The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Introduction
When I was small, my mother often told me that animals, insects,
and plants are to be treated with the kind of respect one
customarily accords to high-status adults. “Life is a circle, and
everything has its place in it,” she would say. That’s how I met
the sacred hoop, which has been an integral part of my life,
though I didn’t know to call it that until the early 1970s when I
read John G. Neihardt’s rendering of the life story of Oglala
Lakota Holy Man Black Elk in Black Elk Speaks.
I didn’t start out to be a Native American scholar. I did my
undergraduate work mostly in English, focusing on creative
writing where I could, and went on to get a Master of Fine Arts
in creative writing. But on my return to Albuquerque from
California in late 1970, my friend Dick Wilson asked me to
teach in the newly formed Native American Studies Program at
the University of New Mexico. My decision to accept his offer
signaled a major shift in my focus, one that returned me to my
mother’s side, to the sacred hoop of my grandmothers’ ways.
In the fifteen or so years since I made the shift to American
Indian Studies, I’ve gotten a Ph.D. in the field, taught a number
of courses, including literature, history, women’s studies,
traditional sciences, spirituality, and philosophy, edited a
volume of curriculum and criticism for studying and teaching
American Indian literature, and published a novel and several
books of poetry. During these years I also wrote the essays that
appear in this volume.
Over the years I have located the following major themes or
issues that pertain to American Indians and that characterize the