In November of 1991, my Laguna mother died of cancer. Or, at least, that’s what they put on her death certificate. She had oat cell cancer of the lung, a kind of cancer that is unlikely to kill its host quickly, particularly when the person is elderly. But she accepted the treatments that Western doctors offered — chemotherapy and radiation — and the cancer metastasized to her brain. More chemo, more radiation. She died– whether of the disease or of the cure, we’ll never know. It is presently fashionable to point out that cancer of any sort was almost unheard of until after World War II, when it became all too ordinary.
In a special report on February 28, 1993, CNN told the story of a doctor who, seeing a single case of lung cancer in 1936, called in several students. He wanted them to observe this “rare disase [they] might never see again.” It was ten years before he saw another case, the report went on, and of course, the incidence has risen precipitously since. CNN blamed the rise in lung cancer and other “smoking-related diseases” on the huge amounts of cigarettes the GIs toted in their C ration packs. Not a word was said about the increase of cancer in relationship to the Bomb, nuclear testing, or the horrifying proliferation of nuclear waste all over the country…
You see, blaming the victim is an old patriarchal game; it fits quite neatly into disinformation systems and possesses the even neater potential of terrorization, social control and mind warp. Held in its sway, we become not only each other’s policemen and enemies, but our own.
…according to the New Mexico Tumor Registry in 1976, Native Americans in New Mexico did not contract lung cancer. Nor is it a fluke that the New Mexico Cancer Control project, for which I worked for a time, refused to deal with radiation, toxic waste, asbestos mining — all demonstrably implicated in carcinogenesis — though they were avidly engaged in an antismoking campaign as a major aspect of what they were pleased to call their “cancer prevention program.”…
The advent of patriarchy signaled its determination to dominate the vast power of the Sun. From Goddess, she became god (Egypt, India, Persia, Europe, Mayaland) or she was subject to the mediation of emporor (Japan, Peru) and shaman/priest (Cherokee, Keres, Natchez, Lakota). During the millenia of her usurpation, men attempted to subject her to their will. Finally she blasted forth, furious at their presumption, ripping apart earth and sky with her pain and rage.
Unfortunately, those who have prayed for enlightenment over the millennia haven’t bargained for the devastating fact of light. They have wanted the bright, the powerful, the utterly overwhelming, the male…Why now complain? The supplicants have been answered with the blinding, deafening whirlwind that is the face and voice of the Great Mystery when it is aroused.
We have for all too long loathed the shade–shadows, night, the darkness of the Moon. We have found the shadows so repugnant, the darkness so repulsive, that we have given the Goddess only three parts — maiden, mother and crone — thoroughly repressing the fourth, that of mystery…Chaos, the Grandmother of all that is, now comes among us, just as we discover that she is the source of all order and that she is infinitely generative, infinitely fecund. It is as the old ones have told: the name of the Female Principle is “Thought,” and she is more fundamental and varied than time and space….
Faced with the terror of our situation vis a vis the sacred, perhaps we can learn what we so urgently need to know: the powers that inform our universe must be treated with respect. The transformational process is sacred and is to be approached cautiously, humbly, and in awareness of its actual nature. At the very least, perhaps we will realize that it is futile to imagine ourselves as threatening the Earth’s survival, when the truth is quite otherwise. Should we attempt to nuke the planet, we can be sure she alone will survive.
I die, but the earth remains forever.
Beautiful earth, you alone remain
Wonderful earth, you remain forever.–Kowa Death Song
– Paula Gunn Allen, from her introduction to Gossips, Gorgons & Crones, The Fates of the Earth, by Jane Caputi, 1993.
Paula Gunn Allen crossed over yesterday, of lung cancer. She was 69. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese-American descent, she grew up in a village in New Mexico which bordered the Laguna Pueblo reservation, and identified most closely with the people she grew up with. Gunn Allen received her PhD from the University of New Mexico. Her book The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, captured the attention of academia in the United States and laid the foundation for Native American women’s studies. She was a writer and a poet and wrote often of Spider Woman and Corn Maiden, imagery which is central to all women’s studies and to feminism today.
Recent years have been years of struggle for Gunn Allen. Having managed to buy a trailer, she lost it and everything she had in a fire in 2007. She was underinsured. She lost her trailer just after she had made the last payment on it and as she was being treated for lung cancer.
One reason I was looking forward to going to last year’s Hullaballoo was, Paula Gunn Allen would be speaking. In the end she could not make it for health reasons. She epitomized the best of the revolutionary spirit and work of the women’s liberation movement in the United States. She was a giant.
