The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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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
ecause others hated her whites hated her indians hated her called shadow apple indian whites saw only INDIAN fat drunk greasy squaw shadow didn’t know what she was my cousin killed herself nothing new we have lots of cousins both dead & alive sometimes both with the same shadow 5 With the same tone of understatement, the almost brutal flippancy of northSun, Walsh writes of Aunt Nettie, who went to Catholic school and then to college for a while, but when she came home “she got a baby / but give it away.” Aunt Nettie liked to talk about what she’d done in college. “She don’t tell though why she come home / nathan say she stole money / and got throwed out.” Aunt Nettie liked to tell poetry that she learned in college, “about love and some lady in a tower / by a lake,” and this love was to be her undoing on the reservation: 5 when aunt nettie got too drunk she told poetry and oh she knowed it good but all the people laughed
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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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esult in either genocide or deicide
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ceremonials known as chantways. The
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then one must accept “devil” wo
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coyote, an ant, but who in any case
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 147 and 148: muteness. 2 So while μ οσ is tra
Page 149 and 150: caused myth to be regarded as “a
Page 151 and 152: Classical myths could be rescued by
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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
Page 169 and 170: waters of life that flow from a wom
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Page 173 and 174: After Tayo completes the first step
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Page 177 and 178: A Stranger in My Own Life: Alienati
Page 179 and 180: I wolde think their life moste happ
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Page 183: I felt like a tourist. 3 Simon J. O
Page 187 and 188: choose to perceive themselves as th
Page 189 and 190: acceptably Indian (with all the pai
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 209 and 210: to a nearly chronological narrative
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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
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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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Page 229 and 230: Hogan speaks of a phase she went th
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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
Page 438 and 439:
Open Road Integrated Media is a dig
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