Why White Women Should Care About Native American Feminism: Paula Gunn Allen’s

Three Approaches to the Yellow Woman Story

In “Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale”

(Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism, pp. 609-620) Paula Gunn Allen analyzes a traditional

Laguna-Acoma Keres “Yellow Woman” story. Allen was born into the Laguna Pueblo tribe through her mother and her father was a Lebanese American. She primarily identified as

Laguna, the culture in which she was raised, though Allen does attempt to take a step towards something other than a strictly Native American viewpoint. The three approaches she alludes to in the title of the essay--the tribal perspective, the feminist perspective, and the hybrid feminist- tribal perspective--illustrate the multiple identities she inhabits and how she comes to terms with being part of several communities simultaneously. In looking at one “Yellow Woman” story,

Allen also discusses the layers of storytelling that accompany many Native American tales, which were retold--and in her analysis, misinterpreted--by Westerners. The entire analysis is part of a discussion between Native feminists and Western feminists, looking at what separates us and what binds us together and through Allen’s three approaches it illuminates what relevance a Native viewpoint has in the monolithic Western feminist community.

The idea behind a “Yellow Woman” story, as Gunn describes it, is to “clarify aspects of women’s lives” (610) and the story is always told from the point of view of Yellow Woman, or

Kochinnenako. Yellow is the color associated with women in Keres culture, linking them to corn and the sacred corn mothers. Kochinnenako can refer to one particular corn mother, or Iriaku, who is a dominant figure in Native tellings of Yellow Woman stories. Allen goes on to explain that many Kochinnenako stories are “about her centrality to the harmony, balance, and prosperity of the group” (611). This is an important distinction that factors into her argument about the misinterpretation of the stories by Westerners, which I will discuss later. But it is important to note that the version of the story “Sh-ah-cock and Miochin or the Battle of the

1 Seasons” comes from a Western perspective and Allen takes issue with what she sees to be cultural discrepancies between the Native and the Western versions of the tale. In the one presented in the article, Kochinnenako is the daughter of the ruler of the white village of the north and is married to Sh-ah-cock, the spirit of winter. Sh-ah-cock continually brings blizzards to the village and the people cannot grow crops and are forced to survive on cactus leaves. One day Kochinnenako wanders far off from the village in search of cactus leaves and comes across a man wearing yellow clothes woven from the silk of corn, and she is immediately attracted to him. When he asks her what she is doing, she tells him of the plight of her village and he gives her corn to eat and to bring back with her. He then asks her to come with him back to his country in the south where it is warm, but she does not consent because of her commitment to

Sh-ah-cock. She instead agrees to meet the man again in the same place so that he can give her more corn. Kochinnenako goes back and tells her family about the encounter and they tell her the man must be Miochin, the Spirit of Summer. Her parents tell her to invite Miochin to come home with her and so she does. When Miochin arrives in the village Sh-ah-cock confronts him and both prepare to do battle the following day. Miochin returns to the south and gathers an army of black and brown animals, while Sh-ah-cock assembles white animals from the north.

Both agree that whoever wins can claim Kochinnenako as his wife. Miochin essentially wins and

Sh-ah-cock calls for an armistice. Sh-ah-cock gives up Kochinnenako to Miochin and it is decided that Sh-ah-cock will rule the village in the north for half of the year and Miochin will rule it during the other half and there will be no violence between the two again (611-615).

This version of the “Sh-ah-cock and Miochin” story comes from John Gunn, Allen’s great uncle, who lived with the Lagunas and eventually married Allen’s grandmother after her husband (his brother) passed away. Allen believes Gunn took many of the stories he retold and much of the information that he recorded from her grandmother. But even with a cursory glance at this story, it becomes obvious that there are disparities between the way it is told by Gunn and what Allen has described as the way it is told by Natives. The most glaring difference is the

2 role of Kochinnenako. In Gunn’s version she is seemingly a prize to be won, not unlike so many fairy tale princesses who are claimed by the slaying of a dragon. As the daughter of the ruler of the village and the wife of Sh-ah-cock, Kochinnenako is only described in terms of her relationships to the men around her and not as a member of a “woman-centered, largely pacifistic people” (610) as Gunn describes the Lagunas. Allen also points out a fundamental misuse of the idea of ruler, or hocheni--the term applied to Kochinnenako’s father. There are subtler nuances to the word that make it difficult to find a Western equivalent, but Allen describes the hocheni as a “mother chief.” This idea is seemingly difficult for Gunn to grasp. The hocheni is a person to whom great respect is given within the tribe and Gunn translates this into a male tribal ruler. Certainly Westerners can imagine a woman ruling--there have been numerous queens in monarchies throughout history--but the patriarchal framework that

Westerners are used to existing within makes the idea of a culture that gives equal respect to male and female leaders one that is difficult to grasp (even in monarchies where women can come to power, it is only when there is no male heir to supercede her that one does). Allen brings up the issue of translation between the Keres language and English as well as idiosyncrasies in the way the tribal members from whom Gunn got his stories spoke to make her point that she believes Gunn wasn’t aware of how much his story “reflected European traditions and simultaneously distorted Laguna-Acoma ones.” One major facet of this essay is Allen’s wish to hybridize a Native woman/Western feminist outlook and in so doing I think she may be letting her great uncle off the hook a bit too easily. Through both Allen’s and Gunn’s notes it is clear he spent a great deal of time with Laguna tribespeople and put great thought into transcribing the stories. His respect for the people comes through in Allen’s essay, but what is also evident is that Gunn was undertaking work that the tribal people themselves had not (and could not, for lack of speaking English) undertaken and to say that he was not aware of cultural differences between himself and these people seems to negate the premise of his project. But it does seem that it would have been difficult for him to see the extent to which he was distorting the traditions

3 of the Lagunas, the people he spent much of his life with.

