The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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understanding of it. The death of Francisco in House Made of Dawn 1 underscores the difference in perception of time between tribal people and nontribal ones. Fr. Olguin wants to know what time it is when Abel wakes him to tell him that Francisco has died. He is unhappy with being awakened at that ungodly hour—whatever it is exactly. “Good lord, what time is it, anyway?” he complains. “Do you know what time it is?” Then, aware that his response is improper, out of place, he says, “I can understand how you feel, but—” As Abel leaves him standing in the predawn doorway, Fr. Olguin shouts after him, “I understand! Oh God! I understand—I understand!” (p. 190). But he doesn’t, of course. He does not know that the time is Francisco’s death time. House Made of Dawn revolves around the axis of time as motion. It opens with Abel running, and it closes the same way. The novel’s epiphany occurs when Abel, maimed and near death on the Los Angeles beach, comprehends the point of the Runners-after-Evil (p. 96). Scene after scene revolves around the thematic preoccupation with the nature of time—Indian time, industrial time, pastoral time, ceremonial time, institutional time. Momaday pursues his story, placing moving particle against eternal field and counterposing still particle against moving field. When moving particle and moving field are in harmony, joy is the result: Benally riding to the squaw dance, singing a riding song; Ben and Milly on the beach, running; Francisco leading the runners in the ritual race, drumming perfect time of the dance. In the end, the understanding Abel reaches is the understanding that all who live in harmony and balance with their universe must reach. And it is the same understanding that contemporary physicists had to reach as they learned to describe the universe of particles that move within moving time and space. Fr. Olguin does not understand, for he confuses emotion with motion, just as he confuses motivation with season and
death with life. Francisco understands, and in the end he moves from this world into another. He runs into death as he ran into life as a young man (pp. 186–188). He moves with what moves. And in the end Abel understands, finally, after a lifetime of not understanding, that the difference between a witch-inspired death and a harmonious, healing death is the difference between stopped movement and balanced motion with what moves. “He was alone and running on. All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on, and he was past caring about the pain” (p. 191). The achronological time sense of tribal people results from tribal beliefs about the nature of reality, beliefs based on ceremonial understandings rather than on industrial, theological, or agricultural orderings. Chronological time structuring is useful in promoting and supporting an industrial time sense. The idea that everything has a starting point and an ending point reflects accurately the process by which industry produces goods. Western industrialists engage in time-motion studies hoping to enhance profits. Chronological organization also supports allied western beliefs that the individual is separate from the environment, that man is separate from God, that life is an isolated business, and that the person who controls the events around him is a hero. (Woman seldom—indeed virtually never—is addressed or referred to in western theological or philosophical speculations.) That understanding, which includes a strong belief in individualism as well as the belief that time operates external to the internal workings of human and other beings, contrasts sharply with a ceremonial time sense that assumes the individual as a moving event shaped by and shaping human and nonhuman surroundings. The difference in the two concepts of time gave rise to my poem, “Hoop Dancer”:
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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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Francisco thus shows that the signi
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connect a person with the world wor
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Saint Plumero Bigfoot. A total inno
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counseled by the Spirit of Thought,
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narrative counterparts, stories, an
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Something Sacred Going on Out There
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muteness. 2 So while μ οσ is tra
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caused myth to be regarded as “a
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Classical myths could be rescued by
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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 177 and 178: A Stranger in My Own Life: Alienati
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Page 183 and 184: I felt like a tourist. 3 Simon J. O
Page 185 and 186: ecause others hated her whites hate
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Page 191 and 192: and the yellow wind make me shiver
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Page 213 and 214: Answering the Deer: Genocide and Co
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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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