford to marry multiple women. She spends most of her days with the other women of the village, hunting and making clothing, cooking and telling stories, and singing and dancing in winter ceremonies. Perhaps she also takes on special sacred tasks when her community calls on her to, drawing upon her experience as an ayagigux' to step into a liminal role. Above her flies a fulmar, a fellow being who understands what it is like to move between worlds. With her splendid tattoos and jewellery, she knows exactly who she is: A woman of the Unangan community on Akun Island.
Like many of the peoples indigenous to the Americas and Siberia, the Unangan had room for a lot of gender variance in their worldview. Gender was not strictly determined by how someone was born, but could change based on how they lived their life as they grew older. Children who were originally interpreted as young boys sometimes came to live as women instead. These people were known as ayagigux', or literally "man transformed into woman". According to the earliest European accounts of the Unangan, some children would be brought up "entirely in the manner of girls". When their beards started to grow in, their family members plucked the hairs out for them. For most girls, the onset of menstruation was often the time when they received their first facial tattoos. These tattoos on their chins and cheeks marked them as women to the rest of their community and to the spirits. But for an ayagigux', it was the time her first facial hair was plucked out that she received women's tattoos. Once she was an adult woman, she would typically marry a man and live as one of his wives.
The decision for someone to live as an ayagigux' was supported by their families. There were some Europeans who speculated that mothers chose their favourite male children for this role so as to protect them from warfare. It's hard to know if this is really true, or if it is just the theory Europeans came up with to try to justify a practice which was so foreign to them. Sadly, much of what we could know about the ayagigux' is lost due to European colonialism's hostile attitude towards transgender people. In a pattern which was repeated in many places across the world, transgender Indigenous people were forced to conform to their colonizers' gender binary under threat of violence. Such a violent approach to transgender people was completely alien to the Unangan, who considered it completely normal that some people would end up in a gender role different than the one they were assigned at birth. The transmasculine equivalent of the ayagigux' was the tayagigux', the "woman transformed into a man". These people were so well-integrated into Unangan society that sometimes Europeans didn't even realise the person they were talking to was transgender.
An ayagigux' woman lived life in a pretty similar manner to her cisgender women counterparts. Unangan women had many active roles to play in their community's survival. While their husbands hunted the largest game, they hunted smaller animals like birds. They took these animals and transformed them into food and clothing to keep their families alive. Clothing was particularly important for survival in the cold and windy climate of the winter months in the Aleutian Islands. Special waterproof parkas were made for hunters who ventured out into the waters on kayaks to hunt seals and whales. Women and men also cared a great deal about personal ornamentation. They tattooed their bodies for decoration and also practiced therapeutic tattooing, which has a similar underlying principle to Chinese acupuncture. Tattoos could tell you a person's gender, social standing, and family connections. Women also wore amber and bone jewellery, from labrets pierced under their lips to earrings studded around their earlobes. Some Unangan people even wore feathers pierced into their ears. Red feathers were particularly admired, whether worn in the ears or sewn into clothing.
Birds also held great spiritual significance to the Unangan. They are often associated with burials, particularly those of children, in the archaeological record. Unangan people across the Aleutian Islands believed that birds could transcend many boundaries, such as that between life and death, and also between human and animal. Many Unangan people carried birdskins around with them with the understanding that if it became necessary, they could transform into birds themselves. There are many Unangan stories about birds who transformed into humans and vise versa. Some of the birds most known for their transformative abilities were hawks, bald eagles, whiskered auklets, song sparrows, winter wrens, and northern fulmars. Humans who transformed into one of these birds gained their powers while maintaining their human consciousness. Birds were seen as fundamentally sentient beings who shared much in common with their human hunters.
