Two Spirit

Registered Name: None

Known Aliases: Kitala Wasatahca (Oglala Sioux translation for "Little Strong Deer"); Wanape Tuweya ("One Hand Guiding"); Two Spirit

Identity: Secret, known only to the Sioux Tribal Nation

Occupation: Protector of the Sioux Tribal Nation; Shamaness

Citizenship: Unregistered (with the BIA) citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe

Base of Operations: Mobile, Freedom City

Place of Birth: The Great Plains

Marital Status: Single

Known Relatives: None

Group Affiliation: Most recently and publicly known as one of the leaders in the American Indian Movement (1970), during the occupation of the BIA Office. There have also been legend of a figure similar to Two Spirit at the Massacre of Wounded Knee and Custer's Last Battle

Enemies: American Popular Culture in all its stereotypical glory

Education: Ancient Wisdom handed down from times predating European Invasion

Height: 5' 6"

Weight: 125 lbs.

Eyes: Fawn Brown

Hair: Mahogany

Origin

Kitala’s original birthplace and year are no longer known to anyone besides perhaps the woman herself. What is known is that from an early age she was recognized as what Oglala Sioux tradition labels “The Two Spirit.” A Two Spirit is the name for the rare being born to tribal nations whom bear both the Female and the Male spirit inside them. From her youth, Kitala was groomed for her role in society as a Woman-Body Two Spirit, taking on tasks deserving of both genders that included hunting and participating in vision quests and other rituals sacred to the leader council, as well as arranging marriages, preparing skins, and imbibing handmade leather garments with sacred power. As she grew older, her position in her tribe rose with her added responsibilities, until she took the title of council member and future seer and shamaness of her people.

The Oglala Sioux had a number of tasks in their sacred rituals that could only be performed by the Two Spirit, often in relation to the mystical powers that came with possessing dual and opposing spirits inside a single form. Kitala was almost 20 when she experienced her first vision quest and was guided by her male spirit, Ptayela ( loosely translated to “Together” or “Unity”), to become the Shaman and Spirit guide to her village. Through the next three years, Kitala’s successive efforts to foretell her tribe’s future and commune with the spirits of their ancestors led her to the spirit animals of the four elements and four directions. Far from powers that do her bidding, the spirits were instead advisors to Kitala’s questions, independent forces that aided her so long as she showed them the proper respect through care of the land.

The Elementals

By the time she was 25, Kitala was named successor to her tribe’s leader, and Ptayela was her constant companion in convening with her four elemental spirit-guides. These ancestral spirits took on images familiar to them, representing their history in life and their connection to the elements and the sacred four directions. The East totem was an Air Hawk called “Mahpiya” (Air), whom represented the power of rising spring and the life force in a single breath and the ability of speech (something of ultimate importance to an aural culture). The South Totem was named “Peta” (fire), a fire coyote that reflected the summer months when the sun and heat grew so intense that little survived on the plains and daily life was a trial by fire. The Totem of the West was a water otter known as “Mnitaca” (water), who saw the cooling of the summer heat and a time for hunting in preparation of the winter months. The final totem belonged to the North, an Earth Bison named “Makoce” (earth) whom represented the enduring spirit required to tolerate the severe winters and the very animal whom would provide for their survival. These four sacred totems worked in tandem to Kitala’s own dual spirit, which signified the fifth sacred element, Ether, a force tied into the plenty-potentiality of all things.

Ptayela and the four elementals, once assured of her devotion to her people and to the ancient ways, granted Kitala her immunity to aging, disease, starvation and thirst, as well as cold and heat. However, the ancients were unable to grant such immunities to the rest of her tribe, and with the invasion of the European culture into Turtle Island, Kitala was forced to watch as the battle tactics she could not fight, such as smallpox and the slaughter of the Buffalo, slowly destroyed her tribe. The Oglala Sioux proved more resilient than most tribal nations, largely due to Kitala’s request for aid from the ancestral spirits. But even as they signed treaties with the White Man, still more were increasingly broken. Kitala, by now the leader of her tribe, led them further north in attempts to follow the retreating buffalo into the Canadian territories. But the land in which they found themselves was not the land of their ancestors, with unfamiliar resources and a cycle of seasons not in tune with the Sioux rituals. When the council overrode Kitala’s motion to remain in the North, she could not blame them. Still, she knew with the certainty of a future-seer that to return to the Plains would ultimately mean the death of her people.

Exile

Kitala and her tribe participated in Custer’s last stand, experiencing a brief triumph amidst their slow starvation and illness. When hunger finally drove them to the Rosebud Reservation, the tribe was one of the few left that believed participating in a Ghost Dance would not only reconnect them to their ancestors, but also ensure the renewal of their people and the return of the Buffalo. The death of Chief Sitting Bull could not have happened at a more impromptu time. News of the well-known leader inspired Kitala’s tribe to set out for Wounded Knee, intent on reviving their ways through the Ghost Dance. The resulting Massacre committed by the U.S. Army would forever be written in history, and eternally burned within the mind of Kitala Wasatahca. The Massacre of Wounded Knee saw the destruction of what was left of her tribe, the part that had not succumbed to starvation or illness. She was among the few survivors of that event, but the sense of powerlessness that followed made her feel as though she had died beside her people.

Kitala was not listed by the American Government as one of those that lived beyond the Massacre. She never returned to the Rosebud Reservation, instead slipping away into a self induced exile in the only place that was still a center of power for her. The Black Hills. Though the discovery of gold brought wave after wave of greedy Americans into the sacred center of Turtle Island, none ever found the hiding location of a mourning Kitala. Her name lived on only in the memories of the few American Indians witnessed to her power, and soon the stories told about her became more legend than accepted truth. She adopted a new name, “Wanape Tuweya,” (One Hand Guiding) the name in which she had been known for during her years as a leader of her tribe. These legends were passed down from family to family, but after the second generation of the assimilated American Indian, the children no longer wished to listen to a past that was like dust in their mouths. And so, the Two Spirit was forgotten, lost to time until a culmination of events would draw her presence out again.

Return to Civilization

Almost 100 years later, Native Peoples across America would take action against their situation in the American Indian Movement (AIM). In doing so, the indigenous tribes led a mass revolution against the bureaucracy in charge of the Rosebud Reservation, wresting power from them at the same time as another group of American Indians would lay siege to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office in Washington D.C. Both efforts met with temporary success, and it was this moment of triumph that inspired Wanape Tuweya out of her 80-year slumber. Her ancestral spirits led her to D.C. and the office which was then occupied by American Indians and surrounded by Government militia. Even without her prophetic abilities, the Two Spirit could see just how this uprising would end, and she swore not to let anymore of her Native companions die because of a blind and prejudice nation.