The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

allowable styles creates the greatest possible social stability
because it includes and encourages variety of personal
expression for the good of the group.
In tribal gynocratic systems a multitude of personality and
character types can function positively within the social order
because the systems are focused on social responsibility rather
than on privilege and on the realities of the human constitution
rather than on denial-based social fictions to which human
beings are compelled to conform by powerful individuals within
the society.
Tribal gynocracies prominently feature even distribution of
goods among all members of the society on the grounds that First
Mother enjoined cooperation and sharing on all her children.
One of the major distinguishing characteristics of gynocratic
cultures is the absence of punitiveness as a means of social
control. Another is the inevitable presence of meaningful
concourse with supernatural beings.
Among gynocratic or gynocentric tribal peoples the welfare of
the young is paramount, the complementary nature of all life
forms is stressed, and the centrality of powerful women to social
well-being is unquestioned.
4. The physical and cultural genocide of American Indian
tribes is and was mostly about patriarchal fear of gynocracy. The
Puritans particularly, but also the Catholic, Quaker, and other
Christian missionaries, like their secular counterparts, could not
tolerate peoples who allowed women to occupy prominent
positions and decision-making capacity at every level of society.
Wives telling husbands and brothers whether to buy or sell an
item, daughters telling fathers whom they could and could not
murder, empresses attending parleys with colonizers and being
treated with deference by male leaders did not sit well with the
invaders.
The colonizers saw (and rightly) that as long as women held