Because of their history of transforming from one gender into another, transgender Unangan people like the ayagigux' were more likely to become shamans. One European observer noted that not only were trans women not looked down upon, but they were held in high esteem in their communities and often performed sacred duties. Like the birds who could move between the human and animal worlds or the worlds of the living and the dead, transgender Unangan people were often seen as having special knowledge of the permeability of barriers that defined the natural and supernatural worlds. Many Siberian cultures had similar approaches to transfemininity and shamanism, with transgender women disproportionately represented in these roles. The belief that transgender people held a unique combination of masculine and feminine experiences was quite common across the Indigenous Americas. That's part of the reason these people are often known in English today as "Two Spirits".
The ayagigux' in this illustration lives on Akun Island at the Surf Bay site, a location positioned near several large bird and seal colonies. Her community has already been living here for countless generations, making their living on the rocky and windy but resource-rich island. She is married to a man who hunts large game for their family, perhaps even the chief himself who could often afford to marry multiple women. She spends most of her days with the other women of the village, hunting and making clothing, cooking and telling stories, and singing and dancing in winter ceremonies. Perhaps she also takes on special sacred tasks when her community calls on her to, drawing upon her experience as an ayagigux' to step into a liminal role. Above her flies a fulmar, a fellow being who understands what it is like to move between worlds. With her splendid tattoos and jewellery, she knows exactly who she is: A woman of the Unangan community on Akun Island.
Artist's Comments
At long last, there is a transgender woman in the Women of 1000 series! I have wanted to include trans women from the beginning, but it has taken me a long time to read up on the many different Indigenous approaches to gender. I have always wanted to make sure to respect that some Indigenous gender systems account for multiple genders, which might fall under non-binary identities rather than binary trans ones. While I'm sure the ayagigux' could also be described as a third gender, reading about their history among the Unangan felt a lot like reading about transgender women today (albeit with important culturally specific differences, such as the sacred role). Since the sources all describe them being almost completely indistinguishable from cisgender women in their appearance and social roles, I thought they would be a good choice to depict in my Women of 1000 series. I'm from a white settler background, not Indigenous at all, so while I hope I did a good job representing what life was like for an ayagigux', I may have gotten some things wrong here. I couldn't find any autobiographical sources from Unangan trans women, so I hope I didn't misrepresent their culture's approach to transfeminine people's gender.
I think this is the biggest closeup I've included in the series so far. It was a fun challenge! Thanks to Morgan and Sacha for helping me pick out the pose references. It's tricky drawing a face from this angle, but I like how it turned out. My health has been difficult lately so it has been really good to work on this as a distraction. I guess that's why this is my third illustration in one month! I was pretty shocked to realise that where I live in Scotland is further north than Akun Island. I've seen northern fulmars nesting here! They're such beautiful birds.
Times have been tough for transgender people in my country lately, and around the world. Transgender people have always existed, including transfeminine people who shared their daily lives with cisgender women often with little differentiation. To argue that transgender identites are some sort of modern trend is to ignore the staggering amount of evidence for transgender people in history. Given the fact that so many Indigenous societies had non-binary genders and recognised transgender people as fully integrated members of society, it's violently colonial to erase and obfuscate this history. I hope to include more transfeminine people in my series as it goes on, and I hope that you have enjoyed and appreciated learning about the life of an Unangan ayagigux' today. ~ March 29, 2022
I think this is the biggest closeup I've included in the series so far. It was a fun challenge! Thanks to Morgan and Sacha for helping me pick out the pose references. It's tricky drawing a face from this angle, but I like how it turned out. My health has been difficult lately so it has been really good to work on this as a distraction. I guess that's why this is my third illustration in one month! I was pretty shocked to realise that where I live in Scotland is further north than Akun Island. I've seen northern fulmars nesting here! They're such beautiful birds.
