Later accounts, influenced by the development of queer theory and Two-Spirit studies, have often described her as Two-Spirit — using the modern pan-Indigenous term that Indigenous scholars and community members developed to describe gender-diverse individuals in Indigenous cultures.

This framework attempts to honor the Indigenous traditions of recognizing gender diversity rather than forcing all such individuals into a European binary.

The Two-Spirit framework is valuable and important.

It represents a genuine scholarly and community effort to describe Indigenous gender diversity on its own terms rather than through European categories.

But applying it to historical figures requires care, because the specific cultural contexts and meanings of gender-diverse roles varied enormously between nations, and because individual historical figures cannot be asked how they understood themselves.

What the historical record shows about Woman Chief is this: she dressed as a woman while functioning as a warrior and chief.