Paula Gunn Allen was a lesbian. It seems fitting to finish with this poem::
dykes remind me of indians
like indians dykes
are supposed to die out
or forget
or drink all the time
or shatter
go away
to nowhere
to remember what will happen
if they dont
they dont
anyway
even though it
happens
and they remember
they dont
because the moon remembers
because so does the sun
because so do the stars
remember
and the persistent stubborn
grass
of the earth
From “Some Like Indians Endure,”
Paula Gunn Allen
Rest in peace, my sister. You gave us all so much.
Heart
Hat tip to bfp and, via bfp, to Joy Harjo for word that Gunn Allen has passed on.
Thank you for this tribute Heart. Paula Gunn Allen was an incredible woman and her writing/spirituality/commitment to women and earth is/was so powerful. I am half-way through Spider-Woman’s Granddaughters at the moment, it seems so strange. These women pass, just as I begin to discover them.
She will be remembered.
Wow thank you so much for paying tribute to this woman! I am going to read her book–I am so teary this moment because I did not know of her and wish I had– it seems like ever since Andrea Dworkin died so many many truly AMAZING women–writers, activists–artists (most feminist women are artists since we’re creatinag new world one way or another
)
* I still miss Andrea Dworkin, just her presence even though I never saw her in real life. I loved her presence on the planet. I wish she were still here, it makes one feel less lonely. With all these women passing it makes me feel so anxious. Of course we all have access to our minds and to everything they had so all we need to do is be emboldened by THEIR boldness and keep the fire going.
**
– have been passing away– I absolutely love her writing you posted, and her poem above as well-I am so sad I didn’t know of her til just this very moment. What a beautifull beautifull spirit and gifts she left us! I can only hope to leave something as beautifull in some way! What does it mean when the last years of a person’s life are so wrought with struggle? I keep seeming to hear this same storyline. Women like Paula Gunn Allen do so much under the radar and then I learn of them in death.
Thank you for always documenting these sisters’ lives! Hearrt.
Jeyoani, I KNOW!! Read every book and poem she has ever written. She was an amazing, amazing woman and it will be so worth it. She represents a moment in the women’s movement that has almost passed away, almost been blotted out. I keep hoping and praying we can bring it back and part of that is refusing to allow the lives of women like Paula Gunn Allen to be erased.
Paula Gunn Allen’s words speak the poignant, fiery, sweet truth that the Earth as Great Mother can never be blotted out (although human form could be).
Yet agreed, Heart, a resurgence of the embodied spirituality of nature and cosmos (honoring the power of chaos and darkness) might move us in new directions. I hadn’t known about Paula Gunn Allen, so thank you. The images you’ve shared, also resonant with poignancy. The Ineffable Infinite has moved me to similar awareness, so that her words written before I became aware speak truth in a similar tongue.
We are also aware, aren’t we, of the almost insurmountable obstacles to new voices of women’s liberation getting into mainstream print given the current global state of corporate media conglomeration?
Andrea Dworkin, in her book, Right Wing Women, speaks to the pragmatic reality of day to day living and collective feminism’s inability to offer up the basics (food, shelter, tangible companionship which does not oppress) that so often goes missing at the end of a life like Paula Gunn Allen’s. This is not our fault, given the overwhelming trickery, trauma and hypocrisy of maledom’s most dominant social architects for many milleniums.
And it is also not our fault that the American wimmins’ land movement of the past 50 years or so has been virtually defeated by patriarchal legal and political maneuvers including taxes. Yet, in immigrant sections of places like LA, patriarchal families without much money live together in trailers and apartments, sharing expenses also of transportation, heating & cooling, group meals, clothing and creative supplies. It may come with wife-beating on the side, but communal living is a given for most patriarchal people around the world. As women, we originated the clan and birth all the children, so it baffles me that we’ve collectively let psycho-babble, GLBT politics and 12-step serenity nonsense push us into new areas of patriarchy without finding our way out. Maybe it’s just too hard (pun intended)?
I feel sometimes that we go online among ourselves to wrangle over this or that point of view, when what we really need is dialog about how to live together in community. Never will I feel at home among gay men and transgendered folks whose misogyny and/or patriarchal focus of gender identity I find need to be liberated from. Thus, the prevailing “liberal” GLBT crowd is no community for me. If we cannot as womankind network for our own tangible communities (beyond the patriarchy) in which Paula Gunn Allen and each one of us can be appreciated and nurtured as her life is waning, women who do not appreciate the online experience can only wonder: what do liberated women really have to offer real living women for our real lives as an alternative to “cutting our best deals” in patriarchy?
May Paula Gunn Allen feel our gratitude as the Great Mother cradles her now in the hours past her death.
((( Judy ))), thank you for that.
Appreciate so very much our collective homage to Paula Gunn Allen. This is a space (dare I say sacred?) for encouragement of sisterhood. It is always a privilege to visit.
