The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

worlds occurred, come to mark much of contemporary American
life. And those qualities, which I believe have passed into white
culture from Indian culture, are the very ones that
fundamentalists, immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and
Asia often find the most reprehensible. Third- and fourthgeneration
Americans indulge in growing nudity, informality in
social relations, egalitarianism, and the rearing of women who
value autonomy, strength, freedom, and personal dignity—and
who are often derided by European, Asian, and Middle Eastern
men for those qualities. Contemporary Americans value leisure
almost as much as tribal people do. They find themselves
increasingly unable to accept child abuse as a reasonable way to
nurture. They bathe more than any other industrial people on
earth—much to the scorn of their white cousins across the
Atlantic, and they sometimes enjoy a good laugh even at their
own expense (though they still have a less developed sense of
the ridiculous than one might wish).
Contemporary Americans find themselves more and more
likely to adopt a “live and let live” attitude in matters of
personal sexual and social styles. Two-thirds of their diet and a
large share of their medications and medical treatments mirror
or are directly derived from Native American sources.
Indianization is not a simple concept, to be sure, and it is one
that Americans often find themselves resisting; but it is a process
that has taken place, regardless of American resistance to
recognizing the source of many if not most of American’s
vaunted freedoms in our personal, family, social, and political
arenas.
This is not to say that Americans have become Indian in every
attitude, value, or social institution. Unfortunately, Americans
have a way to go in learning how to live in the world in ways
that improve the quality of life for each individual while doing
minimal damage to the biota, but they have adapted certain basic