In America, law substitutes for custom. Paula Gunn Allen More Quotes by Paula Gunn Allen More Quotes From Paula Gunn Allen The shadows cannot speak. Paula Gunn Allen shadow speak The hoop dancer dances within what encircles him, demonstrating how the people live in motion within the circling spirals of time and space. They are no more limited than water and sky. At green corn dance time, water and sky come together, in Indian time, to make rain. Paula Gunn Allen space rain sky It's a little-known linguistic curiosity that the name Jehovah or Jaweh is the same name as Eve; Havva, the counterpart name in Farsi, the language spoken by the Persians, means either Jaweh or Eve. Paula Gunn Allen god names mean Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is in essence the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled. Paula Gunn Allen essence may way 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. Paula Gunn Allen trios groups god English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be. Paula Gunn Allen ethnicity discipline views Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation. Paula Gunn Allen outsiders separation groups An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing. Paula Gunn Allen odd-things mind civilization True shamans live in a world that is alive with what is to rationalist sight unseen, a world pulsing with intelligence. Paula Gunn Allen unseen alive sight As long as we avoid the creative, we are condemned to reaction. Paula Gunn Allen creativity creative long Hoop Dancer is a rendering of my understanding of the process by which one enters into timelessness -- that place where one is whole. Paula Gunn Allen dancer understanding process
