The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

perhaps permanently altered the narrative structures of the old
tales and, with them, the tribal conceptual modes of tribal
people. The shift has been away from associative, synchronistic,
event-centered narrative and thought to a linear, foregroundcentered
one. Concurrently, tribal social organization and
interpersonal relations have taken a turn toward authoritarian,
patriarchal, linear, and misogynist modes—hence the rise of
violence against women, an unthinkable event in older, more
circular, and tribal times.
Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in
American Indian Cultures
1. I have read accounts that mention American Indian lesbians
taken from a variety of sources, but those are all in publications
that focus on gays and/or lesbians rather than on Native
Americans.
2. Frederick Manfred, The Manly-Hearted Woman (New
York: Bantam, 1978).
3. Natalie Curtis, The Indians’ Book (New York: Dover,
1950), p. 4.
4. Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), p. 12.
5. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, p. 12.
6. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, p. 12.
7. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, p. 13.
8. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, p. 13.
9. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, p. 13.
10. Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to
Culture?” in Woman, Culture and Society , ed. Michelle
Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1974), p. 70.
11. John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer,