The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

done have largely been distorted by the preconceptions
engendered by a patriarchal world-view, in which lesbians are
said not to exist and women are perceived as oppressed,
burdened, powerless, and peripheral to interesting accounts of
human affairs except in that they have babies.
In her discussion of the “universal” devaluation of women,
Sherry Ortner cites the Crow, a matrilineal American Indian
tribe that places women in high status. Crow Women, according
to Ortner, were nevertheless required to ride “inferior” horses
during menstruation and were prohibited from participating in
ceremonies during their periods. She cites anthropologist Robert
Lowie as stating that menstruation was seen as “a source of
contamination, for [women] were not allowed to approach either
a wounded man or men starting on a war party,” and as a “threat
to warfare, one of the most valued institutions of the tribe, one
that is central to their [the tribe’s] definition.” 10 She interprets
this evidence as proving that the Crow believed women inferior
to men, even though many other aspects of their social structure
and ritual life deny this assertion. But I think the vital question is
why she interprets the evidence to demonstrate female inferiority
and to mean that traditionally low status was woman’s lot among
them. She does not suggest that the present-day status of women
among them might be attributable to the impact of colonization
because she is attempting to prove that women have always and
everywhere been oppressed by men. I contend that women have
held a great deal of power in ritual cultures and that evidence
supporting this contention is at least as massive as the evidence
of our ignominy.
Ortner’s conclusion that menstruation was perceived as dirty
and contaminating by tribal people and that they saw it in the
same light in which it was viewed by patriarchal peoples is
simply wrong. Tribal people view menstruation as a “medicine”
of such power that it can cause the death of certain people, such