Hidatsa

Noun

miáti

1. male-bodied third-gender person who participates in religious ceremonies and lives as a woman

Related terms

• miátihe ‎(“to become a miati”)
• miátike ‎(“to cause to become a miati”)

See also

• two-spirit

References

• Sabine Lang, Men as Women, Women as Men (ISBN 0292777957, 2010)
• Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology (2002 ISBN 0252070763),

  page 98: Adoption of children by miati was also common among the Hidatsa; they took in orphans from their own tribe or children captured on raids and passed on property and ceremonial knowledge to them (Bowers 1965:167).

  page 171: "As with many North American people, the Hidatsa recognized a third gender category […] . Their name for members of this category was miati. The miati were distinguished in a number of ways from Hidatsa male and female genders. Miati were male-bodied persons who in adolescence chose to adopt or embody the miati role, which was fraught with religious significance because the miati were the most active class of persons who conducted ceremonies. Euro-American observers tended to focus on the fact that miati wore feminine attire and seemed disposed to have sexual relationships with males."

• Archaeologies of Sexuality (2005, ISBN 1134593856)
• Handbook of Gender in Archaeology (2006, ISBN 0759106789), page 443: Grounded in ethnographic and ethnohistoric documentation, she suggests that the Hidatsa miati, as cultural-ritual innovators and earth lodge builders, would express their gender identity in the homes they built for themselves.
• Washington Matthews, Grammar and Dictionary of the Language of the Hidatsa