The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

cities, where they regained the self-sufficiency and positions of
influence they had held in earlier centuries. He writes, “In the
cities the power of women has been recognized by the extratribal
communities. Election of tribal women to the leadership of
these urban Indian centers has been a phenomenon in modern
Indian life.” 1
Since the 1960s when Steiner wrote, the number of women in
tribal leadership has grown immensely. Women function as
council members and tribal chairs for at least one-fourth of the
federally recognized tribes. In February 1981, the Albuquerque
Journal reported that sixty-seven American Indian tribes had
women heads of state. In large measure, the urbanization of large
numbers of American Indians has resulted in their reclaiming
their traditions (though it was meant to work the other way when
in the 1950s the Eisenhower administration developed
“Relocation” and “Termination” policies for Indians).
The coming of the white man created chaos in all the old
systems, which were for the most part superbly healthy,
simultaneously cooperative and autonomous, peace-centered,
and ritual-oriented. The success of their systems depended on
complementary institutions and organized relationships among
all sectors of their world. The significance of each part was seen
as necessary to the balanced and harmonious functioning of the
whole, and both private and public aspects of life were viewed
as valuable and necessary components of society. The private
(“inside”) was shared by all, though certain rites and knowledge
were shared only by clan members or by initiates into ritual
societies, some of which were gender-specific and some of
which were open to members of both sexes. Most were maledominated
or female-dominated with helping roles assigned to
members of the opposite gender. One category of inside
societies was exclusive to “berdaches”—males only—and
“berdaches” * —female only. All categories of ritual societies