ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the antiquity of systems of multiple gender in native North American societies, with particular reference to the social role of the shaman. Central to this discussion is the much-debated notion of a broad cultural continuity across much of the circumpolar region, coupled with the contention that it was from eastern Asia and Siberia that the population of North America ultimately derived. One aspect of this discussion has been typified by Kroeber (1952: 314), considering linkages between northern Asian and North American gender and belief systems, who stated ‘that the institution is a single historic growth’. Perhaps La Barre (1970: 161) put it best, when noting that, ‘The worldwide distribution of functionaries recognizable as shamans … testifies to their antiquity’ and that,
. . . the aboriginal New World, seen in its common essence, is a kind of ethnographic museum of the late Palaeolithic – Mesolithic of Eurasia, whence came the American Indian in very ancient times. Indian religious culture is of the same date and origin as their material culture, and it is as copiously documented.
