The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

literature, in fact, is known only to educated, specialized persons
who are privy to the philosophical, mystical, and literary wealth
of their own tribe.
Much of the literature that was in the keeping of such persons,
engraved perfectly and completely in their memories, was not
known to most other men and women. Because of this, much
literature has been lost as the last initiates of particular tribes
and societies within the tribes died, leaving no successors.
Most important, traditional American Indian literature is not
similar to western literature because the basic assumptions about
the universe and, therefore, the basic reality experienced by
tribal peoples and by Western peoples are not the same, even at
the level of folklore. This difference has confused non-Indian
students for centuries. They have been unable or unwilling to
accept this difference and to develop critical procedures to
illuminate the materials without trivializing or otherwise
invalidating them.
For example, American Indian and Western literary traditions
differ greatly in the assumed purposes they serve. The purpose
of traditional American Indian literature is never simply pure
self-expression. The “private soul at any public wall” is a
concept alien to American Indian thought. The tribes do not
celebrate the individual’s ability to feel emotion, for they
assume that all people are able to do so. One’s emotions are
one’s own; to suggest that others should imitate them is to
impose on the personal integrity of others. The tribes seek—
through song, ceremony, legend, sacred stories (myths), and tales
—to embody, articulate, and share reality, to bring the isolated,
private self into harmony and balance with this reality, to
verbalize the sense of the majesty and reverent mystery of all
things, and to actualize, in language, those truths that give to
humanity its greatest significance and dignity. To a large extent,
ceremonial literature serves to redirect private emotion and