Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco's Two-Spirit Community (Indigenous Confluences)

The first book to examine the correlation between mixed-race identity and HIV/AIDS among Native American gay men and transgendered people, Indian Blood provides an analysis of the emerging and often contested LGBTQ "two-spirit" identification as it relates to public health and mixed-race identity.

Prior to contact with European settlers, most Native American tribes held their two-spirit members in high esteem, even considering them spiritually advanced. However, after contact - and religious conversion - attitudes changed and social and cultural support networks were ruptured. This discrimination led to a breakdown in traditional values, beliefs, and practices, which in turn pushed many two-spirit members to participate in high-risk behaviors. The result is a disproportionate number of two-spirit members who currently test positive for HIV.

Using surveys, focus groups, and community discussions to examine the experiences of HIV-positive members of San Francisco's two-spirit community, Indian Blood provides an innovative approach to understanding how colonization continues to affect American Indian communities and opens a series of crucial dialogues in the fields of Native American studies, public health, queer studies, and critical mixed-race studies.

• Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality
• Multiracial Americans and Social Class
• They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields: Illness, Injury, and Illegality among U.S. Farmworkers (California Series in Public Anthropology)
• Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies)
• Red and Yellow, Black and Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies
• Key Concepts in Medical Sociology (SAGE Key Concepts series)
• Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods
• The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing
• Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future
• Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America