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Paula Gunn Allen

111 quotes

“In America, law substitutes for custom. In America, society substitutes for love of family, comrade, village, or tribe. Walden is the self-proclaimed triumph of the isolated, superior individual. Alone with nature, not in it. Not of it. One can be with it as a scholar is with a book, but as an observer, not a creative participant. (2. "The Savages in the Mirror: Phantoms and Fantasies in America")”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a widespread belief that we, Native American and nonnative alike, have nothing to celebrate. All too many believe we should give forth with great trills of mourning. But it is of utmost importance to our continuing recovery that we recognize our astonishing survival against all odds; that we congratulate ourselves and are congratulated by our fellow Americans for our amazing ability to endure, recover, restore our ancient values and life ways, and then blossom.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am Laguna, woman of the lake, daughter of the dawn, sunrise, kurena. I can see the light making the world anew. It is the nature of my blood and heritage to do this. There is surely cause to weep, to grieve; but greater than ugliness, the endurance of tribal beauty is our reason to sing, to greet the coming day and the restored life and hope it brings.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was small, my mother often told me that animals, insects, and plants are to be treated with the kind of respect one customarily accords to high-status adults. “Life is a circle, and everything has its place in it,” she would say. That’s how I met the sacred hoop, which has been an integral part of my life.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indians endure—both in the sense of living through something so complete in its destructiveness that the mere presence of survivors is a testament to the human will to survive and in the sense of duration or longevity.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“American Indians are not merely doomed victims of western imperialism or progress; they are also the carriers of the dream that most activist movements in the Americas claim to be seeking. The major difference between most activist movements and tribal societies is that for millennia American Indians have based their social systems, however diverse, on ritual, spirit-centered, woman-focused world-views.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Native American literature should be important to Americans not as a curio, an artifact of the American past that has little pertinence to an American present or future, but rather as a major tradition that informs American writers ranging from Cotton Mather and Nathaniel Hawthorne through Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and William Faulkner to Adrienne Rich, Toni Cade Bambara, and Judy Grahn.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole body of American Indian literature, from its traditional, ceremonial aspects to its formal literary aspects, forms a field, or, we might say, a hoop dance, and as such is a dynamic, vital whole whose different expressions refer to a tradition that is unified and coherent on its own terms. It is a literary tradition that is breathtaking in its aesthetic realization and fundamental to coherent understanding of non-Indian varieties of American literature.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The view of Indians as hostile savages who capture white ladies and torture them, obstruct the westward movement of peaceable white settlers, and engage in bloodthirsty uprisings in which they glory in the massacre of innocent colonists and pioneers is dear to the hearts of producers of bad films and even worse television. However, it is this view that is most deeply embedded in the American unconscious, where it forms the basis for much of the social oppression of other people of color and of women.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can take the Indian out of Indian country but you can’t take the Indian out of the Indian.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To address a person as “mother” is to pay the highest ritual respect.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy by coercion is hardly democracy, in any language, and to some Indians recognizing that fact, the threat of extinction is preferable to the ignominy of enslavement in their own land.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now dependent on white institutions for survival, tribal systems can ill afford gynocracy when patriarchy—that is, survival—requires male dominance. Not that submission to white laws and customs results in economic prosperity; the unemployment rates on most reservations is about 50 to 60 percent, and the situation for urban Indians who are undereducated (as many are) is almost as bad.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The tribes see women variously, but they do not question the power of femininity. Sometimes they see women as fearful, sometimes peaceful, sometimes omnipotent and omniscient, but they never portray women as mindless, helpless, simple, or oppressed. And while the women in a given tribe, clan, or band may be all these things, the individual woman is provided with a variety of images of women from the interconnected supernatural, natural, and social worlds she lives in.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have memories of tired women, partying women, stubborn women, sullen women, amicable women, selfish women, shy women, and aggressive women. Most of all I remember the women who laugh and scold and sit uncomplaining in the long sun on feast days and who cook wonderful food on wood stoves, in beehive mud ovens, and over open fires outdoors.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One’s emotions are one’s own; to suggest that others should imitate them is to impose on the personal integrity of others.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of a ceremony is to integrate: to fuse the individual with his or her fellows, the community of people with that of the other kingdoms, and this larger communal group with the worlds beyond this one. A raising or expansion of individual consciousness naturally accompanies this process. The person sheds the isolated, individual personality and is restored to conscious harmony with the universe. In addition to this general purpose, each ceremony has its own specific purpose. This purpose usually varies from tribe to tribe and may be culture-specific.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We Indians live in a world of symbols and images where the spiritual and the commonplace are one. To you symbols are just words, spoken or written in a book. To us they are part of nature, part of ourselves, even little insects like ants and grasshoppers. We try to understand them not with the head but with the heart, and we need no more than a hint to give us the meaning.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One sees life as part of oneself; a hint as to which particular part is all that is needed to convey meaning.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indians believe that the basic unit of consciousness is the All Spirit, the living fact of intelligence from which all other perceptions arise and derive their power.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Symbols in American Indian systems are not symbolic in the usual sense of the word. The words articulate reality—not “psychological” or imagined reality, not emotive reality captured metaphorically in an attempt to fuse thought and feeling, but that reality where thought and feeling are one, where objective and subjective are one, where speaker and listener are one, where sound and sense are one.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It might be said that the basic purpose of any culture is to maintain the ideal status quo. What creates differences among cultures and literatures is the way in which the people go about this task, and this in turn depends on, and simultaneously maintains, basic assumptions about the nature of life and humanity’s place in it. The ideal status quo is generally expressed in terms of peace, prosperity, good health, and stability.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every tribe has a responsibility to the workings of the universe; today as yesterday, human beings play an intrinsic role in the ongoing creation.