No people is broken until the heart of its women is on the ground. Then they are broken. Then will they die. - Paula Gunn Allen

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No people is broken until the heart of its women is on the ground. Then they are broken. Then will they die.

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About Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen (October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Native American, and Arab-American descent, she identified with her mother's people, the Laguna Pueblo and childhood years. She drew from its oral traditions for her fiction poetry and also wrote numerous essays on its themes. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary works and wrote two biographies of Native American women. In addition to her literary work, in 1986 she published a major study on the role of women in American Indian traditions, arguing that Europeans had de-emphasized the role of women in their accounts of native life because of their own patriarchal societies. It stimulated other scholarly work by feminist and Native American writers.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Paula Marie Francis
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Additional quotes by Paula Gunn Allen

Ritual-based cultures are founded on the primary assumption that the universe is alive and that it is supernaturally ordered. That is, they do not perceive economic, social, or political elements as central; rather, they organize their lives around a sacred, metaphysical principle. If they see a cause-and-effect relationship between events, they would ascribe the cause to the operation of nonmaterial energies or forces. They perceive the universe not as blind or mechanical, but as aware and organic. Thus ritual—organized activity that strives to manipulate or direct nonmaterial energies toward some larger goal—forms the foundation of tribal culture. It is also the basis of cultural artifacts such as crafts, agriculture, hunting, architecture, art, music, and literature. These all take shape and authority from the ritual tradition. Literature, which includes ceremony, myth, tale, and song, is the primary mode of the ritual tradition. The tribal rituals necessarily include a verbal element, and contemporary novelists draw from that verbal aspect in their work.

The cultural bias of the translator inevitably shapes his or her perception of the materials being translated, often in ways that he or she is unaware of. Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. In short, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re a tree.

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