Dancing With the Berdashe by Kent Monkman : How to Dance Differently

“One of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs that I have ever met in the Indian country... I should wish that it might be extinguished before it be more fully recorded.” 
– George Catlin

The custom that George Catlin, a white America painter and “specialist” of the representation of Native American ways, is referring to is that of the Berdashe. “Used indiscriminately refers to homosexuals, bisexuals, androgynes, transvestites, hermaphrodites and eunuchs,”¹ 1 - Pierrette Déesy, “The Berdaches: ‘Man-Woman’ in North America”, English translation by S. M. Van Wyck, 1993, never published in its entirety of “L’homme-femme. (Les Berdashes en Amérique du Nord),” Libre – politique, anthropologie, philosophie (Paris, Payot: 1978): 57-102. The article is available on line in the collection “Les classiques des sciences sociales,” Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, at: http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/desy_pierrette/homme_femme_Berdashe /homme_femme.html the term Berdashe is more specifically associated with men or women who, in some Native American tribes, freely choose to take on the social role of the opposite sex by cross-dressing and carrying out the daily tasks of their adopted ­gender. Catlin’s highly ethnocentric and profoundly puritan quote,² 2 - The George Catlin quotation displayed in the MMFA is taken from From Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, published in London in 1844.  which was placed as a preamble on the wall adjacent to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition room where Kent Monkman’s work Dance to the Berdashe was on display from May 6 to October 4, 2009, abruptly grabs the viewer’s attention and accurately reflects a sombre image of ethnological excesses. Though, as we know the colonial undertaking succeeded in making the Berdashe disappear, Kent Monkman proudly spells his/her return.