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literature must, of necessity, express and articulate the deepest perceptions, relationships, and attitudes of a culture, whether it does so deliberately or accidentally.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From invasion, which stretches from 1492 in the Caribbean to the 1880s in the United States (and is still occurring in parts of Central and South America), onward as far as the colonizers, particularly Americans, were concerned, Native Americans were faced with a choice between assimilation and extinction. This choice, forced on them through wars and policies that made other options such as resistance appear untenable, was eventually accepted as inevitable by many Native Americans.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Colonization does not, after all, affect people only economically. More fundamentally, it affects a people’s understanding of their universe, their place within that universe, the kinds of values they must embrace and actions they must make to remain safe and whole within that universe. In short, colonization alters both the individual’s and the group’s sense of identity. Loss of identity is a major dimension of alienation, and when severe enough it can lead to individual and group death.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man who has had a vision is a fully functioning adult, possessing an identity that is of both ritual and practical significance to himself and his peers. [...] Until he has a vision the youth is not an adult, that is, a ritually acknowledged member of his community. He has no adult name, a circumstance that marks him as a “child” who cannot take on his adult responsibilities in the community.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nature of the cosmos, of the human, the creaturely, and the supernatural universe is like water. It takes numerous forms; it evaporates and it gathers. Survival and continuance are contingent on its presence. Whether it is in a cup, a jar, or an underground river, it nourishes life. And whether the ritual traditions are in ceremony, myth, or novel, they nourish the people. They give meaning. They give life.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mythic dimension of experience—the psychospiritual ordering of nonordinary knowledge—is an experience that all peoples, past, present, and to come, have in common.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Red, the color of the earth and of the East, and the color of what is sacred.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Black, the color of the West, of truth, revelation, and destruction.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Indian way includes ample room for vision translated into meaningful action and custom and thought, and it is because of the centrality of the vision to the life of the peoples of America that the religious life of the tribe endures, even under the most adverse circumstances. Vision is a way of becoming whole, of affirming one’s special place in the universe, and myth, song, and ceremony are ways of affirming vision’s place in the life of all the people. Thus it renews all: the visionary and his relatives and friends, even the generations long dead and those yet unborn.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Myth is a story of a vision; it is a presentation of that vision told in terms of the vision’s symbols, characters, chronology, and import. It is a vehicle of transmission, of sharing, of renewal, and as such plays an integral part in the ongoing psychic life of a people.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are the land, and the land is mother to us all.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All tales are born in the mind of Spider Woman, and all creation exists as a result of her naming.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fragility of the world is a result of its nature as thought. Both land and human being participate in the same kind of being, for both are thoughts in the mind of Grandmother Spider.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true nature of being is magical and that the proper duty of the creatures, the land, and human beings is to live in harmony with what is.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Acceptance is the better part of grief.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While lovelessness is not usually named by sociologists as an aspect of alienation, it may be the primary factor. For without relationships with significant others, meaning, self-esteem, a sense of belonging expressed in the establishment of norms and experienced as a sense of power cannot exist.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps the most destructive aspect of alienation is that: the loss of power, of control over one’s destiny, over one’s memories, thoughts, relationships, past, and future. For in a world where no normative understandings apply, where one is perceived as futile and unwanted, where one’s perceptions are denied by acquaintance and stranger alike, where pain is the single most familiar sensation, the loss of self is experienced continually and, finally, desperately.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The traditional tribal concept of time is of timelessness, as the concept of space is of multidimensionality. In the ceremonial world the tribes inhabit, time and space are mythic.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Timelessness—that place where one is whole.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the ancient bardic tradition the bards sang only of love and death. Certainly these twin themes encompass the whole of human experience. Loving, celebrating, and joining are the source of life, but they necessarily occur against a background of potential extinction. Thus, these themes become the spindle and loom of the poets’ weavings, for from the interplay of connection and disconnection come our most significant understandings of ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our tradition, our past.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are the dead and the witnesses to death of hundreds of thousands of our people, of the water, the air, the animals and forests and grassy lands that sustained them and us not so very long ago.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a permanent wilderness in the blood of an Indian, a wilderness that will endure as long as the grass grows, the wind blows, the rivers flow, and one Indian woman remains alive.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The years between time immemorial and the present are long and bloody and filled with despair. But we cannot despair, we children of the mother, Earth Woman, and the grandmother, Thought Woman. American Indian women not only have endured, but we have grown stronger and more hopeful in the past decade. Our numbers grow, our determination to define ourselves grows, and our consciousness of our situation, of the forces affecting it, and of the steps we can take to turn our situation around grows.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are busily stealing the thunder back, so it can empower the fires of life we tend, have always tended, as it was ever meant to.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The American Indian people are in a situation comparable to the imminent genocide in many parts of the world today. The plight of our people north and south of us is no better; to the south it is considerably worse. Consciously or unconsciously, deliberately, as a matter of national policy, or accidentally as a matter of “fate,” every single government, right, left, or centrist in the western hemisphere is consciously or subsconsciously dedicated to the extinction of those tribal people who live within its borders.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are doing all we can: as mothers and grandmothers; as family members and tribal members; as professionals, workers, artists, shamans, leaders, chiefs, speakers, writers, and organizers, we daily demonstrate that we have no intention of disappearing, of being silent, or of quietly acquiescing in our extinction.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Patriarchy requires that powerful women be discredited so that its own system will seem to be the only one that reasonable or intelligent people can subscribe to.”
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source