Face it.  Not everyone in the trans community is transgender.  Our community consists also of family, friends, and allies.

This past week many of us who personally knew Dr. Kenneth Dollarhide have mourned his passing.  For us, he was more than an ally.  He was a dear personal friend to many of us and a teacher who awakened many of us to our deep connections to antiquity and to the 2-Spirited peoples from before the European invasion.

This writer is one person privileged to know this man over many years.  I first met the man I knew as “Ken” in 2001 through TG Forum when it still had the “Meow” chat system.  My spiritual connections somehow “clicked” with him, being one deeply in touch with my dreaming practices, many of which have their parallel to Native American Shamanism.  Before long we were exchanging e-mails with communiqués that continued to just last month.

 

A MOTHER’S CHARGE

Dr. Dollarhide was Lakota.  He grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.¹ When he was a boy he noticed a child walking nearby and asked his mother, “Why is that boy wearing a dress?”

His mother said, “Shh!  That is not a boy.  That is a Winkte.”

She further charged him that he should become friends with her and to show her kindness.  Her direction led him beyond to others like the Winkte he had known, and this would in time lead him to show the same interest in transgender people generally.

Dr. Dollarhide told me that Winkte had a special spiritual role to fulfill in Lakota life, something which he had also perceived in me.  Winkte were also expected to marry just like women were expected to marry.  For a time he referred to me as one, but as I transitioned he began to question the transsexual connection with Winkte.  Lakota have no word of their own specific to the transsexual.  Nevertheless, he did not spare his interest in the welfare of  transpeople, regardless of their various flavors.

 

BEYOND “THE REZ”

Ken remained in and around Pine Ridge till he turned 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Army on a 4-year hitch.  When he returned to civilian life in 1963 he studied, earning a doctorate at McMaster University in religious studies, with special focus upon Buddhism, Japanese, Eastern Religion and Holocaust Studies.²

He had become a Dean of Religious Studies at various universities, eventually working at Keene University in New Jersey.  His travels took him to Japan in connection with his study of Buddhism.  He described himself to me one time as a “Bu-Jew,” and easily understood me when I referred to ideas from Kabbalah.

Often he concluded his e-mails to me with the phrase, “With thoughts of metta.”  Metta is a Buddhist concept.  It could be described as compassion.  It could be compared to Chesed in Kabbalist thought, but specifically in ethical terms of loving kindness, not as a sephirah or universe as in Kabbalah.

His view of spirituality contrasted sharply with that of religion and he clearly favored the former to the latter.  He described spirituality as “horizontal”, a nurturing principle gathered within its circle, whereas religions is “vertical”, domineering and potentially destructive.  Native American spirituality follows the former.  He said, “We look upon the European who trips over a rock and curses, and we feel amused for if an Indian trips over it he says, ‘excuse me, grandfather!’”

It reflects a panpsychism not alien to the monism of the Eleatics and Neoplatonists, even Sufis who come to understand that there’s really no “you” or “me” but an ultimate unity in which individuality is only a descriptive that constantly reminds us of our interconnectedness with all nature.  The human cannot divorce himself from nature as an individual.  All are necessarily interconnected and awareness of that is crucial to our healing the planet.  The spiritual connection of Winkte, and consequently, of other transpeople demands an awakening to that interconnectedness with the planet.  As such, his outreach to transpeople over the years had much of this in mind.

 

INNOCENCE AND THE DREAMER

Perhaps the most revolutionary thing Dr. Dollarhide said to me was in October 2001 when I was first being assessed for transition.  He said, “You are beautiful, smart, and also innocent.”

I recalled how I had not long left the sex industry, having purposed in my heart that I would not return to it in transition.  I demurred, looking upon myself with a sense of shame.  I said, “I am not innocent.”

He said, “You may not see yourself as innocent because of your past.  But no matter where you may have been or what you may have done, you are innocent, because you never lost your capacity to dream and to wonder, even as a little child.”

I dismissed his words as nonsense then.  But in 2004 I remembered what he said and suddenly a profound realization dawned upon me.  I would later write in The Téssara:

“There’s one trait specifically, the true innocence, manifest in children, which is precious beyond all price, for by it we owe the continuance of the world. It’s the capacity to wonder, to dream, to be in awe. From such things we invent all that mankind has made, the affairs of state and education, the assemblies of worship, and the arts of love; for there’s nothing in our world that did not begin somewhere in a dream, including you who are also dreamers. Even your life essence began as a dream in your parents, and that instilled from the mind of God.”³

It would be for me one step of many in the development of my own philosophy, and years later, becoming the fulcrum of a postmodern moral theory.⁴  But more importantly, it would be a philosophy upon which I would build a career and enable me to follow through with my transition.

