The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

foundations. 13 Long ignored by white and Indian writers alike,
these traditions are the basis for much of tribal society in the
Americas. My choice is not surprising: as a daughter of Laguna,
a Keres pueblo, I was raised with a gynocratic perspective, one
not unmixed with patriarchal views, however.
As already mentioned, women’s rituals are traditionally
centered on continuance. While women experience
transformations accompanied by danger, blood, and death, they
also create life from their own flesh. The transformative phases
of a woman’s life alter the degree of power (in the medicine or
sacred sense) that she possesses, bringing to her increased
power with each of the four female life phases. 14
The Keres conceptualize the supreme being as a puzzling
figure commonly referred to as Old Spider, Grandmother Spider,
or Spider Woman. Spider Woman’s Keres name is translated as
Thought Woman (it can be better understood if translated as
Creating-through-Thinking Woman). She is the Dreamer, the
ritual center, who sang her sister goddesses Uretsete and
Naotsete into life and taught them the rituals they used to sing
everything in their baskets, their medicine bundles, into being.
Among the things in their baskets were the heavens, the waters,
the mountains, the earth, the katsina (spirit messengers and
protectors), the creatures, and the plants. In ensuing times they
change: Uretsete becomes Iyatiku and as such is the Mother of
the people, the gods, and the animals. She, like her agricultural
analogue the corn, is the power of self-generation and
regeneration. It is this power or force that binds the people
together, that empowers their rituals and customs and provides
them with social systems, village plans, sustenance, and all else
they might need to live in harmony and reasonable plenty on
earth. Eventually Uretsete leaves the people and goes to Shipap,
the ceremonial or dream/vision center of the tribe’s ritual life,
from whence she guides the people, aided by the cacique and