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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 … - 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 America. It is ignorant of the genesis of its culture in this Native American land, and that ignorance helps to perpetuate the long standing European and Middle Eastern monotheistic, hierarchical, patriarchal cultures' oppression of women, gays and lesbians, people of color, working class and unemployed people. Hardly anyone in America speculates that the constitutional system of government implaced here might be as much a product of American Indian ideas and practices as it is of colonial American and/or Anglo-European revolutionary fervor. However Indians are officially and informally ignored as intellectual movers and shapers in the United States, Britain and Europe, they are peoples with ancient tenure on this soil. During the ages when the tribal societies existed in the Americas largely untouched by patriarchal oppression, they developed elaborate systems of thought that included sciences, philosophy and governmental systems based on a belief in the central importance of female energies, systems that highly valued autonomy of individuals, cooperation, human dignity, human freedom, and egalitarian distribution of status, goods and services. Respect for others, reverence for life, and as a by-product of this value, pacifism as a way of life, importance of kinship ties and customary ordering of social transactions, a sense of the sacredness and mystery of existence, balance and harmony in relationships both sacred and secular were all features of life among the tribal confederacies and nations. And in those that lived by the largest number of these principles, gynarchy was the norm rather than the exception. Those systems are as yet unmatched in any contemporary industrial, agrarian, or post-industrial society on earth.
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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
The great mythic and ceremonial cycles of the American Indian peoples are neither primitive, in any meaningful sense of the word, nor necessarily the province of the folk; much of the literature, in fact, is known only to educated, specialized persons who are privy to the philosophical, mystical, and literary wealth of their own tribe. Much of the literature that was in the keeping of such persons, engraved perfectly and completely in their memories, was not known to most other men and women. Because of this, much literature has been lost as the last initiates of particular tribes and societies within the tribes died, leaving no successors.
I have said that an American Indian myth is a particular kind of story, requiring supernatural or nonordinary figures as characters. Further, a myth relies on mystical or metaphysically charged symbols to convey its significance, and the fact of the mystical and the teleological nature of myth is embodied in its characteristic devices; the supernatural characters, the nonordinary events, the transcendent powers, and the pourquoi elements all indicate that something sacred is going on. On literal levels of analysis, the myth tells us what kind of story it is. It focuses our attention on the level of consciousness it relates to us and relates us to. Having engaged our immediate participation on its own level, the myth proceeds to re-create and renew our ancient relationship to the universe that is beyond the poverty-stricken limits of the everyday.
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