 

THE CONFERENCES

That last quote from The Téssara might never have been written in the first place had he not related to me something he had recently learned himself.  In 2002 he was returning home from a conference in Perth, Australia.  I would meet him on a stopover in Los Angeles and talk over Italian food.  Our conversations centered upon spiritualities as a favorite subject.  He told me that he learned at the conference that there exists an aboriginal belief that no child can be born unless a parent first dreams the child.  That dreaming connection adds a new dimension to the idea of conception.

But as we went to my car to drive to the restaurant my wig became caught in the door and yanked away from my head.  He noticed my hair which still had a lot of growing to do.  He said, “Why are you wearing a wig?  You have beautiful hair.  You should never wear a wig.”

I left that wig off that night.  I never wore one after that.

For Dr. Dollarhide, that conference in Perth was one of many he attended for various purposes.  He also spoke at a great many transgender conventions, speaking about Native American connections to the modern trans community.  He wrote for Transgender Tapestry, a publication of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE).⁵

He also worked for the civil rights of transpeople, becoming one of the charter members of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE).  However, he didn’t consider himself to be a member of the trans community because he wasn’t himself trans.  He emphatically referred to himself as a “guest” of the trans community.

However, transpeople who knew Dr. Dollarhide saw him differently.  One told him at one of the conventions, “Just accept it.  You really are one of our own.”

 

MORE THAN A “GUEST”

And he was.  It was impossible not to love a man of his compassion and integrity, especially one so unassuming. He was true to what his mother taught him, to show kindness to Winkte, and upon this he became one of the most exemplary allies we have ever known.  His genuineness made him more than a “guest” of the trans community

People like Dr. Dollarhide contributed through their own experiences and recollections to the philosophic forest that has made the transgender mind great, just like he did, whether or not the world accepts its greatness or not.  It’s this kind of thinking that has given us much more impetus for survival and creativity when it could have been expected that transpeople might have died out in localized Sisyphean attempts to organize.  We survive because of the exchange of ideas that teem with possibilities that keep us exploring who we all can be.  Dr. Dollarhide might have been only one of many, but his contribution has been widely received and loved throughout the trans community.

His example taught us how open-ended the trans community really is, and how we must cultivate with care its continued development on every level, not only for the varieties of transpeople that exist, but also those families, friends, and allies who continue to support us or will come to support us in future crises.  It’s an example for which this writer remains eternally grateful.

_____________________________

Featured Image:  A rather grainy fragment of a frame from one the last surviving online images of Dr. Dollarhide.  It comes from an interview he did with Vanessa Fabbre of Illinois Gender Advocates in 2010 where he speaks about the 2-Spirit peoples of our First Nations.  The video is still accessible and highly recommended to all at this link: https://vimeo.com/21328761.

Unless otherwise noted, the author relies upon her own recollections of conversations with Dr. Dollarhide since 2001.

1. Obituary, Kenneth James Dollarhide (accessed March 21, 2018) http://www.clintonfh.com/notices/Kenneth-Dollarhide.
2. Ibid.
3. Stuart, Lynnea Urania. “Enthumesia”, Ch. 1, The Téssara (2008, unpublished) p. 207.
4. The moral theory, “Restorative Ethics” is represented in: Lynnea Urania Stuart. “Confronting Morality in the Singularity” The Pacific Coast Sojourner (March 6, 2018, accessed March 21, 2018) http://www.thepacificcoastsojourner.com/2018/03/bylynnea-urania-stuart-if-i-go-on-site_6.html.
5. Examples: Kenneth Dollarhide. “Concept of Gender among Selected Native American Traditions” Transgender Tapestry (Issue 99, Fall 2002) http://www.ifge.org/magazines/99_fall02.htm; “Lakota Winkte” Transgender Tapestry (Issue 94, Summer 2001) http://www.ifge.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=94; “Native American Spirituality: Understanding Gender As Sacred” Transgender Tapestry, Issue #115, cited by “Genevieve” http://difecta.blogspot.com/2009/10/gender-as-sacred.html.