The social construction of gender : the
relative relationship between masculinity and femininity in The names
著者（英） Masaru Yasuda
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 38
page range 71‑103
year 1995‑03‑10
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000014787
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER:
THE RELATIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN THE NAMES
MASARU YASUDA
In the same way N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain consists of mythic, historical and personal aspects which are crucial to Native American Autobiographies, Momaday's The Names also includes these aspects. These characteristics differentiate Native American autobiog- raphies from the Western notion of autobiographies concerning mainly personal matters 1 The three aspects and Momaday's incorporation of orality, a Native American oral, storytelling tradition, function as indispens- able constituents of Momaday's identity in The Names. Despite Momaday's conscious attempt to retrieve his and his tribal memoir through cultural memories not blood memories, the influence of both Native American culture (his Indianness) and mainstream Euro-American culture (his educational background) on him produces some ambiguity in his treatment of masculin- ity, femininity and gender: his views differ from time to time. This paper is intended as an investigation of Momaday's attempt at self-representation through consideration of aspects of masculinity, femininity and gender and of Western socio-cultural I economical interference with the author's self and the Native American cultural concept.
Some Native American societies and Euro-American society share seemingly similar ideas about masculinity. It is therefore difficult to draw an exact line, especially between Kiowa masculinity and the Western one.
However, there are significant differences between the two cultures. First, differing from the egalitarian indigenous culture, Western culture subordi-
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nates femininity to masculinity. Second, Western culture excludes (gyne- cocentric) rituals and people who disaccord with its socially constructed gender codes, and this culture once attempted to eradicate some ceremonies and some indigenous people, especially berdaches2
A recent situation might explain the positions on which the mainstream Euro-American culture and some of the Native American cultures stand. In February 22, 1994, the Oakland Tribune carried an article about the discovery of a DNA strand which might be related to sexual orientations, and the news focused on the protection of a gay gene, stating thus: "a federal researcher who may. have discovered a gene for sexual orientation vowed Monday to legally prevent its use for the genetic screening of fetuses by those who wish to eradicate homosexuality.,,3 This quotation bases its argument upon a Euro-American heterosexual notion of sexes. It reveals the traditional "belief not only that there are two distinct sexes, but also that there are two distinct genders,"4 since this premise politically gives the article its newsworthiness. Moreover, the premise of the report also suggests that it is related not only to homosexuals but also to women (and men), under the binary gender system, who are not privileged by failing to be "real"5 women (and "real" men). This diagram of the opposition between the socially accepted heterosexuals and outsiders is analogous to that between the idea of gender in the Western society and the idea of gender in some diverse Native American societies.
Even though such advancement of genetic research could somewhat influence an idea of gender or sexuality in the future, it will not change the idea, at least fundamentally, in both Western society and Native American societies, all of which possess their own socio-culturally / economically encoded definition of gender. As theorists such as Judith Butler emphasize, gender is basically imprinted through social or cultural constructions. This idea is reinforced by the fact that notions of gender and sexuality vary from
culture to culture; concerning the idea of gender, a postmodern feminist like Simone de Beauvoir can state that "[0) ne is not born, but rather becomes a woman." The mainstream Euro-American culture's unproductive attempt to purge homosexuality from its social codes is analogous to the dominant white culture's attempt to purge the berdachism and to impose the Western bipolar notion of masculinity and femininity, in which women are generally supposed to be under the domination of men, on the Native American cultures. Some Native American views of gender are incompatible with the Western binary notion, and berdaches easily became the target of the most visible acculturation because of their visibility. Under some Westernized indigenous cultures which used to have berdachism, berdaches became invisible according to the socio-cultural I economical change. This invisibility itself suggests the unprivileged position they occupy in the power relationship. To some extent, this kind of paradigm can be found in what N. Scott Momaday creates or in the way he represents himself and retrieves his tribal identity in this autobiography. Paula Gunn Allen discusses four elements which caused the change of Indian society from the egalitarian, gynecentric system to the hierarchical, patriarchal system: the gender-shift of gods I creators; the loss of the tribal governing institutions and philosophies; the extortion of the land which is the base of economy; the replacement of the clan structure with a nuclear family-based structure.6 Though what Paula Gunn Allen points out is true for some indigenous people, it should not be assumed to be true for all. Still, some of these elements seem to apply to Momaday's personal, tribal, family life history.