May Paula Gunn Allen’s words and works continue to inspire. May we remember the past into our evolving future, and honor our living connections.
Around Sunday’s chores, I searched for what might be in the online public domain from Paula Gunn Allen’s 20+ year-old article on the red (Native American) roots of white feminism.
Having had the Cherokee Great-Grandmother who was kidnapped (or bartered to the white man by her brothers, the story was never clear), raped and then married into the family as my Great-Grandmother, I find that this “personal [which] is political” hits individually close to home.
Here’s an outline I had time to find:
[source] http://peernet.lbpc.ca/Philosophy/Allen.htm
“Who is your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism
Paula Gunn Allen (1939-)
- of Laguna Pueblo and Sioux heritage
- circle of life and interconnectedness of all things is a theme in her work
- traditional systems value tradition, women’s power, autonomy, cooperation, dignity, egalitarianism
- western tradition values non-tradition, male power, hierarchy, restricted autonomy, inequality
p. 453:
- gynocratic societies: matrilineal, clan centred
- importance of tradition, especially knowing how you fit into the ‘matrix’ of life is important and contrasted with rejection of tradition in the west (including feminism)
- leads to a rejection of history as important which leads to making the same mistakes and having to reinvent the wheel
- native values lead to solid sense of identity and lower levels of psychological and interpersonal conflict
- for ‘Indians, remembering is important, but for Americans, forgetting is important.’
- American society has much to learn and should model itself on native values:
- Positive role of women, fair distribution of goods and power, respect for the elderly and healthy notions of beauty, environmentalism, spirituality, and peace
p. 454:
- Gynarchy: the term which represents the complex societies of native Americans before European contact, and which stresses the centrality of women
p. 455:
- E.g Iroquois’s Great Law
- First successful feminist rebellion (1600)
- Ignorance of this native feminism results in confusion, division and lost time for modern feminists
The Roots of Oppression … Loss of Memory
p. 456:
- matriarchal societies have existed in many places in the world, but are now being replaced by patriarchies with very different values
- the matriarchal societies are ones in which there is: no soldiers, no police, etc.
- no private property
A Feminist Heroine
p. 457
- Sacagawea: Shoshoni teenager who traveled with Lewis and Clark
- The study of native / white relations has not focused on individual relationships between women, but on treaties between men
- But there have been much cross cultural marriages, and many native ways have found their way into non native practices, such as ‘permissive’ child rearing, sexual openness, distrust of authority, pride, courtesy, generosity, etc.
p. 458:
- It is really only fundamentalists who are against these things
- ‘indianization’ of western culture is on the rise
An Indian-Focused Version of American History
- American ideas of self-government came as much from observation of tribal governments as from their own heritage
- Especially rejection of non feudal confederacies
P. 459:
- Reports from Columbus about native American government were in circulation by the time the Reformation took place
- The Iroquois feudal system is much like the federal US system today with the three parts of gov. except that the Iroquois system had women at the centre, was spirit based
- Influence on Marx of knowledge of Iroquois culture, esp liberation of women”
Paula’s friends and family have set up a memorial website and guestbook. Please visit and leave your thoughts. We all miss her terribly.
http://www.paulagunnallen.net
“I feel sometimes that we go online among ourselves to wrangle over this or that point of view, when what we really need is dialog about how to live together in community. . . .[What] do liberated women really have to offer real living women for our real lives as an alternative to ‘cutting our best deals’ in patriarchy?”–Judy Best
This is profound–worthy of a post, of an ongoing discussion, of a blog itself. Why is it that the only way “practical sisterhood”, real women’s communities, has worked for more than a very few years has been under the guise of patriarchal religion? Convents, Catholic religious orders for women, existed for hundreds of years, although generally reviled in literature and popular opinion as a horrible fate/destination for women who entered them (probably because male authors couldn’t imagine a woman being fulfilled and productive without access to the mighty penis!) and offered a place for study, work, and self-development. And, of course, there also had been the Beguines’ communities, but persecution stamped them out.
Now that in the West we have some legal rights and opportunities for independence, are we too broken by 1000’s of years of patriarchy, by daily breathing in the teachings, mindset, expectations, and innumerable humiliations of patriarchal treatment, to cohere? Why do we continue to parse instead of unite? Suggested areas for concentration of our efforts: reading of this blog and other feminist blogs daily for news and inspiration; study of such writers as Paula Gunn Allen, Dworkin, Daly, MacKinnon to reset our minds; investigation of financial planning (hello, Satsuma!) to help us be more independent; consideration of purchase of property for intentional community.
