The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

thought I heard them talking, coming up the walk. She turned
again, pulling the door shut behind, vagueness hunching her
round shoulders, her brown arms raising to circle her for
warmth. Slowly she sat in the nearest bright orange chair.
What time is it? (p. 3)
In the book, dream, “actual” event, myth, tale, history, and
internal dialogue are run together, making it evident that
divisions do not lead to comprehension. The structure reflects
the point that particles move in moving time and space and that
individuals move in a moving field. One passage in particular
relates this idea:
All is very still. There is sky leading everywhere. Or
nowhere. And the woman in a beige dress is telling
Ephanie she is too meek. That she lets them run over her.
That she must take charge …
Ephanie sat the afternoon pondering the window, its
light. The reflection of the yellowed tree. Branches standing
as if on the threshold of awareness. Throwing light at the
sky. Fall now, winter soon. Time a floating crap game. (p.
15)
The section title that follows this passage, “If She Remembers,
She’ll Know The Time,” captures the essence of Indian time.
Ultimately, Indian time is a concept based on a sense of
propriety, on a ritual understanding of order and harmony. For an
Indian, if being on time means being out of harmony with self
and ritual, the Indian will be “late.” The right timing for a tribal
Indian is the time when he or she is in balance with the flow of
the four rivers of life. That is, Indian time rests on a perception
of individuals as part of an entire gestalt in which fittingness is
not a matter of how gear teeth mesh with each other but rather
how the person meshes with the revolving of the seasons, the
land, and the mythic reality that shapes all life into significance.