The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

questioner and the newcomer.
Again, community in the non-Indian modern world tends to
mean people who occupy a definable geographical area or who
share a culture (lifestyle) or occupation. It can extend to include
people who share an important common interest—political,
avocational, or spiritual. But “community” in the American
Indian world can mean those who are of a similar clan and
Spirit; those who are encompassed by a particular Spirit-being
are members of a community. In fact, this was the meaning most
often given to the concept in traditional tribal cultures. So it was
not impossible that members of a community could have been a
number of women who “belonged” to a given medicine society
or who were alike in that they shared consciousness of a certain
Spirit.
Women and Power
Any discussion of the status of women in general and of
lesbians in particular cannot hope for accuracy if one
misunderstands women’s power in tribal societies. Indeed, in a
recent random sampling of general ethnographies of several
groups, I have noted that all matters of female life in the group
under discussion can be found under the heading “Woman.” This
heading is divided into marriage, childbearing, childrearing,
housekeeping, and, perhaps, menstruation. The discussions are
neatly ordered according to middle-class white views about
where women fit into social schemes, but they contain a number
of false implications, not the least of which is that men don’t
marry, have children, or participate in childrearing.
It is clear, I think, that the ground we are exploring here is
obscure: women in general have not been taken seriously by
ethnographers or folklorists, and explorations that have been