N. Scott Momaday, who is now a professor of English at Stanford University, grew up under the influence of Native American cultures which had already been affe~ted by mainstream American culture. He lives in the society seeing "no contradiction in being both an American Indian who participates in tribal dances and a college professor."7 Martha Trimble
74
comments on Momaday thus: Dr. Momaday exemplifies the best of two cultures for the greater good of all. His life thus reveals that some kind of accommodation to a dichotomous culture is not only possible but productive, wholly American."8 In the same way, his mother "imagined who she was."9 the same act of imagination plays an important role in Momaday's Indianness. Momaday is no doubt a Kiowa, at least in his sense of his multiple identities. Simultaneously, however, he seems to be unconsciously and consciously affected by so-called Euro-American culture, including its notion of gender, in the process of establishing his manifold identities: his identities that are reflected in The Names amalgamate with the white culture.
In a similar way Momaday's outward Asian-like appearance belies the nature of his ethnic origin.; the fundamental difference, the outward resemblance, between the two contrastive cultures confuses the reader. It is necessary but difficult for both Indian and non-Indian readers to judge from what point of view gender-related descriptions are provided and to realize the difference between the division of male and female roles, which has been produced and maintained by male-dominant Euro-American mainstream culture, and the division of male and female roles in some Indian cultures having a notion of harmony between men and women (lberdaches). Referring to such harmony seen in some American Indian novels, Paula Cunn Allen continues thus:
These works reflect the complementary traditions of women and men, which have always been separate but interdependent in ritual traditions.
Every part of the oral traditions expresses the idea that ritual is gender-based, but rather than acting as a purely divisive structure, the separation by gender emphasizes complementarity.lO
Momaday's frequent possession of a contradictory or ambiguous attitude to handling this issue further confuses the reader. Positioning himself in the
world through his power of language and imagination, consciously or unconsciously, Momaday inescapably incorporates some Western ideas of gender or sexuality into his self and his text as a part of his self- representation. In the book, by using his tactical language as a primary means, he fuses the Euro-American notion of gender with Native American notions of gender and manipulates gender in both Indian and Euro-American ways for the establishment of his identity.
The first example dealing with gender aspects is seen in the first section of Part One, where Momaday first describes light and earth: the "light there is of a certain kind. In the mornings and evenings it is soft and pervasive, and the earth seems to absorb it, ... and a brightness that is hard and thin like a glaze. There is something strange and powerful in it" (4). It is a coordinate concept of "light" (4) and "earth" (4) that is necessary for the appropriate comprehension of the scene. The earth is sometimes associated with femininity or mother, as AlIen states thus, referring to Leslie Silko's Ceremony
We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life; the land (Mother) and the people (mothers) are the same ... The earth is the source and the being of the people, and we are equally the being of the earth. 11
Momaday's use of grammatical gender also accords with AlIen's view and elucidates the assignments of gender to what the two words imply: light, male-gendered; earth, female-gendered. Later in the book, Momad-ay recreates his mother's phrase thus: "Kentucky is just famous for three things in particular, her women, her horses, and her tobacco" (20). The repeated use of "her" (20) as the pronouns of "Kentucky" (20), the land, reinforces the Kiowa femininity of the earth: in this episode, the referents of the subject are
indicated to belong to or assimilated by the earth because of the possessive pronouns. There, "women" (20), and "horses" (20), the latter of which are usually linked with the Native American maleness, and "tobacco" (20) are identified with the earth or with Kentucky, evoking a harmonious image- the idea of gynecentric or egalitarian Indian culture. Because of the existence of the correlated images as such in the text, Momaday's definition of the "light" (4) as "powerful" (4) comes to imply its masculine feature. The description that "the earth seems to absorb" (4) the light therefore implies the women's identification with men. If the male-identified light overlaps the female-identified earth, the hierarchical situation might indicate the male- centered society. However, the situation, where the light is completely coalesced with the earth, here exemplifies some egalitarian Native American societies.
