Sex has been theorized as key to understanding shamanism by Roberte Hamayon, who attends to shamans, sex, and gender in Siberian shamanism. She argues that shamanic séances among the Evenk and Buryats are "sexual encounters" in themselves. She views the "marriage" between shamans and their non-human helpers as more significant in understanding what these shamans do than the "ecstasy," "mastery of spirits," "altered states" or "journeying" emphasized by other scholars.

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Conclusion

Early work on Siberian shamans by Sergei Shirokogoroff demonstrated that shamans may be either (or both) "hostages to the spirits" and their sexual and/or marital partners. Shamans might, then, be defined as people who welcome "possession" as an embodiment of (sexual and/or marital) relationship with other-than-human-persons.

As the most effective mediators, then--between genders, between humans and nonhumans, the living and dead, and so on--shamans mediate between all the many constituent elements, beings, and situations of the cosmos. They thereby actively accomplish meanings through the construction of relations between human and other-than-human worlds.

Anthropology, the first of the social science disciplines to take sexuality--and particularly homosexuality--seriously as a field of intellectual inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has achieved a new impetus in the post-Stonewall era.

Ethnography, the description of indigenous non-European peoples by Euro-Americans, has been a safe way for writers to discuss homosexuality as a normal, non-pathological behavior.

Beginning in the 1960s increasing numbers of ethnographers have conducted research on glbtq issues, spurred by the premise that studies of diverse sexualities are crucial to understanding human behavior and culture.

"Indigenous" is a concept important in the history of anthropology, particularly as it regards anthropology's treatment of same-sex sexual relations.

In North American Indian cultures, mixed-gender individuals were depicted in a variety of art forms and, in many tribes, were themselves among the most accomplished artists of their communities.

A social role for individuals who crossed or mixed male and female characteristics was one of the most widely distributed institutions of native North America.

From the two-spirits of traditional culture to contemporary writers, Native North Americans have produced a considerable body of gay and lesbian literature.

The art of the Pacific cultures that practiced male homosexuality in a ritual context included flutes, bullroarers, and woven textiles used in male initiations and other ceremonies.

Santería, Vodou, and related belief systems comprise a complex of religious ideas, practices, and imagery whose origins can be traced to West African traditions.

Primarily a nature religion that seeks to commune with the divine through the contemplation and celebration of nature and its mysteries, Wicca--like other contemporary pagan traditions--celebrates our existence in this world.

Both male and female berdaches (or two-spirit persons), common among Native American tribal cultures, were characterized by gender variation sanctioned by supernatural dreams and visions.