Berdache

This is an English-language version of Berdache, a comic by Shaawan Francis Keahna and Waabanokiizhick Mandosking. Read the Anishinaabemowin version of this comic here. You can view a transcript with image descriptions of the comic in English at the bottom of this page.

Aadizookaan/legend/spirit leaves room for interpretation so listeners can find their own meaning. Hiawatha, known by many names, is a central figure in Anishinaabe culture who is both fully human and fully spirit. S/he named creation, taught us ceremonies, picture writing, and how to live well. S/he is considered a spiritual relative who saves our people. I often explain to non-Native folks that this story is like if there were a Bible story about Jesus transitioning. My community sees this teaching as foundational to Indigenous trans identity, and how our worldview ascribes spiritual status to people who have been gifted the ability to change genders and courageous enough to fulfill that responsibility.

—Waabanokiizhick Mandosking

Panel One:

Trickster in the shape of a white porcupine with human feet and traditional Anishinaabe tattoos curls up in the hollow of a tree. He addresses two sisters in Anishinaabemowin. The older sister has a mohawk and a battle jacket with jingles on the back panel. The younger sister has a buzzcut and a red turtleneck dress on, with bleached brows and vampire piercings. 

Narrator: While walking Hiawatha heard women laugh.

They were two: an eldest daughter and her younger sister.

One had a jingling dress on, the other had not: the youngest one's did not jingle.

Hiawatha went into a hollow tree.

And when they were passing nearby he said to them: “I am a white porcupine.”

“Ah! My younger sister! We are going to get quills!” the eldest one said to her younger sister.

Panel Two:

The two sisters undress in order to go find a club to kill the Trickster with. They walk uphill wearing tank tops. The trickster puts on the red dress and the battle jacket and transforms into a woman, with quills flying out of her flesh as she transforms. The sky is blue.

Narrator: The women truly went away to fetch the stick.

When they were gone, Hiawatha put the jingling dress on and covered himself with the other one.

So Hiawatha turned himself into a woman.

Panel Three:

An assortment of queer people lounge about on a massive Dodge Ram in front of a bright pink sky. The trickster, tattoos visible, approaches a tattooed, shirtless trans masc wearing plaid pajama pants. They have a short fuzzy crew cut and an assortment of tattoos: a sword on their neck, the words "hard to kill" across their clavicle, the sacred heart on their right bicep, creeping vines up their forearm, with a spiderweb on their elbow, stylized top surgery scars, the words "boy pussy" on their tummy, and T4T on their hip. Sitting on the front of the Dodge Ram is a redheaded woman, flagging down someone offscreen. Next to the trans masc is a goth girl in a ribbon skirt with spiky red hair. She lights an old man's cigarette. A fat, pink-toned man with a baseball cap sneers down his nose at the Trickster in the bed of the truck.

Narrator: She went to a village that she was acquainted with.

Now, she arrived. “Where is the chief living?” she asked,”because I am going to marry his son.”

“The chief's son had died last night.”

Panel Four:

Image Description: The Trickster smirks shyly out of the corner of her eye at the chief's son, a visibly dead man wrapped in a shock blanket and leaned against a chain link fence. He has a cigarette hanging out of his dead lips and his eyes are all bruised. The sky is neon pink and blue.

Narrator: He was propped up so that he seemed to sit upright, with a pipe in his mouth, apparently living. She feigned to be bashful in his presence, looked at him out of the corner of her eye though he was dead.

Panel Five:

Inside of a lodge, the Trickster sits naked, with the chief's son, also naked, in her lap. She has more tattoos visible, a thunderbird across her chest, and her greasy hair hangs down over the chief's son's face.

Narrator: After all the inhabitants had gone to sleep, she put the dead man on her back and took him out. Then she made a sweating-lodge and heated stones. After this, she took him in to make him sweat, and she put her hair-grease on the stones.

Panel Six:

The chief's son sits upright, sweat pouring down his living, breathing face, and presses his thumb into the Trickster's bottom lip. She has a small tattoo, the emblem of Chinimiwin/Evelyn Pakinewatik/Rot Wood Media tattooed on her wrist. She looks suddenly panicked.

Narrator: After a while inside, he said: “Who is the one who makes me alive?” So Hiawatha had got a husband.

To be continued...