Paula Gunn Allen - The sacred hoop (1986)

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Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.

Paula Gunn Allen
An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.

Paula Gunn Allen
Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

Paula Gunn Allen
America does not seem to remember that it derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and a large part of its "dream" from Native Americans.

Paula Gunn Allen
Hoop Dancer is a rendering of my understanding of the process by which one enters into timelessness -- that place where one is whole.

Paula Gunn Allen
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.

Paula Gunn Allen
The Indians used to be the only inhabitants of the Americas, but times change. Having perceived us as belonging to history, they are free to emote over us, to re-create us in their history-based understanding, and dismiss our present lives as archaic and irrelevant to the times.

Paula Gunn Allen
We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life...

Paula Gunn Allen
For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.

Paula Gunn Allen
Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation.

Paula Gunn Allen
The hoop dancer dances within what encircles him, demonstrating how the people live in motion within the circling spirals of time and space. They are no more limited than water and sky. At green corn dance time, water and sky come together, in Indian time, to make rain.

Paula Gunn Allen