The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

passages, in her extensive collection, that are the equivalent of
“Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Color TV,” and the absence of such
material weakens the childhood-magic theory of repetition. In
fact, the usual American Indian perception of humanity
(collectively, not individually) as cocreator discourages the
people from perceiving the deity as a sort of cosmic bellhop
who alone is responsible for their personal well-being. This
perception simultaneously discourages people from setting
themselves up as potentates, tyrants, dictators, or leaders of any
other kind.
The failure of folklorists to comprehend the true metaphysical
and psychic nature of structural devices such as ceremonial
repetition is a result of the projection of one set of cultural
assumptions onto another culture’s customs and literatures.
People of the Western cultures, particularly those in professions
noted for their “objectivity” and intellectual commitment to
Freudian tenets, are likely not to interpret psychic components of
ceremonial literature in its extramundane sense but rather in its
more familiar psychological sense. The twin assumptions that
repetition serves to quiet childish psychological needs and to
assure participants in a ceremony that they are exerting control
over external phenomena—getting something they want badly—
are projections. The participants do indeed believe that they can
exert control over natural phenomena, but not because they have
childishly repeated some syllables. Rather, they assume that all
reality is internal in some sense, that the dichotomy of the isolate
individual versus the “out there” only appears to exist, and that
ceremonial observance can help them transcend this delusion
and achieve union with the All Spirit. From a position of unity
within this larger Self, the ceremony can bring about certain
results, such as healing one who is ill, ensuring that natural
events move in their accustomed way, or bringing prosperity to
the tribe.