The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

thought, and arbitrary divisions of the universe into “divine” and
“worldly” or “natural” and “unnatural” beings do not occur.
Literature takes on more meaning when considered in terms of
some relevant whole (like life itself), so let us consider some
relationships between specific American Indian literary forms
and the symbols usually found in them. The two forms basic to
American Indian literature are the ceremony and the myth. The
ceremony is the ritual enactment of a specialized perception of a
cosmic relationship, while the myth is a prose record of that
relationship. Thus, the wiwanyag wachipi (sun dance) is the
ritual enactment of the relationship the Plains people see
between consecration of the human spirit and Wakan Tanka as
manifested as Sun, or Light, and Life-Bestower. Through
purification, participation, sacrifice, and supplication, the
participants act as instruments or transmitters of increased
power and wholeness, which bestows health and prosperity,
from Wakan Tanka.
The formal structure of a ceremony is as holistic as the
universe it purports to reflect and respond to, for the ceremony
contains other forms such as incantation, song (dance), and
prayer, and it is itself the central mode of literary expression
from which all allied songs and stories derive. The Lakota view
all the ceremonies as related to one another in various explicit
and implicit ways, as though each were one face of a
multifaceted prism. This interlocking of the basic forms has led
to much confusion among non-Indian collectors and
commentators, and this complexity makes all simplistic
treatments of American Indian literature more confusing than
helpful. Indeed, the non-Indian tendency to separate things from
one another—be they literary forms, species, or persons—
causes a great deal of unnecessary difficulty with and
misinterpretation of American Indian life and culture. It is
reasonable, from an Indian point of view, that all literary forms