I’ve wondered that so many times, Level Best, why the only way practical sisterhood has seemed to work has been within patriarchal religion. I think some of that has to do, ironically, with how much women really need each other in these communities, given their vulnerabilities and too often, abuse at men’s hands. Some of it, again ironically, has to do with the fact that inside of religious communities, women are comparatively safe. As Andrea Dworkin said in that quote I’m so fond of, right wing women have assessed the world, and they find it a dangerous place. They’ve decided they are better off the property of one man via marriage, than harrassed/abused/mistreated by many men, whether on the job or in the street or whatever.
I hope we aren’t broken, Level Best. I believe we are not and am just going to continue to believe we are not.
I think people do need to understand that Paula did not die alone, unappreciated, unhonored. She was surrounded by blood family, extended family, friends. I speak as her friend since 1971–I directed that dissertation that became the Sacred Hoop, we coauthored a book and articles, were always in close touch. Paula often paid less attention to her own health and financial well-being than she might have, but she always had a solid core of friends who came from many communities, walks of life. When her house fire occurred, we collectively raised funds for her, worked to replace household goods, precious books, etc–”we” being people from all over the country, but especially those of us involved in Native Studies—-and then, mercifully, the Lannan Foundation came in with a generous grant that helped really ensure she was comfortable. She, in her working life, held honored and well-paid professorships at Berkeley, UCLA, with excellent retirement benefits.
There is much to be said about her life and her work in the many spheres she touched–Native Studies, Feminist Studies, GLBT communities, women’s spirituality, native/euroAmerican physicists. And, yes,she did endure great sorrow–mostly because of the deaths of one infant and one adult son, both sheer happenstance(one a crib death; the latter one of those blow-out aortas that just sometimes happen to healthy guys).
But please don’t envision her as some lonely person out there on the edge of society. That’s just not true.She was surrounded by people, near and far. My husband, John Crawford of West End Press, has been her publisher for her last few books of poems–her essays and scholarly work have mostly been done by major presses–and one of the things she did after she knew she was really going to die was to get together a final manuscript–as well as read and sign off on a couple of dissertations, and attend to lots and lots of other stuff! And one of the great things about her, always, was her irreverence, her bad puns, her great big infectious laughter. She said at the end she believed she was being called to the other side in order to help ensure this election didn’t get fucked up and that Obama got elected…(Sorry, those of you who wanted another candidate, but she was superpassionate about that.)
So don’t romanticize this incredibly vibrant, quirky-like-all-of-us, brilliant person, who would not have done well at all in any kind of commune—boy, she really needed her space! And she needed to smoke! That made it hard even for her to stay with us at our house, though she always did when she was back here in Albq. I would say, just go read the wonderful stuff she wrote, and the wonderful writers she helped to call to everyone’s attention. And wish her a fine journey. Patricia Clark Smith
Dear Paula:
I know you are still there. Iwant to thank you for the opportunity to bring you Toronto and meet you and help you asssist the launch of Spiderwomen’s Granddaughters with Random House. I wish we had kept in touch more. Idon’t have a lot to say right now but I do know you were important to alot of people – your intellectual and artistic gifts, your spirit and the your warm heart always open to students.
Peace in the spirit world for you my frind,
DM
Judy Best says:
…the American wimmins’ land movement of the past 50 years or so has been virtually defeated by patriarchal legal and political maneuvers including taxes.
I got to this blog from the web page memorializing Paula Gunn Allen, and this quote above caught my eye. I want you to know that wimmin’s land is still alive and well in America, as well as in other countries. The strongest wimmin’s land communities are in southern Oregon and the Missouri Ozarks, but there are also ones in New Mexico, California, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia/Alabama, and likely other places that I’m not aware of.
Actually, what defeated those communities that no longer exist is internalized effects of patriarchy – we could not get along with each other. Women left until there were no longer enough to sustain a place. In fact there are presently empty wimmin’s lands waiting for women to reclaim them. Some communities died because of bad decision-making, such as locating them in places so isolated that there weren’t local jobs or enough outside community. Others died because of power structure mistakes, such as one owner and everyone else not feeling empowered.
A good resource is http://groups.google.com/group/Maize
That should get to Maize magazine, which networks wimmin’s lands.
Pelican
I worked with and was friends with Paula and Judy Grahn when on a Fulbright Post Doctoral Scholarship in Multicultural Lesbian Studies at UC, Berkeley, 1983-7. We had some awesome times together and shared deep korero ‘talks’…I am a Maori author [www.spinifexpress.com.au] and Paula encouraged me to write from the heart. We talked about The Sacred Hoop at length. She will remain in my heart and spirit forever – kia kaha-arphanui, dear Paula – Cath Koa Dunsford.
Hi Heart,
Your server is down again.
I suggest:
http://www.websitesource.com/hosting/budget_details.shtml
Their site says:
They are hosting shopping cart websites, so their uptime *has* to be good.
(I just pre-empted a thread here that was still taking comments).