The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

by Paula Gunn Allen

This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Native American, Indigenous, History, Gender, Religion

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, lesbian activist, and novelist.

Born Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, Allen grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese-American descent, Allen always identified most closely with the people among whom she spent her childhood and upbringing.

Having obtained a BA and MFA from the University of Oregon, Allen gained her PhD at the University of New Mexico, where she taught and where she began her research into various tribal religions.

Reviews

[Miguel Amaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, I miss her. Dearly. Anyone who knew Paula (at UCLA, UC Berkeley) knew what a wonderful
scholar she was. You don't stay at UCB or UCLA for long with under-performance.

She did plenty of research for this text and it held up fairly well in its category. I'm somewhat disappointed that reviews don't bring up the fact that this text fills in many gaps that exist about Keres Pueblo groups and others. Even Vine Deloria grudgingly acknowledged its importance.

I once heard Paula share how hard it was to conduct research and have it accepted in the English dept. worlds. She was once challenged for not speaking Keres. (Those who read Dream of the Rood in original Old English, and can note whether Hamer or Treharne is the better translator, take offence or great umbrage here).
The Sacred Hoop is a filler of those critical spaces that were left empty by neglect, or by misappropriation. Here's to Paula's work, and all those who've been friends of those who travel the good red road.

[Miriam Cihodariu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essays collected in this anthology are about matriarchal figures in the religion, myth and social structures of Native nations. The author argues that these elements were once central to the worldview of American Indians and in more subtle ways they still are, but got lost through colonization and the subsequent whitewashing of Indian culture.

Some claims are a bit controversial - such as when the author argues that white feminists borrowed the idea of feminine independence from Native myth completely - as if feminism started from the Native influence and would not have been born at all were it not for Native inspiration.

There's also a lot of literary comment on older and newer native sources, and I particularly enjoyed the poetry quoted and discussed throughout. Here's a lovely sample:

Contemporary Native American poetry by Roberta Whiteman Hill (fragment from ‘Leap in the dark’):

—Then she sealed her nimble dreams
with water from a murky bay. “For him I map
this galaxy of dust that turns without an answer.
When it rains, I remember his face in the corridor
of a past apartment and trace the anguish around his mouth,
… With the grace that remains
I catch a glint around a door I cannot enter.
The clock echoes in dishtowels; I search love’s center
and bang pans against the rubble of my day, the lucid
grandeur of wet ground, the strangeness of a fatal sun
that makes us mark on the margin of our loss,
trust in the gossamer of touch, trust in the late-plowed field.
I hug my death, my chorus of years, and search
and stretch and leap, for I will be apprentice to the blood
in spite of the mood of the world
that keeps rusting, rusting, the wild throats of birds.

[aloveiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paula Gunn Allen is really a great and notable scholar. I am endlessly pleased with her essays. I have consistently found them to be encompassing, original and acute. It seems that she can write from all sides of the fence in the tesseract dimension of emotional identities.
Her impact is especially well executed through the subjects she chooses to address. Writing to a target audience of english teachers about how to teach literature that integrates native american art and the philosophical environment and ramifications of that art has great potential for high impacting outcomes.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though she sometimes succumbs to generalizations and risks merely substituting the dominance of one gender over the other in her theorization of matriarchal American Indian cultures, Paula Gunn Allen provides some really interesting ideas about the differences between American Indian literature and western literature as well as some useful analysis of major American Indian authors.

"The Sacred Hoop" provides the most insight into American Indian thought. Allen here argues, for instance, that “In English, one can divide the universe into two parts: the natural and the supernatural. Humanity has no real part in either, being neither animal nor spirit—that is, the supernatural is discussed as though it were apart from people, and the natural as though people were apart from it. This necessarily forces English-speaking people into a position of alienation from the world they live in. Such isolation is entirely foreign to American Indian thought. At base, every story, every song, every ceremony tells the Indian that each creature is part of a living whole and that all parts of that whole are related to one another by virtue of their participation in the whole of being” (60). Furthermore, she says, “American Indian thought is essentially mystical and psychic in nature. Its distinguishing characteristic is a kind of magicalness—not the childish sort described by Astrov but rather an enduring sense of the fluidity and malleability, or creative flux, of things. This is a reasonable attitude in its own context, derived quite logically from the central assumptions that characterize tribal thought. The tribal person perceives things not as inert but as viable and alive, and he or she knows that living things are subject to processes of growth and change as a necessary component of their aliveness. Since all that exists is alive and since all that is alive must grow and change, all existence can be manipulated under certain conditions and according to certain laws” (68-9).

