The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

is powerless to meet. Opposed to him (seldom her) is the greedy
and ignorant white man (seldom white woman) whose dominant
characteristic is his unmitigated evil. While the historical facts,
when viewed in a large scope that blurs individual details, are
largely about the theft of an entire hemisphere by alien invaders
(who might just as well have come from outer space for all they
and the native people had or have in common), the pain and
anxiety engendered by not having a secure sense of place and
identity cannot be assuaged by reducing a multifaceted history
and many human interactions to one-dimensional or cartoonish
stereotypes.
Nor does portraying the Indian as a helpless, innocent, highly
exotic victim do much for the image of Indian people as complex
and intelligent human beings. If we’re so smart, why did we lose
two whole continents? The question must enter the minds of
readers at least vaguely when they are confronted with the noble
innocent red man in place of a human being.
There are ways to write about colonization, the disasters and
the misery and disorganization that have flowed in its wake, that
do justice to the enormity of the tragedy while maintaining a
sense of the humanity of those involved. That means treating the
subject of colonization and of alienation with respect for the
complexity of it. And there are plenty of poets and writers who
do so with great competence, in some cases with brilliance.
The themes of loss, anger, and brutalization form the body of
the work of poets such as nila northSun and Marnie Walsh.
NorthSun writes of her cousin, shadow:
shadow is
my cousin
shadow was
my cousin
hated herself