ABSTRACT
The status of Native American berdaches rests upon a cultural construction of gender that differs significantly from gender construction in the United States and the western tradition (Callender & Kochems, 1983). As stated by Whitehead (1981), the two cultural traditions, Native American and western, give very different weight to particular cultural attributes of gender. At the ideological level, Western gender construction acknowledges only a dichotomy between two opposing gender statuses, men and women. Many Native American cultures, however, accept a gender-mixing status.
