The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

materials. Western technological-industrialized minds cannot
adequately interpret tribal materials because they are generally
trained to perceive their entire world in ways that are alien to
tribal understandings.
This problem is not exclusive to tribal literature. It is one that
all ethnic writers who write out of a tribal or folk tradition face,
and one that is also shared by women writers, who, after all,
inhabit a separate folk tradition. Much of women’s culture bears
marked resemblance to tribal culture. The perceptual modes that
women, even those of us who are literate, industrialized, and
reared within masculinist academic traditions, habitually engage
in more closely resemble inclusive-field perception than
excluding foreground-background perceptions.
Women’s traditional occupations, their arts and crafts, and
their literature and philosophies are more often accretive than
linear, more achronological than chronological, and more
dependent on harmonious relationships of all elements within a
field of perception than western culture in general is thought to
be. Indeed, the patchwork quilt is the best material example I can
think of to describe the plot and process of a traditional tribal
narrative, and quilting is a non-Indian woman’s art, one that
Indian women have taken to avidly and that they display in their
ceremonies, rituals, and social gatherings as well as in their
homes.
It is the nature of woman’s existence to be and to create
background. This fact, viewed with unhappiness by many
feminists, is of ultimate importance in a tribal context. Certainly
no art object is bereft of background. Certainly the contents and
tone of one’s background will largely determine the direction
and meaning of one’s life and, therefore, the meaning and effect
of one’s performance in any given sphere of activity.
Westerners have for a long time discounted the importance of
background. The earth herself, which is our most inclusive