We'wha

We'wha (1849–1896, various spellings) was a Zuni Native American from New Mexico. She was the most famous lhamana, a traditional Zuni gender role, now described as mixed-gender or Two-Spirit. Lhamana were men who lived in part as women, wearing a mixture of women's and men's clothing and doing a great deal of women's work as well as serving as mediators.

We'wha is the subject of the book The Zuni Man-Woman by Will Roscoe. The anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson also wrote a great deal about We'wha, and even hosted her on her visit to Washington D.C. in 1886. During that visit, she met President Grover Cleveland and was generally mistaken for a cisgender woman. One of the anthropologists close to her described her as “…the strongest character and the most intelligent of the Zuni tribe” (Roscoe, 1991, p. 29).

She was a cultural ambassador for her people, and performed the role of Kolhamana, the lhamana kachina of the Zuni. She died in 1896.

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