The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions Book

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.