The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

incorporating event within event, piling meaning upon meaning,
until the accretion finally results in a story. The structure of
tribal narratives, at least in their native language forms, is quite
unlike that of western fiction; it is not tied to any particular time
line, main character, or event. It is tied to a particular point of
view—that of the tribe’s tradition—and to a specific idea—that
of the ritual tradition and accompanying perspective that inform
the narrative. Ritual provides coherence and significance to
traditional narrative as it does to traditional life.
Ritual can be defined as a procedure whose purpose is to
transform someone or something from one condition or state to
another. While most rituals are related in some way to
communitas, not all have social relationship and communication
as their purpose. Their communitarian aspect derives simply
from the nature of the tribal community, which is assumed to be
intact as long as the ritual or sacred center of the community is
intact. These centers vary from tribe to tribe: for the Lakota the
ritual center of the people is the Sacred Pipe brought to them
long ago by White Buffalo Woman. For the Kiowa that center is
the ten Grandmother bundles. For the Cherokee it is the
ceremonial fire. For many Pueblos it is the plaza, the “middle
place,” as N. Scott Momaday terms it in House Made of Dawn.
It is not so much an idea of community as it is a tangible object
seen as possessing nonrational powers to unite or bind diverse
elements into a community, a psychic and spiritual whole. Thus a
healing ritual changes a person from an isolated (diseased) state
to one of incorporation (health); a solstice ritual turns the sun’s
path from a northerly direction to a southerly one or vice versa;
a hunting ritual turns the hunted animal’s thoughts away from the
individual consciousness of physical life to total immersion in
collective consciousness. In tribal traditions beings such as
certain people and beasts, the sun, the earth, and sacred plants
like corn are in a constant state of transformation, and that