Another major issue with Gunn’s telling of this story is the aspect of the battle between

Sh-ah-cock and Miochin. Allen describes the Lagunas as a pacifistic tribe that this battle is really an acting out of the ritual of the change of the seasons. This becomes important when looking at

Kochinnenako’s importance to the story. If the two combatants are seen as embodiments of seasons as acted out by men, as in the ritual, Kochinnenako, to my mind, has more agency.

She is the medium between two opposing forces in nature and is the reason for the peace agreement they come to. If, on the other hand, the two combatants are men whose traits and personalities are explained in terms of the seasons (”And then she told him of her alliance with the Spirit of Winter, and admitted that her husband was very cold and disagreeable...”[612]),

Kochinnenako becomes the catalyst for a battle, a sort of Native American Helen of Troy, who runs off with her lover in the end. This objectifies her in a way that seems incongruent with the values of a tribal society that traces lineage through one’s mother and affords respect to hocheni and Iriaku (who is also missing from the story). The difference is perhaps a subtle one, but is undergirded by the teller’s understanding of society and whether a matriarchal mindset is a possibility in the world.

It is from this matriarchal mindset that Allen is speaking and from which comes her three approaches to analyzing this Yellow Woman story. In the first approach, that of a tribal person, she positions herself squarely within a matriarchal culture. In the second, that of a Western feminist, she looks through the lens of women who have been fighting against a patriarchy and have much difficulty imagining that any other form of society could exist or has existed. And in the third approach Allen attempts to combine the two in order to synthesize a feminist-tribal perspective based on common understandings about tribal culture and feminism that Native

American women, white feminists, and Native American feminists can share.

In her tribal analysis of the Yellow Woman story, Allen points out incongruities between the Keres telling of the story and Gunn’s telling, including the mistranslation of words and

4 names (the name of Kochinnenako’s father in Keres should translate to “Remembering Prayer

Sticks,” but Gunn calls him “Broken Prayer Sticks”) and the missing element of the season change ritual, which is narrativized as the battle between Sh-ah-cock and Miochin. Allen then jumps to a modern feminist interpretation of the story, which she believes centers on power dynamics--struggles between the wealthy and poor, men and women, and whites and people of color. The modern feminist, she says, looks at the content and interprets it through her own understanding of oppressive forces in the world, extrapolating them to all societies, including tribal societies. Finally, the “Indian-Feminist interpretation” comes together through the idea that

Western feminists must be aware of “tribal thought and practice” (619) and that if they are there is a better chance for a richer conversation and relationship between the two communities of women.

So this begs the question of what relevance Native American traditions and feminism have for those of us who do not identify as tribal women. What Western feminists can take away from Allen’s final approach seems twofold, one half of which is something we already have in common, and the other a major difference in thinking that is invaluable to dynamic dialogue among and activism on behalf of all women. Women, no matter the societal context, see themselves as inhabiting more than one sphere of existence. For those of us who have been raised in Anglo, patriarchal societies there is a division of mind in being a white woman--the other and yet the other-maker. We are both the underclass and the privileged class, depending upon who you ask. African American women in feminist discourse see their identities as tripartite: African American, women, and African American women. For Native American women there is an even more complex arrangement of identities to navigate, as they identify with particular tribes, as Native American, as women, as Native American women, and as having been raised in the West wrestling with the often conflicting values of the Native American sovereign nation and those of the United States. The struggles of women differ greatly and become more complex upon closer inspection into their particular circumstances, so these are

5 just cursory explanations of some groups of women. But this clearly presents the idea that if we look at the Native woman’s journey to reconciling multiple sets of values to form an identity that suits her, we will recognize it as our own and perhaps find a way to resolve our own struggle against turning Native (and black, Latino, lesbian, etc) women into the Other.

The important difference that Native American feminists bring to feminist discourse is the point of view of women who are conscious of the possibility of a culture in which women play a significant role. This awareness is central to any reading of specifically Native American tales, but can be applied elsewhere. When envisioning a culture in the United States (or other traditionally patriarchal cultures) where women can take on leadership roles and positions of political and social power, the Native experience could be of much use. There is a precedent for working communities that allow for both men and women to be respected leaders. As in the case of the hocheni, there are specific woman-centric ideas that Luguna Pueblos and Native

Americans bring to the conversation that have no equivalent in our own society and without such ideas our conversation about how to bring Western women onto equal footing with men would be lacking. Allen relates a story in her notes about her sister who spoke about Native

American women’s centrality in Keres tradition in a Women’s Studies class and the backlash from a fellow student and radical feminist who believed they had been brainwashed into thinking that women had power over their lives. This is illustrative of the kind of destructive thinking that can grow out of ignorance of tribal traditions. Here, Allen’s tribal-feminism comes in to put all

Native and non-Native women on the same plane and bring them together to transcend the continual struggle against a patriarchy and strive for equality, something tribal women already know to work.

Native American feminism is an often overlooked and undervalued element of the larger feminist discussion. The experiences of tribal women are distinct from those of other cultures in a way that makes their contributions to our consciousness of women’s role in society one that cannot be ignored. Without hearing their perspective and furthermore, integrating it with our

6 own, we will lead ourselves down a path of destructive misunderstanding that can only serve to hinder feminist activism. Through Paula Gunn Allen’s three approaches to understanding the

Yellow Woman story, a small, but integral part of her Laguna Pueblo heritage, we can find a different path--one of inclusion and synthesis that allows us to recognize both the similarities and differences between ourselves and other women and find useful ideas in each that can lead to more thoughtful and deliberate work on behalf of women in all cultures.

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