Where I had the most trouble with this book was in her discussions of feminism. In "Where I Come From Is Like This," a frequently anthologized essay, she writes,

“Of course, my mother’s Laguna people are Keres Indian, reputed to be the last extreme mother-right people on earth. So it is no wonder that I got notably nonwhite notions about the natural strength and prowess of women. Indeed, it is only when I am trying to get non-Indian approval, recognition, or acknowledgment that my ‘weak sister’ emotional and intellectual ploys get the better of my tribal woman’s good sense. At such times I forget that I just moved the piano or just wrote a competent paper or just completed a financial transaction satisfactorily or have supported myself and my children for most of my adult life.
“Nor is my contradictory behavior atypical. Most Indian women I know are in the same bicultural bind: we vacillate between being dependent and strong, self-reliant and powerless, strongly motivated and hopelessly insecure. We resolve the dilemma in various ways: some of us party all the time; some of us drink to excess; some of us travel and move around a lot; some of us land good jobs and then quit them; some of us engage in violent exchanges; some of us blow our brains out. We act in these destructive ways because we suffer from the social conflicts caused by having to identify with two hopelessly opposed cultural definitions of women. Through this destructive dissonance we are unhappy prey to the self-disparagement common to, indeed demanded of, Indians living in the United States today. Our situation is caused by the exigencies of a history of invasion, conquest, and colonization whose searing marks are probably ineradicable” (48-49).

It’s not that her point isn’t a good one; it’s that it’s not limited to the experience of Indian women. Indian women are not the only women torn between two cultures, two conceptions of what they should be; Indian women are not the only women who have good sense or strength. As a previous borrower of this copy of her book wrote in the margin by this passage, “Welcome to the club!” Indeed.

She continues her commentary on the strength of American Indian women and the traditions of western feminism in her essay “Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism”: “The feminist idea of power as it ideally accrues to women stems from tribal sources” (220).

This idea that western feminism came from native sources is problematic. It’s one thing to look for alternative models of society in native cultures, proof that there are other ways of being than the patriarchal and hierarchial; it’s another to say that those native cultures directly influenced western feminists, especially given Allen’s argument that these matriarchal traditions are hidden and unknown. In making this argument in conjunction with the argument in the earlier essay, Allen gives western feminists and white women generally very little credit. That makes it a hard book for me to read and fully endorse.

[April Browning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the thing. I hated reading this book but I did not hate the actual book. It was part of a book club and I did my very best to actively read, take notes, and absorb the information. Some of the information here is older and a bit outdated in spots. I find it hard to not appreciate where the author was coming from when she wrote this book in 1986.

If you're looking for a textbook, this is absolutely the book for you.

[Grace Lazarre · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for my native american feminist lit class. has amazing essays and perspectives on native women and their writing/poetry. covers a wide variety of topics from colonialism to alienation to familial relations. even as a white woman, so much of the subject matter applies to my life and has truly opened my eyes. for a book written 20+ years ago, Gunn Allen writes so skillfully about topics that will (sadly) forever be relevant such as violence, misogyny, racism, and hatred. but more importantly she asks how we’re going to stand up to those issues; how we’re going to refuse to let them tear us down. how we’re going to persist. it’s a must read, especially for someone who loves the craft of writing. the essays are *chef’s kiss*

[Nanu · Rating 4 out of 5]

She makes some very good points regarding the stereotyping that exists even among the indigenous peoples themselves... A very interesting read.

[Adrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a hard book, very academic and made more difficult by the fact that I have read nothing by most of the authors Gunn Allen analyzes. Still, this was an excellent book. There were moments when I saw from a perspective I never even knew existed. It challenged some of my judgements about contemporary Native fiction I have read. (There's a couple books I need to go back and reread now that I didn't give a fair shot the first time around.) I particularly loved the essays "This Wilderness in My Blood" and "Kochinnenako in Academe."

I have discovered a whole new world of literature, and I feel like Paula Gunn Allen gave me some tools to appreciate it and interpret it well. I already have Mary TallMountain's book of poetry on order at the library!