Times have been tough for transgender people in my country lately, and around the world. Transgender people have always existed, including transfeminine people who shared their daily lives with cisgender women often with little differentiation. To argue that transgender identites are some sort of modern trend is to ignore the staggering amount of evidence for transgender people in history. Given the fact that so many Indigenous societies had non-binary genders and recognised transgender people as fully integrated members of society, it's violently colonial to erase and obfuscate this history. I hope to include more transfeminine people in my series as it goes on, and I hope that you have enjoyed and appreciated learning about the life of an Unangan ayagigux' today. ~ March 29, 2022
Resources
Want to learn more about historical Aleut women and transgender people? Here are some recommended resources.
"Tattooing and Piercing Among the Alaskan Unangax (Aleut)" by Lars Krutak
Tattoo researcher Lars Krutak gives a really great overview of Unangan tattooing practices in this online article. It includes a great section on the tattoos of transgender ayagigux' people. There are some higher resolution versions of the images used in the article in his book Tattoo Traditions of Native North America, although that book doesn't have more info on transgender Unangan people than the article here does.
Pacific Homosexualities by Stephen Murray
I have to put a disclaimer before recommending this book. Murray quotes extensively from primary sources about transgender Unangan people (mainly Unangan transgender women). The lengthy quotes are invaluable for putting together the evidence for trans experiences in early colonial Alaska. However, his own interpretations of this source material are often quite transphobic. Sadly, even though he sometimes acknowledges that trans women were gendered as women, his book still has a habit of describing trans women as gay males, since he is very focused on sex acts between people with penises. For that reason, I'd caution anyone to be careful about using this book since the author's interpretations are often transphobic. The book's main use is that it compiles so many primary sources about queer people in Asia and the Americas and quotes from them at great length.
Unangax' (Aleut) on Alaska Native Connections
This website from the Smithsonian Institute profiles the different Alaska Native peoples of Alaska. The introduction to the Unangan, linked above, is written by Niigugim Aleut anthropologist Patricia Petrivelli. You can see some of her publications listed here. Another good website for an overview of the Unangan, particularly directed at children, is the Aleut Fact Sheet on Nativelanguages.org. If you want to learn more about the Unangan language, there's also Tanam Awaa which has information on Unangan history and culture as well as language-learning resources. One of the people behind the website is Aquilina Lestenkof, an Unangan woman and researcher who has facial tattoos. Krutak's book about tattoos, linked above, has an interview with Lestenkof about her tattoos.
"Ethno-ornithology in the Rat Islands: Prehistoric Aleut relationships with birds in the western Aleutians, Alaska" by Caroline Funk
In this article, Funk seeks to summarize for the first time in academic literature the types of relationships Unangan people had with various bird species. Her inclusion of the northern fulmar as a bird which Unangan people believed humans could transform into is the reason I decided to depict that species in this illustration. If you're not able to access the linked academic article, there is a shorter account of her research available in the online article "For the Ancient Aleuts, the Bird Was the Word" by Faith Rudebusch.
"Unangan (Aleut) subsistence throughout the Medieval Climatic Anomaly: Zooarchaeological analysis of the Surf Bay Landing site (1500 BP to 700 BP) on Akun Island, Alaska" by Aubrey L. Morrison
Morrison's PhD thesis goes in-depth looking at the Surf Bay site on Akun Island. Since AD 1000 (950 BP) was included in the date range she analysed, I decided to set my illustration here. Her photographs of the site were really helpful for creating the background of my drawing.
"Archaeology of the Eastern Aleut Region" by Herbert Maschner
If you're interested in the archaeological background of Unangan cultures in Alaska, check out this article from The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic. As Maschner says in his introduction, this area of archaeology can be very confusing to try to get your head around. I think he does a good job here though of outlining the general progression of archaeological phases in the Eastern Aleutians.
Two Spirit and LGBTQIA Indigenous Resources
This resource page from the University of Toronto is a great place to start if you'd like to learn more about Two Spirit people. It opens with an introductory video by Geo Neptune, a Passamaquoddy Two Spirit person. Then there are databases, studies, and books linked in the Two Spirit Research page. Another good reading list for learning about Two Spirit experiences is hosted by Halifax Public Libraries, provided by the Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance. If you'd like to learn whether there's a Two Spirit organisation near you, check out this list on Wikipedia. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an annual Two Spirit powwow.
