The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

clear, as do the various purposes to which industrialized
patriarchal people can put a tribal story.
If she is familiar with the ritual color code of this particular
group of Native Americans, a feminist will know that white is
the color of Shipap, the place where the four rivers of life come
together and where our Mother Iyatiku lives. Thus she will know
that it is appropriate that the Spirit of Woman’s Power/Being
(Yellow Woman) be “married” (that is, ritually connected in
energy-transferring gestalts) first with Winter who is the power
signified by the color white, which informs clouds, the Mountain
Tse-pina, Shipap, originating Power, Koshare, the north and
northwest, and that half of the year, and then with Summer,
whose color powers are yellow and green, which inform
Kurena, sunrise, the growing and ripening time of Mother Earth,
and whose direction is south and southeast and that portion of the
year.
A feminist will know that the story is about how the Mother
Corn Iyatiku’s “daughter,” that is, her essence in one of its
aspects, comes to live as Remembering Prayer Sticks’ daughter
first with the Winter people and then with the Summer people,
and so on.
The net effect of Gunn’s rendition of the story is the unhappy
wedding of the woman-centered tradition of the western Keres
to patriarchal Anglo-European tradition and thus the dislocation
of the central position of Keres women by their assumption
under the rule of the men. When one understands that the hocheni
is the person who tells the time and prays for all the people,
even the white people, and that the Hutchamun Kiuk is the ruler
only in the sense that the Constitution of the United States is the
ruler of the citizens and government of the United States, then the
Keres organization of women, men, spirit folk, equinoxes,
seasons, and clouds into a balanced and integral dynamic will be
seen reflected in the narrative. Knowing this, a feminist will also