The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

elieves that he is invisible. He was in the war, saw his cousin
Rocky die, watched Japanese soldiers who looked like his own
people dying. He cursed the rain, believing that if it would stop,
Rocky would live.
He thinks he is responsible for the drought at home, on the
Laguna reservation, because he went to war and might have
killed somebody. His uncle Josiah died while Tayo was in the
Philippines, and Tayo thinks he is responsible for Josiah’s death
as well.
Feeling completely powerless over the tragic events
surrounding him and convinced that he has somehow caused
them, he retreats into a dream life in which he believes himself
to be invisible, unable to speak because he has no tongue, unable
to make a sound because he has no voice.
Tayo’s suffering is caused by his status as a half-breed in a
tribe that does not approve of mixed blood. His mother, a lost
Laguna woman who had tried to fit into the white world as a
result of her experiences at white schools, turned to alcohol and
a bitter form of prostitution when her attempts to be accepted in
the white man’s world failed. She died of exposure or alcohol,
and her breed son Tayo was raised by her sister and brother in
Laguna. Because he was a breed, Tayo was not taught Laguna
traditions and did not share the arcane knowledge of his Laguna
people. He was treated as an outsider, mocked for his green
eyes. Auntie watched him carefully, always remembering the
circumstances of his birth and his low status because of his
white father, reminding him through her actions how alien he
was. She did not treat her son Rocky the same way but
encouraged him to emulate whites—seeing in him some hope of
salvation, some restoration of the respect she believed lost by
Laura’s transgressions. Tayo saw his place in the family as the
shadow of his successful and handsome cousin-brother Rocky. 12
He believed that he would take Josiah’s place in tending the