The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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and she took to crying a lot wouldn’t eat just drank whisky all the time … no mama to care and no papa to beat her they dead and her alone 6 yesterday they find her all crazy screaming and naked she say she lost and cant find her tower by the lake some people take her away but not her poetry i stole it and she wont miss it where she went 6 Aunt and cousin, caught in the same ambiguity; unable to be Indian, unable not to be Indian, they go the same route: drunk, crazy, isolated, having no point of reference that is meaningful to all their experience. Neither Indian nor white can accept all parts of these unfortunates’ experiences, so they fall into tragedy along with their people. The crucial factor in the alienation so often treated in American Indian writing is the unconscious assumption that Indians must ally with one particular segment of their experience and not with another. The world is seen in terms of antagonistic principles: good is set against bad, Indian against white, and tradition against cultural borrowing; personal significance becomes lost in a confusion of dualities. For many, this process has meant rejection of Indianness. The “apples,” who categorically reject the Indian culture they were born to, choose one side, the white. The personal war waged by those who
choose to perceive themselves as thoroughly westernized is often worked out in bouts of suicidal depression, alcoholism, abandonment of Indian ways, “disappearance” into urban complexes, and verbalized distrust of and contempt for longhairs, John “Big Bluff” Tosamah in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn represents this response to the forces of alienation. Others, aware that one cannot reject one’s race and culture, either because the winds of fashion and politics have so convinced them or because they are aware that such an action is in reality impossible, choose the other course of self-rejection. These persons often work out their struggle through rage directed against whites and “apples.” Their violence tends to be otherdirected, and they are the most likely to engage in abuse of wives and children. A third category of victims of alienation are people caught between two cultures. These are the most likely to be suicidal, inarticulate, almost paralyzed in their inability to direct their energies toward resolving what seems to them an insoluble conflict. Their lives are, as they see it, completely beyond their control and any hope of reconciling the oppositions within and outside themselves seems beyond their reach. James Welch writes about those who choose to cling to their Indian heritage in his moving “Winter Indian”: Happy to think of good times buffalo fat to fall in jumps. When war was still a game and berries stained a face fierce, white women slaved to laughing squaws. 7 Unlike many who write about the past with longing, Welch sees the terms of the conflict and in his anger and grief finds wit for honesty, though the dire need of his people does not escape
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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
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In his early thirties, Loney, who w
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Page 139 and 140: Saint Plumero Bigfoot. A total inno
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Page 159 and 160: This sequence reveals to Black Elk
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Page 173 and 174: After Tayo completes the first step
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Page 179 and 180: I wolde think their life moste happ
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Page 183 and 184: I felt like a tourist. 3 Simon J. O
Page 185: 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 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 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
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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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