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Beyond the Binary: Retelling the Dine' Creation Story

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Yes Magazine
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Reprinted from www.yesmagazine.org


'For this was First Woman's gift: a choice to be, to love, and a small power of creation. For some, the power of pregnancy. For a select few, the power to call forth rain. And for everyone, the power to create bonds that last a lifetime.'
(Image by POLA HEREDIA/YES! MEDIA)
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Long ago, when the corn stalks were tall and plentiful, and the animals spoke freely, First Woman made a journey across the land. She hiked mesas and climbed canyon walls. She listened and studied all of creation to learn how every living being coexisted.

First Woman noticed that all creatures had a choice about who they could be and who they could love. First Woman wanted this for her people, the Dine', too. From a stone of turquoise, First Woman fashioned a penis, and then she asked the yucca plant for its fruit, which she put inside the turquoise penis. Next, First Woman picked up a white shell and made a vagina, and in the vagina, she placed a small red shell for the clitoris. She asked the yucca plant again for its fruit and put that inside the clitoris. She then combined herbs with various kinds of water from the four directions and placed that mixture deep inside the vagina and the penis.

Then First Woman went to the Dine' and commanded that upon reaching a certain age, every child would experience a ceremony of transformation in which they could choose a vagina, a penis, both, or neither. For this was First Woman's gift: a choice to be, to love, and a small power of creation. For some, the power of pregnancy. For a select few, the power to call forth rain. And for everyone, the power to create bonds that last a lifetime.

At least, that is how I would rewrite the story. The one that is published and shared widely today is not as inclusive toward our Intersex, Queer, and Trans relatives. That story" collected by outsiders, like Washington Matthews in 1897 and later rewritten by Paul G. Zolbrod in 1984" fits within a narrow framework of a strict gender binary. First Woman supposedly only creates a penis and a vagina, and she commands that those two can only attract each other. This version enforces a cisgender-heteronormative narrative" one that was never there before.

The story I write is the story that I believe. It is a story that my body tells me and celebrates who I am"a Trans-feminine Queer Dine'.

My body remembers.

It remembers the stories told long into the night.

But what are those stories? What are those stories that were silenced and taken from my people? Or the stories stolen from us and rewritten to fit into this restrictive narrative that refuses people like me?

My body hears.

It hears the prayers sung before the rising of the sun.

I never experienced that destined ceremony of transformation. My choice was taken away from me, and I was forced to be a man, forced to refuse the gift of First Woman, and forced to never hear the prayers and lessons that were meant to be shared with me in this ceremony of transformation. But is it too late?

All around me are moments. Moments

that sing to me. that reach to me. that know me.

Deep within my body, my memory, and my soul, I exist. I was celebrated and I was revered by my community. We all were. Each one of us a part of the whole within a community. Along with the power of creation, we were given the power to choose. Yet over the centuries, those were taken away from me, whether by my community or by colonizers.

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Yes magazine is a superb publication with visionary articles Opednews recommends very highly. They give OEN permission to periodically reprint some of their articles. 

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