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

The further I got in the book, the more I got into it. I wish I had read more of the novels she discusses first. I read Silko’s “Ceremony” years ago, but I still haven’t got to “House Made of Dawn,” and she talks about that a lot. I live in a country where the Karl May fantasy is still dominant and it is really helpful to be reminded just how deeply wrong that is in every way. It’s also nice to read in these particularly apocalyptic times a book that is so optimistic and hopeful from someone who really had to struggle to get her message out there and to know that she was right! Native women’s and queer or two-spirt voices are louder, are being heard more, they are winning victories over the planet-killers. The so-called Indians have given us all so much and I am thankful. If you also want those feelings, check out this book!

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will think about this book for a long time. I've read other books that helped me realize that understanding between indigenous Americans and Europeans was almost impossible because their cultures were vastly different from each other - this book solidified that realization and introduced a feminist point of view I hadn't thought much about before. “No people is broken until the heart of its women is on the ground. Then they are broken. Then they die.”

The essays discuss female deities, the impact of European contact on native women, traditions, women’s social status, feminism, and native women’s survival (cultural and biological).

Allen says traditional tribal lifestyles were more often gynocratic than not and were never patriarchal and that the “physical and cultural genocide of American Indians is and was mostly about patriarchal fear of gynocracy” - Europeans “could not tolerate peoples who allowed women to occupy prominent positions and decision-making capacity at every level of society.” Furthermore, "Western studies of American Indian tribal systems are erroneous" because the cultural bias of patriarchy that “either discount, degrade, or conceal gynocratic features or recontextualize those features so that they will appear patriarchal."

In The Ways of Our Grandmothers section, traditions from various tribes were discussed. Some of the ideas that resonated with me were: “In the beginning was thought, and her name was Woman. She is the eldest God. At the center of all is Woman. She is the true creatrix for she is thought itself, from which all else is born.” “Certainly, there is reason to believe that many American Indian tribes thought that the primary potency in the universe was female, and that understanding authorizes all tribal activities, religious or social.” “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 status of tribal women has seriously declined over the centuries of white dominance, as they have been all but voiceless in tribal decision-making bodies since reconstitution of the tribes through colonial fiat and U.S. law.”

The Pushing Up the Sky section further discussed the long-lasting destructive changes brought about by the European colonizers. “During the five hundred years of Anglo - European colonization, the tribes have seen a progressive shift from gynocentric, egalitarian, ritual-based social systems to secularized structures closely imitative of the European patriarchal system.” “…woman-based, woman - centered traditions of many precontact tribes were tightly bound to ritual, and ritual was based on spiritual understandings rather than on economic or political ones. The genocide practiced against the tribes aimed systematically at the dissolution of ritual tradition.” “The devaluation of women that has accompanied Christianization and westernization is not a simple matter of loss of status. It also involves increases in violence against women by men.” “Patriarchy requires that powerful women be discredited so that its own system will seem to be the only one that reasonable or intelligent people can subscribe to.” “The colonizers’ revisions of our lives, values, and histories have devastated us at the most critical level of all — that of our own minds, our own sense of who we are.”

The Pushing Up the Sky section also contained interesting discussions about gender understanding/designation, how LGBTQ people fit into society, traditional status of women (before European contact), clan membership (most often based on matrilineal descent), child rearing, and the development of self-identity.

My favorite essay was Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale. It points out that “male bias has seriously skewed our understanding of tribal life and philosophy, distorting it in ways that are sometimes obvious but are most often invisible.” “Those who translate or “render” narratives make certain crucial changes, many unconscious.” “Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. When shifts of language and context are coupled with the almost infinite changes occasioned by Christianization, secularization, economic dislocation from subsistence to industrial modes, destruction of the wilderness and associated damage to the biota, much that is changed goes unnoticed or unremarked by the people being changed. Much of that change is at deep and subtle levels that are not easily noted or resisted.” “Egalitarian structures in either literature or society are not easily “read” by hierarchically inclined westerners.” “But as the old tales are translated and rendered in English, the western notion of proper fictional form takes over the tribal narrative. Soon there appear to be heroes, point of view conflict, crisis, and resolution, and as western tastes in story crafting are imposed on the narrative structure of the ritual story, the result is a western story with Indian characters.” “The history of Native America is selective; and those matters pertaining to women that might contradict a western patriarchal world-view are carefully selected out. The tribes became more male-oriented and more male-dominated as acculturation accelerated.”

A key thought that underscores how different indigenous and western cultures are: “In a system where all persons in power are called Mother Chief and where the supreme deity is female , and social organization is matrilocal , matrifocal , and matrilineal , gynarchy is happening. However, it does not imply domination of men by women as patriarchy implies domination by ruling class males of all aspects of a society.”

