The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Momaday’s portrayal of Abel as lost because he has been cut
away from his sources by colonization and genocide clearly
focuses on alienation as a political theme. Silko also uses
political arguments throughout Ceremony. The ideas and values
of the ecology, antiracist, and antinuclear movements inform
much of her narrative, giving it a topical quality while advancing
the plot and major themes of the novel.
The tragic vision of Welch may best portray the ultimate
condition of the Indian people in the United States, although his
novels reach resolution in singularly white ways. The
protagonist in Winter in the Blood achieves a sort of sanity, a
balance between his anguish and his need, that allows him to
make plans for a future that will not be as blighted as his past.
But Jim Loney chooses a warrior’s death—one that is simple
and clean, that comes of his own choice, and that singularly fits
the circumstances of his life. Loney chooses to die on the
reservation he never lived on. He is killed by an Indian, a tribal
policeman who believes that Loney murdered his high school
friend, Pretty Weasel.
Jim Loney has his own reasons for allowing the police to
believe him a murderer. He would like to live, to survive, but he
can’t survive in a world that is not meant for him, a white world
that rejects him, an Indian world that abandons him. He can
belong to neither, and his memories, like the black birds he sees,
are too painful for him to continue recalling. He hopes to be
remembered as an Indian, not as a man who was seen “with a
bottle and a gun” 20 like a white man, but “carrying a dog that I
was taking to higher ground.” 21
Loney dies like a warrior, out of choice, not out of defeat.
Though he could not plan or control his life, he could, finally,
determine his death. Perhaps the most destructive aspect of
alienation is that: the loss of power, of control over one’s
destiny, over one’s memories, thoughts, relationships, past, and