The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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can now treat him as she treats the other men, not as a stranger but as a friend whom it is safe to complain about, to nag, and to care for. Even Grandmother knows that he is no longer special after he returns from the Paguate hills, where he became simply a part of the pattern of Laguna life and the enduring story within the land, and she comments that “these goings-on around Laguna don’t get me excited any more” (p. 260). Perhaps she is also implying that ordinariness can replace the extraordinary nature of life while the ceremony is being played out. Tayo has come home, ordinary in his being, and they can get on with serious business, the day-to-day life of a village, which is what the land, the ceremony, the story, and time immemorial are all about.
A Stranger in My Own Life: Alienation in American Indian Poetry and Prose Although one of the major themes in contemporary American Indian literature is alienation, traditional American Indian literatures display an attractive absence of a sense of otherness. Indeed, the overwhelming message of belonging, of enwholement, that characterizes traditional American Indian literature makes it and the tribes to which it belongs appealing to the American and European mind. Belonging is a basic assumption for traditional Indians, and estrangement is seen as so abnormal that narratives and rituals that restore the estranged to his or her place within the cultural matrix abound. The primary thrust of traditional narratives and chants is wholeness because relationship is taken as fundamental to creaturely existence. Aliens are so designated because they belong to another group of people, not because they are excluded from group membership altogether. Their alien condition is thus normal. It occasions no intrapsychic conflict because the basic assumption of belonging is not in question. The rules for dealing with strangers are clear in tribal traditions, and the normative bias remains unchallenged. Even when a group member is ostracized for severe violations of tribal laws, the narratives point to his or her eventual return to the people, often bringing new laws or rituals, like Handsome Lake of the Seneca or Kochinnenako of the Keres, or coming as a leader of great
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EARLY BIRD BOOKS FRESH EBOOK DEALS,
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For Native people everywhere: may o
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Angry Women Are Building: Issues an
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throughout the United States, incre
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As she read, my heart was lifted in
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of women in native life across the
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Something sacred indeed is going on
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essays in this volume. 1. Indians a
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unquestioned power of such magnitud
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wilderness. The view of Indians as
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context. However, I know from exper
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The Ways of Our Grandmothers
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North America since white contact,
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she is thought itself, from which a
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engendering), Thought Woman is not
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Woman. The Lakota are connected to
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There is an old tradition among num
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matrifocally resorted to their accu
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esult of defeat as well as of victo
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communication with animals, plants,
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among Indians) that was empowered b
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ody of a bird and the head of a wom
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makes them the preponderant powers
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them, he says, “Enough … mother
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When Women Throw Down Bundles: Stro
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function in present-day American In
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Canadian border defeated. Pressed f
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during the council that decided on
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Cherokee gynocracy, of a region tha
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possession of Cherokee lands. The C
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each other and experienced it at ea
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nonauthoritarian social system wher
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degynocraticization is subject to i
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adversarial and dualistic perceptio
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II Since the coming of the Anglo-Eu
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were about power, not about sin or
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am trying to get non-Indian approva
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and white, explains the situation d
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The acts of aggression committed ag
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literature, in fact, is known only
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Geronimo’s autobiography, Frederi
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thus be exiled from the perfect pla
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the one, significance is a necessar
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emphasize restoration of wholeness,
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should be interrelated, given the b
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epetition integrates or fuses, allo
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Seated at home behold me, Lo, here,
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desire will ensure its gratificatio
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The westerner’s bias against nono
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commonplace are one. To you symbols
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presume that thoughts are idiosyncr
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particular talent that human beings
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tales and songs, which may be humor
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from the point of view of its peopl
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its way takes up themes that pervad
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on human life, largely because conf
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incorporating event within event, p
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American novelists’ use of ritual
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complementarity. The women’s trad
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United States (and is still occurri
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that is, accepted the whites’ pea
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Page 127 and 128: ceremonials known as chantways. The
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Page 133 and 134: In his early thirties, Loney, who w
Page 135 and 136: Francisco thus shows that the signi
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Page 139 and 140: Saint Plumero Bigfoot. A total inno
Page 141 and 142: counseled by the Spirit of Thought,
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Page 145 and 146: Something Sacred Going on Out There
Page 147 and 148: muteness. 2 So while μ οσ is tra
Page 149 and 150: caused myth to be regarded as “a
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Page 157 and 158: And in this mystic body, or mythic
Page 159 and 160: This sequence reveals to Black Elk
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Page 167 and 168: We are the land, and the land is mo
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Page 173 and 174: After Tayo completes the first step
Page 175: this disordered thinking into motio
Page 179 and 180: I wolde think their life moste happ
Page 181 and 182: signaled. Then, too, one can meet t
Page 183 and 184: I felt like a tourist. 3 Simon J. O
Page 185 and 186: ecause others hated her whites hate
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Page 191 and 192: and the yellow wind make me shiver
Page 193 and 194: The violence in which Abel finds hi
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Page 197 and 198: seeing for some time, and by this m
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Page 201 and 202: Momaday’s portrayal of Abel as lo
Page 203 and 204: The Ceremonial Motion of Indian Tim
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Page 207 and 208: hoop dance I was watching in my ima
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Page 213 and 214: Answering the Deer: Genocide and Co
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Page 217 and 218: ago and they fought over Acoma land
Page 219 and 220: ut i can see an eagle almost extinc