"Tattooing and Piercing Among the Alaskan Unangax (Aleut)" by Lars Krutak
Tattoo researcher Lars Krutak gives a really great overview of Unangan tattooing practices in this online article. It includes a great section on the tattoos of transgender ayagigux' people. There are some higher resolution versions of the images used in the article in his book Tattoo Traditions of Native North America, although that book doesn't have more info on transgender Unangan people than the article here does.
Pacific Homosexualities by Stephen Murray
I have to put a disclaimer before recommending this book. Murray quotes extensively from primary sources about transgender Unangan people (mainly Unangan transgender women). The lengthy quotes are invaluable for putting together the evidence for trans experiences in early colonial Alaska. However, his own interpretations of this source material are often quite transphobic. Sadly, even though he sometimes acknowledges that trans women were gendered as women, his book still has a habit of describing trans women as gay males, since he is very focused on sex acts between people with penises. For that reason, I'd caution anyone to be careful about using this book since the author's interpretations are often transphobic. The book's main use is that it compiles so many primary sources about queer people in Asia and the Americas and quotes from them at great length.
Unangax' (Aleut) on Alaska Native Connections
This website from the Smithsonian Institute profiles the different Alaska Native peoples of Alaska. The introduction to the Unangan, linked above, is written by Niigugim Aleut anthropologist Patricia Petrivelli. You can see some of her publications listed here. Another good website for an overview of the Unangan, particularly directed at children, is the Aleut Fact Sheet on Nativelanguages.org. If you want to learn more about the Unangan language, there's also Tanam Awaa which has information on Unangan history and culture as well as language-learning resources. One of the people behind the website is Aquilina Lestenkof, an Unangan woman and researcher who has facial tattoos. Krutak's book about tattoos, linked above, has an interview with Lestenkof about her tattoos.
"Ethno-ornithology in the Rat Islands: Prehistoric Aleut relationships with birds in the western Aleutians, Alaska" by Caroline Funk
In this article, Funk seeks to summarize for the first time in academic literature the types of relationships Unangan people had with various bird species. Her inclusion of the northern fulmar as a bird which Unangan people believed humans could transform into is the reason I decided to depict that species in this illustration. If you're not able to access the linked academic article, there is a shorter account of her research available in the online article "For the Ancient Aleuts, the Bird Was the Word" by Faith Rudebusch.
"Unangan (Aleut) subsistence throughout the Medieval Climatic Anomaly: Zooarchaeological analysis of the Surf Bay Landing site (1500 BP to 700 BP) on Akun Island, Alaska" by Aubrey L. Morrison
Morrison's PhD thesis goes in-depth looking at the Surf Bay site on Akun Island. Since AD 1000 (950 BP) was included in the date range she analysed, I decided to set my illustration here. Her photographs of the site were really helpful for creating the background of my drawing.
"Archaeology of the Eastern Aleut Region" by Herbert Maschner
If you're interested in the archaeological background of Unangan cultures in Alaska, check out this article from The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic. As Maschner says in his introduction, this area of archaeology can be very confusing to try to get your head around. I think he does a good job here though of outlining the general progression of archaeological phases in the Eastern Aleutians.
Two Spirit and LGBTQIA Indigenous Resources
This resource page from the University of Toronto is a great place to start if you'd like to learn more about Two Spirit people. It opens with an introductory video by Geo Neptune, a Passamaquoddy Two Spirit person. Then there are databases, studies, and books linked in the Two Spirit Research page. Another good reading list for learning about Two Spirit experiences is hosted by Halifax Public Libraries, provided by the Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance. If you'd like to learn whether there's a Two Spirit organisation near you, check out this list on Wikipedia. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an annual Two Spirit powwow.