The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

in South America—Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Peru. In
some areas we have been all but extinguished, as in the islands
of the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States; in others we
continue to survive in large numbers, though usually
characterized as peasants and disguised as Hispanics by the
Anglo-European/Hispanic media, scholars, officials, and
political activists. Still we endure, and many of our old values,
lifeways, and philosophies endure with us, for they, like us, are
inextricably linked to the land, the sky, the waters, and the spirits
of this Turtle Island, this Earth-Surface place, that the whites
call “the New World.”
From Gynecentric to Patriarchal
During the five hundred years of Anglo-European
colonization, the tribes have seen a progressive shift from
gynecentric, egalitarian, ritual-based social systems to
secularized structures closely imitative of the European
patriarchal system. During this time women (including lesbians)
and gay men—along with traditional medicine people, holy
people, shamans, and ritual leaders—have suffered severe loss
of status, power, and leadership. That these groups have suffered
concurrent degradation is not coincidental; the woman-based,
woman-centered traditions of many precontact tribes were
tightly bound to ritual, and ritual was based on spiritual
understandings rather than on economic or political ones.
The genocide practiced against the tribes is aimed
systematically at the dissolution of ritual tradition. In the past
this has included prohibition of ceremonial practices throughout
North and Meso-America, Christianization, enforced loss of
languages, reeducation of tribal peoples through governmentsupported
and Christian mission schools that Indian children