The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

experience of warmth and caring. He thought of those years as
being “like a dream.” 18 He didn’t remember how she died, did
not even know what happened to her. He did not remember her
name until Kate reminded him of it years later. But he
remembered certain moments—drinking hot chocolate, brushing
her hair. She was, he decided, “the woman he had tried hardest
to love, throughout the years, and now.” 19
Thus, fatherless, motherless, abandoned by sister and friend,
he grew into an adult who was lonely to the core, unable to be
nurtured by anyone. Anomie was his chief characteristic.
In many respects, Jim Loney, Tayo, Abel, and the nameless
narrator of Winter in the Blood are alike. All have been
severely damaged by death, all are parentless except the narrator
in Winter in the Blood, whose mother, though still alive, cannot
communicate love or closeness to her son. Most important, none
of these protagonists has a clear sense of belonging to a people,
a tradition, or a culture.
The conflict is resolved variously: the southwestern authors,
Momaday and Silko, choose traditional Indian modes of
resolution, while the northern author Welch chooses realism.
The difference in choice can at least be partly ascribed to the
differences in perception of options among Pueblo, Navajo, or
other southwestern tribes and those of the Plains or more eastern
tribes. As the acculturation processes have been different in the
two regions, the degree of alienation, as reflected in these
novels, has also been different. In addition, romanticism of
American Indians is endemic to the Southwest, while
brutalization and degradation of them is common on the Plains.
Thus, it seems that alienation is a political issue. Among
others, Silko and Momaday make this point as part of their plots.
In House Made of Dawn, police brutality is a significant factor
in Abel’s destruction, as is the lack of comprehension by liberal
sympathizers like Fr. Olguin and Milly. Beyond these elements,