The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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As shamans, the women in many tribes function in all ways that male shamans are known to. They perform healings, hunting ceremonies, vision quests and the guidance for them, acts of psychokinesis, teleportation, weather direction, and more. In the various tribes according to each one’s customs, the shaman also creates certain artifacts—clothing, baskets, ornaments, objects to be worn in pouches or under skirts or sewed into belts. She officiates at burials, births, child naming and welcoming into this world, menstrual and pregnancy rituals and rites, psychic manipulation of animals, metamorphoses or transformations. She does much of this through dancing and chanting, and a large part of the method, symbols, significances, and effects of her shamanic efforts are recorded in the stories she tells, the songs she sings, and the knowledge she possesses. Much of this knowledge she transmits to others in ways that will be of use to them, and much of it she keeps to herself, teaches in formal settings to her apprentices, or shares with other shamans. One of the primary functions of the shaman is her effect on tribal understandings of “women’s roles,” which in large part are traditional in Mrs. McCabe’s sense of the word. It is the shaman’s connection to the spirit world that Indian women writers reflect most strongly in our poetry and fiction. If there is any Indian woman’s tradition that informs our work, it is the spiritual understanding of womanhood as an expression of spirit. That understanding is formed on the recognition that everything is alive, that the spirit people are part of our daily world, that all life lives in harmony and kinship with and to all other life, and that sickness of all kinds and of all orders comes about because of our resistance to surrendering to the complexity and multidimensionality of existence. So we acknowledge that the violation of the Mothers’ and Grandmothers’ laws of kinship, respect, balance, and harmony brings about social, planetary, and personal illness and that
healing is a matter of restoring the balance within ourselves and our communities. To this restoration of balance, of health, and wellness (wealth) we contribute our energies. For we are engaged in the work of reclaiming our minds, our gods, and our traditions. The sacred hoop cannot be restored unless and until its sacred center is recognized.
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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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choose to perceive themselves as th
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acceptably Indian (with all the pai
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and the yellow wind make me shiver
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The violence in which Abel finds hi
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cattle and fields because Rocky see
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seeing for some time, and by this m
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stasis of Loney as he approaches th
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Momaday’s portrayal of Abel as lo
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The Ceremonial Motion of Indian Tim
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death with life. Francisco understa
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hoop dance I was watching in my ima
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to a nearly chronological narrative
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thought I heard them talking, comin
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Answering the Deer: Genocide and Co
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witness is one solution, but it is
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ago and they fought over Acoma land
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ut i can see an eagle almost extinc
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A contemporary American Indian is a
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joined to blood and flesh. There’
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 249 and 250: Pushing Up the Sky
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Page 297 and 298: approach reveals not only the explo
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Page 309 and 310: A Keres Interpretation When a tradi
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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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The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

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