The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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Myself repeated Out of dark and different time. 12 There Has to Be Someone to Name You: Wendy Rose Conflict such as that articulated by Harjo, Hogan, and TallMountain is a feature of the work of virtually every Indian woman writer. Each experiences it differently, and each has her particular way of addressing it and, within her work, of resolving it. Wendy Rose, a Hopi-Miwok woman, speaks poignantly of the conflict as it works itself out in her life. Born and raised in Richmond, California, completely estranged from any tribal traditions from birth, Rose exhibits the greatest polemical tendencies of contemporary Indian women writers. Yet she is also one of the clearest about the exact nature and degree of the conflict she must live with. She is aware of the spiritual and mystical nature of her Hopi people and of her enforced distance from them. Because she has been educated as an anthropologist, much of the material in her poetry comes from her ethnographic knowledge. Because she was raised a Roman Catholic, much of the spiritual content of her work is phrased within Catholic structures. And because she was a dropout into the mad, hippy world of Berkeley in the 1960s, much of her work is informed with a militant, radical polemic. Nevertheless, Rose’s work exhibits the peculiar unitariness of consciousness, despite surface contradictions, that marks American Indian poetry in the late 1970s and 1980s. The oral tradition, based on a mystical understanding of unity that is not as material as it is psychic, provides an axis for the work of contemporary American Indian writers, and this axis is as
present in the work of “marginal” Indians like Rose, Hogan, Harjo, and TallMountain as it is in the work of the more traditional women writing today. And while her enforced distance from her people grieves and angers Rose, she writes poetry that does not fall into suicidal bitterness on the one hand or radical excess on the other. Rather, it hews a clear line toward her understanding of her position, illuminating in that clarity the position of all who are dispossessed. Affirmative Action Berkeley, 1977 Us riffraff, you and me, they let us in. You’re okay but I’m wedged tight like I belonged here sort of blind pretending I was cut to plan the worst part being the direction, that wide white path on which I step across broken beer bottles, cracked pow wow drumsticks, tiny spots of blood leading into books. They imagine in their tower
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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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I felt like a tourist. 3 Simon J. O
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ecause others hated her whites hate
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Page 191 and 192: and the yellow wind make me shiver
Page 193 and 194: The violence in which Abel finds hi
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Page 201 and 202: Momaday’s portrayal of Abel as lo
Page 203 and 204: The Ceremonial Motion of Indian Tim
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Page 213 and 214: Answering the Deer: Genocide and Co
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Page 217 and 218: ago and they fought over Acoma land
Page 219 and 220: ut i can see an eagle almost extinc
Page 221 and 222: A contemporary American Indian is a
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Page 225 and 226: This Wilderness in My Blood: Spirit
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Page 229 and 230: Hogan speaks of a phase she went th
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Page 233 and 234: toward one another. Their pulses be
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Page 237: Your small shape remained In mornin
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Page 249 and 250: Pushing Up the Sky
Page 251 and 252: States; an analysis of lesbianism i
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Page 259 and 260: in South America—Brazil, Argentin
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Page 267 and 268: lands. One of the women, identified
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Page 271 and 272: human agency. For Mrs. McCabe, havi
Page 273 and 274: are inextricably interwoven with fe
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Page 279 and 280: traditionalism. The Native American
Page 281 and 282: Native America. America does not se
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Page 287 and 288: 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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