25 Quotes by 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.

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

The shadows cannot speak.

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.

We are the women of daylight; of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days.

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

In the native world, major gods come in trios, duos, and groups. It is the habit of non-natives to discover the supreme being, the one and only head god, a habit lent to them by monotheism.