At the end of the book, Allen calls for more focus on American Indian literary studies and the reinstatement of the important place of women in it. “The focus has long been on Indian as noble or savage warrior who, as it happens, lost the war to superior military competence. The truth is more compelling: the tribes did not fight off the invaders to any great extent. Generally they gave way to them; generally they fed and clothed and doctored them; generally they shared their knowledge about everything from how to plant corn and tobacco to how to treat polio victims to how to cross the continent with them.”

“All the interpretations and conclusions scholars in the fields of folklore, ethnology, and contemporary literary studies will have to be altered, all the evidence reexamined, and all the materials chosen for exemplification of tribal life—which at present reveal more about academic male bias than about the traditions and peoples they purport to depict—will have to be redone. This is because the shift in focus from a male to a female axis recontextualizes the entire field.”

“These traditions have never been described or examined in terms of their proper, that is, woman - focused, context. buried under tons of scholarly materials selected and erected to hide the centrality of women in tribal society, tribal literature, and tribal hearts and minds.”

“A vanished context is the same as a meaningless pile of data, and it is the same as a vanished source of meaning, a vanished God. Destroying the context parallels the destruction of women; in this case it also parallels the destruction of a race It amounts to Deicide.”

[J. Hennig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this as a young woman searching her identity; it was just a lovely years later for an elder woman settled in that identity, but always and still questioning.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging but in a good way.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard the Navajo poet Luci Tapahonso read the following during the 1991 Modern Language Association’s annual convention:

I am, I am
In wisdom
I walk
In beauty may
I walk …
In beauty it is restored.
The light, the dawn. It is morning.

As she read, my heart was lifted in recognition of our power, our magnificent life. I am Laguna, woman of the lake, daughter of the dawn, sunrise, kurena. I can see the light making the world anew. It is the nature of my blood and heritage to do this. There is surely cause to weep, to grieve; but greater than ugliness, the endurance of tribal beauty is our reason to sing, to greet the coming day and the restored life and hope it brings.

This felt like a masterclass of all aspects of American Indian thought and art and history, and I learned so much. Written in 1986, it still has such important essays that illuminate the history of this land and peoples. I hope even more has been added to the canon, she writes about so many I have read, Linda Hogan, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and juxtaposed scholarly analysis with the personal with the poetry so beautifully.

I add my breath to your breath
That our days may be long on the Earth
That the days of our people may be long
That we may be one person
That we may finish our roads together
May our mother bless you with life
May our Life Paths be fulfilled.

Indigenous Keres song

Indians endure—both in the sense of living through something so complete in its destructiveness that the mere presence of survivors is a testament to the human will to survive and in the sense of duration or longevity. Tribal systems have been operating in the “new world” for several hundred thousand years. It is unlikely that a few hundred years of colonization will see their undoing.

In tribal gynocratic systems a multitude of personality and character types can function positively within the social order because the systems are focused on social responsibility rather than on privilege and on the realities of the human constitution rather than on denial-based social fictions to which human beings are compelled to conform by powerful individuals within the society.

The wide diversity of tribal systems on the North American continent notwithstanding—and they are as diverse as Paris and Peking on the Asian continent (yes, they’re both on the Asian continent despite the European delusion that Europe occupies a separate landmass), tribal world-views are more similar to one another than any of them are to the patriarchal world-view, and they have a better record of survival.

There is a spirit that pervades everything, that is capable of powerful song and radiant movement, and that moves in and out of the mind. The colors of this spirit are multitudinous, a glowing, pulsing rainbow. Old Spider Woman is one name for this quintessential spirit, and Serpent Woman is another. Corn Woman is one aspect of her, and Earth Woman is another, and what they together have made is called Creation, Earth, creatures, plants, and light. At the center of all is Woman, and no thing is sacred (cooked, ripe, as the Keres Indians of Laguna Pueblo say it) without her blessing, her thinking. … In the beginning Tse che nako, Thought Woman finished everything, thoughts, and the names of all things. She finished also all the languages. And then our mothers, Uretsete and Naotsete said they would make names and they would make thoughts. Thus they said. Thus they did.

In this way one learns how to view oneself and one’s tradition so as to approach both rightly. Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is in essence the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled.

