The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Native America. America does not seem to remember that it
derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and
a large part of its “dream” from Native America. It is ignorant of
the genesis of its culture in this Native American land, and that
ignorance helps to perpetuate the longstanding European and
Middle Eastern monotheistic, hierarchical, patriarchal cultures’
oppression of women, gays, and lesbians, people of color,
working class, unemployed people, and the elderly. Hardly
anyone in America speculates that the constitutional system of
government might be as much a product of American Indian
ideas and practices as of colonial American and Anglo-
European revolutionary fervor.
Even though Indians are officially and informally ignored as
intellectual movers and shapers in the United States, Britain, and
Europe, they are peoples with ancient tenure on this soil. During
the ages when tribal societies existed in the Americas largely
untouched by patriarchal oppression, they developed elaborate
systems of thought that included science, philosophy, and
government based on a belief in the central importance of female
energies, autonomy of individuals, cooperation, human dignity,
human freedom, and egalitarian distribution of status, goods, and
services. Respect for others, reverence for life, and, as a byproduct,
pacifism as a way of life; importance of kinship ties in
the customary ordering of social interaction; a sense of the
sacredness and mystery of existence; balance and harmony in
relationships both sacred and secular were all features of life
among the tribal confederacies and nations. And in those that
lived by the largest number of these principles, gynarchy was the
norm rather than the exception. Those systems are as yet
unmatched in any contemporary industrial, agrarian, or
postindustrial society on earth.
As we have seen in previous essays, there are many female
gods recognized and honored by the tribes and Nations.