The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

process all the way to the final explosion is that they’re taking a
power out of the earth that belongs to the earth. They’re taking
the heart and the soul of the earth.” 6
Hogan’s current poetry and fiction clearly reflect her concern
with the presence of spirits in the land and among the people and
her continuing concern with the political issues of our time. In
her work she carefully fuses her vision to her tribal-based
understanding, so that her work does not exhibit the
awkwardnesses common to writers who are not so strongly
aware of the spirit-based consciousness that necessarily must
underlie the political involvements of an Indian. The
fundamental tribal understanding that Hogan possesses also
protects her from falling into the simplistic rhetoric of activist
propaganda; her politics are deeply knitted to her vision, and her
vision, as her friend observed, is a result of her being an Indian.
Being an Indian enables her to resolve the conflict that presently
divides the non-Indian feminist community; she does not have to
choose between spirituality and political commitment, for each
is the complement of the other. They are the two wings of one
bird, and that bird is the knowledge of the interconnectedness of
everything. That awareness gives rise to a deep confidence that
we will survive because the consciousness possessed by tribal
people is now spreading throughout the nontribal, post-Christian,
postindustrial general populace.
“White people are waking up,” she says. “I have been
traveling, and everywhere I go I see that people are really
developing an older consciousness and they are paying attention
to what’s going on in the world, understanding what needs to be
spoken and heard. And the people are starting to see the animals,
the insects, the trees, as equal to themselves.” 7
In her journals, Hogan has written powerfully and lyrically,
articulating the connection that she so clearly perceives between
the alienated vision of the technocracy she lives in and the living