The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Kochinnenako in Academe: Three
Approaches to Interpreting a Keres
Indian Tale
I became engaged in studying feminist thought and theory when I
was first studying and teaching American Indian literature in the
early 1970s. Over the ensuing fifteen years, my own stances
toward both feminist and American Indian life and thought have
intertwined as they have unfolded. I have always included
feminist content and perspectives in my teaching of American
Indian subjects, though at first the mating was uneasy at best. My
determination that both areas were interdependent and mutually
significant to a balanced pedagogy of American Indian studies
led me to grow into an approach to both that is best described as
tribal-feminism or feminist-tribalism. Both terms are applicable:
if I am dealing with feminism, I approach it from a strongly
tribal posture, and when I am dealing with American Indian
literature, history, culture, or philosophy I approach it from a
strongly feminist one.
A feminist approach to the study and teaching of American
Indian life and thought is essential because the area has been
dominated by paternalistic, male-dominant modes of
consciousness since the first writings about American Indians in
the fifteenth century. This male bias has seriously skewed our
understanding of tribal life and philosophy, distorting it in ways
that are sometimes obvious but are most often invisible.
Often what appears to be a misinterpretation caused by racial