Page 221 and 222: A contemporary American Indian is a
Page 223 and 224: joined to blood and flesh. There’
Page 225 and 226: This Wilderness in My Blood: Spirit
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crazy. But I also know, in another
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Hogan speaks of a phase she went th
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world of creatures, human and nonhu
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toward one another. Their pulses be
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eturned to the Alaskan Koyukon vill
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Your small shape remained In mornin
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present in the work of “marginal
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here? Shall I go mumbling into my k
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from Paguate to a small land-grant
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dead society, but the reworking of
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and cannot sing it into line. 3) as
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Pushing Up the Sky
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States; an analysis of lesbianism i
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extinction which for several hundre
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death. A headline in the Navajo Tim
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human life and human dignity was ha
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in South America—Brazil, Argentin
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example, the Kaska of Canada would
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were contemptuous of Gay traditions
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considerable stature on Native Amer
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lands. One of the women, identified
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childbearer, and nurturer, they no
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human agency. For Mrs. McCabe, havi
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are inextricably interwoven with fe
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certain women as individuals result
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healing is a matter of restoring th
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traditionalism. The Native American
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Native America. America does not se
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The Matrons held so much policy-mak
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convinced that those wars were and
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Dye declared that Sacagawea, whose
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worlds occurred, come to mark much
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ody responsible for implementing po
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ought here as slaves. Ethnographer
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Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Appr
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approach reveals not only the explo
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are not possible in English. Langua
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and are so painted at death so that
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woven from the silks of corn, a bel
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mood. On approaching the city, he f
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have white markings upon them. From
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A Keres Interpretation When a tradi
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exchange of dominance, and thus eac
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to accept a life bereft of warmth a
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males as one of them in order to bu
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constitutes his declaration of his
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e able to see how the interpolation
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features of the forest. When a woma
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materials. Western technological-in
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tale. I am acutely aware that much
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the manly hearted woman divorces he
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concept of women, the concept of bo
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household as an economic unit but h
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Actually, the legitimacy of motherh
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questioner and the newcomer. Again,
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as men on the eve of combat, or pre
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accepted as part of the woman’s c
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together women tilled their fields,
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The Lakota have a word for some of
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ecome anathema; her presence has be
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Stealing the Thunder: Future Vision
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power, all the life ways and values
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grandmother/mother/Peacemaker/farme
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American Indian studies is not pure
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materials selected and erected to h
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Something of the vastness of the ch
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paw, the healer rushes out of the h
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of Adrian Recinos (Norman: Universi
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Niantic, Scaticook, Piscataway, and
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12. Margot Astrov, American Indian
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8. N. Scott Momaday, House Made of
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of the ritual significance of the d
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11. Momaday, House, p. 64. 12. Lesl
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Press, 1985), p. 56. 12. Paula Gunn
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and forced them to give up their un
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foremothers created a feminist hero
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I think he was doing the translatio
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perhaps permanently altered the nar
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Selected Bibliography Autobiographi
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Brandon, William. The Last American
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University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
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Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Harjo,
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Cochran, Jo (Lakota), et al. Bearin
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Larson, Charles R. American Indian
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“Black-feet, Blood and Peigan Hun
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INDEX Abanaki Indians, 23 Abzug, Be
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ceremonies) Beloved Woman of the Na
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(“rope baby”), 258; and women a
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Crazy Horse (Sioux leader), 115, 26
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Elderly, the: treatment of, 49, 191
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Ghost Dance, 115. See also Dances G
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life, 196-99, 202, 205, 245-47, 250
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Kilpatrick, Jack and Anna, 116 King
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Patriarchy Malinalli (La Malinche;
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Moraga, Cherrie, 214 Morgan, Lewis
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Ortiz, Simon J., 101, 131-32, 264 O
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Quakers, 3, 35. See also Christiani
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Sacred Twins, 19, 27. See also Uret
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Squaws, see Sunksquaws Standing Bea
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Oral tradition Trobriand Islands, 2
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52, 264 West, the (as symbol): colo
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World War II, 21, 125 Wovoka (Paiut
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American Indian studies; Marta Fiel
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May they hold this writing in their
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All rights reserved, including with
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Open Road Integrated Media is a dig
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The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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