The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

are inextricably interwoven with feminine power) within the
secure psychic power-generating and protective “battery” of the
circle of Grandmothers, and the Sacred Pipe way of the Lakota
comes to them from the spirit White Buffalo Woman.
In these and many other tribal systems, the oral tradition in its
ceremonial and ritual aspects rests on female power; shamanism,
which is accorded to certain persons, including gays and
lesbians, derives from the power of dream/vision and the living
presence of the Dreamer among the people.
In another film, Pomo Shaman, Mrs. Parrish demonstrates a
healing ritual, in which she uses water and water power,
captured and focused through her motions, words, and use of
material water, to heal a patient. She demonstrates the means of
healing, and in the short narrative segments, she repeats in
English some of the ritual. It is about creation and creating and
signifies the basic understanding the tribal peoples generally
have about how sickness comes about and how its effects can be
assuaged, relieved, and perhaps even removed.
The mental health practitioner Phyllis Old Dog Cross alludes
to this belief when she quotes anthropologist Peggy Sanday:
“‘Where men are in harmony with their environment rape is
usually absent.’” 13 That is, rape or other acts of political or
power-based violence result from a disorder in the relationship
between person and cosmos.
Traditional American Indian systems depended on basic
concepts that are at present being reformulated and to some
extent practiced by western feminists, including cooperation (but
by that traditional Indians generally meant something other than
noncompetitiveness or passivity), harmony (again, this did not
necessarily mean absence of conflict), balance, kinship, and
respect. Their material, social, and ritual systems were
predicated on these essential values, which might be seen as
objectives, parameters, norms, or principles depending on how