Although this symbolized situation seemingly suggests only the coordi- nating unity between the two biological sexes here, it simultaneously implies the unity among the multiple gender through the reader's reconstruc- tion of the text. The unity itself largely relies on women as its (grammatical) s]lbject and projects an image of the egalitarian, gynecentricsystem where men, women, and berdaches are equal. Such image finally brings the idea of diversities of gender, which is first clarified by Momaday's mother's reproduced phrase: "Kentucky is just famous for three things in particular, her women, her horses, and her tobacco" (20). Since this phrase embodies the harmonious egalitarian society and since Kentucky the earth is female- identified, the words such as women, horses and tobacco should be male-identified. If so, the male-gendered women and the male-gendered tobacco, symbolizing agriculture which is thought to be less masculine from a Kiowa viewpoint, imply the existence of berdaches in the society. The notion of diversities of gender is also clarified by the subsequent sentences:
When you look out across the land you believe at first that it is all one thing; there appears to be an awful sameness to it. But after a while you see that it is not one thing at all, but many things, all of which are subject to change in a moment (4).
This description of multiplicity of the land, the earth, suggests gender diversity within Native American societies. At this point, the symphoniously integrated entity of the two sexes dissolves into multiple gender entities.
Nevertheless, since the idea of oneness between the earth and the light exists in other parts of the text, both the integrity of the two sexes and the gender diversity continue to coexist in the reader's mind and in the text and suggest the conformity among' men, women and berdaches. Consequently, this indicates an idea of original Indian gender relationships.
The diversity seen in the description of the land also points out the nature of Momaday's manifold identities. There Momaday talks not passively, but quite actively to "you," (4) which suggests the existence of the Native American oral tradition. In short, in the same way the traditional Native American storytellers did, Momaday here simultaneously plays the role of both narrator and interpreter. Because of this simultaneity, the pronoun
"you" (4) involves Momaday himself and clarifies some of his manifold identities. By the act of narrating and interpreting the story of the land which is somewhat historical, Momaday shows his communal self, which is an incorporation of the past into the present. Therefore, in this respect, Momaday seems to use the passages about the earth to represent his own or his tribal notion of the relationship between masculinity and femininity and to represent his tribal notion of gender, since Momaday, the unmentioned
"I," recognizes the miscellaneity of gender through his narrative act.
Moreover, the way Momaday manipulates the passage about the land presents his authorial position to the reader. First, his use of the idea that what seems to be one is actually many things appears to be an incorporation
into the text of the modernist idea that "unity exists on the surface and
j
disunity beyond the surface."12 Besides, his use of imagination and his use of Joycean "stream-of-consciousness"13 technique, which is seen in the long, unpunctuated passages in Section Three of Part Three, also accords with the modernist vision. These instances could define Momaday as a Western literary person, and Momaday's conscious amalgamation of the Native American orality with the Western literary tradition, for his attempt at self-representation therefore insinuates the author's mixed identities.
Second, Momaday's definition of Native American literature does not exclude "the possibility of addressing a multi-ethnic audience."14 Assuming that it is so clarifies some idea about the second-person pronoun "you" (4), which may refer to both Indian and non-Indian readers and may also show Momaday's intention to make this book accessible to all readers. Since Momaday is both a narrator and interpreter, the presumed reader's multi-ethnicity includes Momaday himself and denotes the characteristics of Momaday's identities.
After the descriptions of the remembered earth, the author recalls with his mind's eye his earliest memories of an experience in "the storm cellar" (5).
Despite his act of imagining his childhood, this memory is both personal and historic and is contextually tied to the depiction of the earth and the light.
Here, the relation between the earth and the light is analogically transformed into the relation among the earth, "the lamplight" (6) and "the sky" (6). Still, the earth maintains her femaleness, since Momaday places Momaday's mother and the earth in the same category by juxtaposing the synechdochic phrase "on her face" (6) with the phrase "on the earthen walls" (6). The lamplight (=the sky) embodies maleness, as the result of the bipolar notions suggested by the "odds" (6) between the earth and the sky.