Carol Lee Sanchez (Laguna/Sioux)
the Song the Dance the Poem

i toil in the field
syllable into line
through the breath
the breathing is
difficult
the birthing.
i dreamed of you mamma
far away, talking hours
into the night.
the breathing was difficult
and you changed again
trying to tell me something
i couldn’t remember –except
the field was there and
stretched on and on.
…
what syllable then can best convey
the ochre/umbers of that ground?
and choking dust that’s interspaced
with sunburst prism on window glass?

i swell with visions
erupting rocks and clouds
within my mind. i know this
wilderness in my blood
and cannot sing it into line.

[Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The scope of her project is too ambitious and the execution too clarified for me to write off, but, as a project of revaluation, significate portions of her perspective get shaded by reactionary essentialisms, limiting truly incisive study at times. Aside from the whole of Part 1, rich in tribal specificity, it was her more general essays on literary criticism and cross-cultural readings that I found to be of most interest. There is “The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Perspective,” where she defines two basic forms of American Indian literature, that of the ceremony and that of the myth. This claim is fleshed out in the following chapter, "Whose Dream Is This Anyway? Remythologizing and Self-definition in Contemporary American Indian Fiction,” which discusses American Indian literature as centrally guided by ritual rather than social, political, or economic concerns (80).

Now, while I found her readings of ritual to be very persuasive and well-supported, what I just quoted includes some of my hesitancies that appeared across the text. Allen makes many arguments about tribes being guided by ritual as well as spiritual forms of valuation separate from political/economic hierarchies. I treat such claims with a great degree of skepticism, and the book doesn't devote much time to supporting these claims. Unfortunately, this exemplifies a trend within ethnic studies to treat subjects on a good/bad continuum (with ritual being almost certainly treated as 'good' in opposition to the bad 'political' - and here I mean good as 'divorced from unhealthy power dynamics' and lacking in materialist considerations) while writing to an audience that can be assumed to share the same views. This simplification of value surveying, treated in opposition to the dominant cultural perspective, is somewhat understandable given Allen's context as a foundational figure, making inroads for future study to follow from.

Now, with that being said, there were other chapters I greatly appreciated, such as “The Ceremonial Motion of Indian Time: Long Ago, So Far,” which distinguishes western individualism’s investment in chronological industrial time with an Indian achronological “ceremonial time sense that assumes the individual as a moving event shaped by and shaping human and nonhuman surroundings” (149). Her concepts are supported by readings of poetry as well as novels, and beyond her own readings, she also gives examples of literary translations and arguments that fall off the mark because they lack tribal specificity. “Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale” was an especially rewarding example of cross-cultural distortion of a story depicting tribal values. In general, this is a really impressive body of scholarship from an equally outstanding literary figure. My criticisms come from a place of admiration.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

After seeing my friend’s review of this book, I knew I had to read it. Interestingly the hoop representing the circle of life, much like the “Lion King.” It is amazing that the European men were scared by the concept of women ruling the tribe, and it’s a pity that American literature completely ignores its prominence and existence in tribal society. With the tribal leadership being gynocritic it makes me wonder what our society would be like today if the tribes had forced the European settlers to follow the tribal structure of governmental (fewer wars, families not in need of want through the sharing of resources – no poverty, less gambling and drinking). I’m sure it would be much more friendly to the environment. Plus, their attitude toward LGBTQ+ people was much more inclusive, even acknowledging the value and prestige they bring to the tribal culture. The author acknowledges that both indigenous and white cultures have good and bad traditions that every member doesn’t necessarily agreement with, but she still recognizes the importance of belonging and needing the common beliefs that a community offers to help an individual identify who they are. The Matrifocal family structure makes sense for tribes where the men were off hunting or fighting, just like the colonials during the revolutionary war or salesmen who are always on the road.

With the women being in charge and controlling the property, it appears that the home and family were the primary purpose of life. They made what they needed and didn’t need to buy land, because they were content and didn't want other possessions. Plus, their territory was community property because it represented their hunting grounds. In comparison the European settlers were wanting more land and money to buy additional possessions and seeking power.

I appreciate the philosophy that the elements all around us (inanimate objects) have life if not by themselves as part of the living earth we dwell on. I also like the recognition of the soul in as part of our existence, not the scientific attitude that a soul does not exist in science therefore it doesn’t exist at all. Stories send a clear message of the importance of relationships with other people and as part of a community. It is most apparent when people who struggle in the two worlds of Indians and the today’s white society. Where they are lost and can’t relate to anyone, especially in a loving relationship. I found it crass for other writer to criticize the author's writing style (instead of appreciating the difference), where the Indian style follows ceremonies or rituals, as opposed to a chronological timeline.

