The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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that enter our eyes. At night there are reflections of skin filled with muscle, lung, nerve, that flash of dark and light skin, shadows we love that belong to us all. Daughters, the women are speaking. They arrive over the wise distances on perfect feet. Daughters, I love you. 11 Out of a Dark and Different Time: Mary TallMountain The work of Mary TallMountain (Athabascan) reveals a deeply spiritualized sensibility. Her tribal consciousness is tempered with a mystical Roman Catholic perspective, and this makes for a difficult and uneasy alliance between the pagan awareness that characterizes tribal thought and the less earthy, more judgmental view of medieval Christianity. Yet at times her purely Indian awareness and the unity of thought that distinguishes it from that of more secularized political consciousness overwhelms her Christianized sensibility. The poem titled “The Last Wolf” is based on the appearance of a spirit wolf who saw her through a time of deep personal difficulty and serious illness. Along with that poem, she has also recorded incidents of tribal consciousness, as in the following synopsis I’ve made of a personal memoir she wrote in 1980, titled “There Is No Word for Good-Bye.” TallMountain had
eturned to the Alaskan Koyukon village of her birth after an absence of fifty years. She was talking to a nun with whom she was staying during her visit, and they began to talk about spirits that have been spotted recently around the village. The nun mentioned a beaver who had come up out of Mukluk Slough that spring and had clearly said “Do in tsa” (“hello” in Koyukon) to some children. Then she told TallMountain about the appearance of a Christmas tree in the ice seen by one of the men that winter when he was getting water. A pilot who flies a bushplane to Nulato also spotted the tree, “shining out there in the middle of the river,” the nun said. In response to these tales, TallMountain recounted a dream she had had around that time, about a Raven flying upside down. “It’s a message,” she observes. And certainly her awareness of spirit runs through her work like a bright thread, or sometimes like a note fraught with dread and fear. Her journals are full of notes about nonphysicals around her, and they are often directed toward her mother, who died years ago but whose presence is often very close to TallMountain. But side by side with these pagan awarenesses, she reveals a great deal of conflict within her own mind. She has a personal spirit who has often spoken to her. His name is Naagudzaah, or Owl. She speaks of him often in her conversation and in her journal, but she quietly writes that he is “really the Lord Jesus” and that she is aware of that fact. And most of her journal entries, which date from 1973 to the present, are filled with impassioned meditations on the meaning of Catholicism, on the teachings of the Church, and on what the Lord Jesus Christ wants of her. For first and foremost, TallMountain is a devout Roman Catholic, like her Koyukon mother before her; but unlike her mother, TallMountain is a Catholic deeply steeped in the mystical literature and liturgy of her faith. Her poetry is an odd assortment of poems that dart
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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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sought, and his vision was bestowed
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associated with Thunder and the Wes
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And in this mystic body, or mythic
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This sequence reveals to Black Elk
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movements and action and in charact
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eyond the small hoop of the Lakota
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incorporates both. Lastly, the myth
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We are the land, and the land is mo
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waters of life that flow from a wom
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about Tayo’s life is ordinary whi
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After Tayo completes the first step
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this disordered thinking into motio
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A Stranger in My Own Life: Alienati
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I wolde think their life moste happ
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signaled. Then, too, one can meet t
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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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Page 267 and 268: lands. One of the women, identified
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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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