I enjoyed comparing this book with “Native Nations” seeing where they are similar and where they differ.

[Kaylee]

More scholarly than I was hoping for. I felt like the essays as a whole were more about Allen's view of American Indian culture in general, and sometimes she would talk specifically about women in those traditions.

I liked her comparison between Native and Judeo-Christian creation stories. Pages 57-59.

"[T]he All Spirit...has limited power as well as a sense of proportion and respect for the powers of the creatures. Contrast this spirit with the Judeo-Christian God, who makes everything and tells everything how it may and may not function if it is to gain his respect and blessing and whose commandments make no allowance for change or circumstance. The American Indian universe is based on dynamic self-esteem, while the Christian universe is based primarily on a sense of separation and loss. For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.
In Paradise, God created a perfect environment for his creatures. He arranged it to their benefit, asking only that they forbear from eating the fruit of one particular tree. In essence, they were left with only one means of exercising their creative capacities and their ability to make their own decisions and choices. Essentially, they were thus prevented from exercising their intelligence while remaining loyal to the creator. To act in a way that was congruent with their natural curiosity and love of exploration and discovery, they were forced to disobey God and thus be exiled from the perfect place he had made for them.
...The Cheyennes' creator is somewhat wiser. He gives his creatures needs so that they can exert their intelligence and knowledge to satisfy those needs by working together to solve common problems or attain common goals...[The significance of American Indian literature] is determined by its relation to creative empowerment, its reflection of tribal understandings, and its relation to the unitary nature of reality."

One more gem from p.243: "Women's traditional occupations, their arts and crafts, and their literature and philosophies are more often accretive than linear, more achronological than chronological, and more dependent on harmonious relationships of all elements within a field of perception than western culture in general is thought to be."

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly wish this book had been available to me many, many, many moons ago. Have always believed that life is always seeking a balance and wondered why so much that was available regarding native traditions was male centric, especially in light of my own upbringing, which was primarily by women. I thank Paula Gunn Allen for helping to open my mind even more with regard to even more insidious effects of colonialism on native culture and thought. Indeed, one can extrapolate to similar effects occurring to all native cultures around the world.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit I had a harder time reading the middle section, in which are deconstructed some prominent Native literary works. I found the other two sections a lot more informative and interesting to read. An important read nonetheless, which is so radical as to feel too confrontational and extreme for some in its deconstruction of the – even now – patriarchy-warped image of Natives in the collective psyche.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A critical, indispensable book. Exposes an entirely new, or as Gunn would say, old and original, way of thinking.

“In the Keres way, context is female and it is God, because it is the source and generator of meaning.”

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

love books about Native American/feminist/global issues that are actually written by the people they talk about

[Cassandra Piester · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will stick with me for a long time. I devoured it.

[Raven Feather · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic that informs the multiplicity of feminist thought. Her rendering of Thought Woman is beautiful.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of discussions about American Indian women and their significance in American Indian traditions. Often, there are moments where this is presented as pan-Indian culture, but at other times there are moments where they attempt to be tribally specific. It works either way, but I wish there was more clarify about how this was going to be portrayed. Perhaps putting "pan-Indian" discussions in one half, "tribally specific" in another half. I'm not sure, but the formatting could have been more beneficial for readers.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

I used this book as a resource in my Field Project for college. It is a collection of writings by Gunn and other authors. As such, I found some articles more interesting/useful than others. Generally, the book describes the important role women in Native American cultures pre-contact with Europeans. A few articles describe the impact that reaches into problems with today's Native American cultures. Definitely not a light read.

[LPK · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty dissappointing to me. I was looking for a book that celebrated womanhood about Native Americans, with teachings and essays on the subject. But it's really dry, and deals more with modern issues specific to Indian women, and wasn't of much interest to me.

[SueB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just heard she died

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book

[Nancy Rossman · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not that I hated it. Again, I didn't finish this one. The problem is that it is way beyond my spiritual being, and that is what it is about.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

some wear on the cover; $2.99

[Kurukka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very inspiring and beautiful, but at times, the arguments are layered with too much mysticism to be taken as sociological/ethnological facts.

Read as part of my corpus for a thesis.