The difference between the two seemingly repetitious episodes is that the earth's (women's) conformity with the light (men) does not exist or is at most
elusive in the storm-cellar episode. This time, the lamplight, which is parallel to the male-identified light is just "flickering on her and on the earthen walls" (6) without being absorbed by the earth, and "the earth and sky are at odds" (6). If gynecentric society is gender-bias free, the metaphorically described world of the storm-cellar episode must be a patriarchal, stereotyped Euro-American or Westernized Indian society. These express- ions consequently imply the idea of disconformity between the two sexes and of disconformity among multiple gender. The male-identified, artificial lamplight symbolizes Western scientific civilization; Momaday's mother, the female-identified earth, symbolizes the fear of Western invasion in two ways.
In a narrow sense, her fear in the storm cellar represents a repressed female or berdache figure. The destructive invasion of the Western binary system historically caused women and berdaches to lose their indigenous socio- cultural/economical roles and attempted to change their gender roles in many Native American societies. It is natural to think that her fear is a metaphorical representation of historic fear of women and berdaches who must have suffered the most from the phallocentric culture. Momaday's mother's act of keeping "a sharp eye on a sky [the male-identified light]" (6) with doubts also supports this idea. In a larger sense, if some of the Indian societies were egalitarian as Paula Gunn Allen insists, the diagram of opposition between the Western society and Indian societies is presented here. Her fear therefore embodies the suppressed Native American society, all of whose constituents suffered the breakdown of harmonies among all the people. Momaday, the narrator and interpreter of his memoir, also experi- ences his mother's personal and tribal fear. The juxtaposition of the two episodes schematically emphasizes the difference of the two, but its significance is rather that the radical, substantial shift from the conformity seen in the first episode to the disconformity seen in the cellar episode is formally analogous to the historic, situational alteration enforced by white
invaders.
Though Momaday situates himself on the side of the gynecentric system while narrating the multiple nature of the historic landscape, he positions himself in Westernized Indian societies or E uro-American society in the cellar episode. Mentioning the memory of the storm cellar, Momaday emphasizes masculinity or manliness, which has been cherished by both American Indian and Euro-American cultures. He positions himself as a male relative to his mother. The fact that there is no indication of Momaday's childhood fear or no descriptions of sympathy for his mother is the evidence.
The objective description of his childhood memories reminds the reader of the imprinting of the stereotyped Western perspective of maleness upon him:
Momaday here emphasizes his ultra masculinity by not mentioning his fear or his sympathy for his mother. He consciously attempts to describe his memory from his childhood viewpoint to represent himself, for he is "in the presence of the past" (6) when he recreates the memoir. If his objectivity derives from Momaday's childhood consciousness, however, it seems quite artificial for the boy not to sympathize with his mother at all. This unnatural objectivity therefore can be thought to come from Momaday's adult conSClOusness as a writer rather than from his recreated childhood consciousness and poses a question about Momaday's authorial intervention and the possibility of self-representation. Moreover, as I mentioned before, this episode is symbolized as a Westernized post-contact Indian society.
Despite Momaday's attempt to retrieve a Kiowa masculinity throughout The Names, however, in this particular metaphorical episode, Momaday's objectivity indicates that the male-centered gender notion is pervaSIve:
Momaday here favors a Westernized masculinist perspective. Therefore, . Momaday's failure to show his tribal masculinity proffers the reader the idea of the inevitable incorporation of his Westernized masculinist notion into his identity and into this autobiography.
In The Names, Momaday repeatedly appears to refer to the significance of names, as seen in the pre-prologue, where he emphasizes an idea that "a man's life proceeds from his name, in the way that a river proceeds from its source," declaring, "My name is Tsoai-talee. I am, therefore, Tsoai-talee;
therefore I am. " This idea, in some ways, suggests the conviction that the human individual and the communal self are formed posteriorly to birth under the influence of culture rather than anteriorly to birth under the influence of genetics. A similar thought is seen in Momaday's statement:
"My father's people are arrogant and set in their ways. I like this in them, for it gives them a certain strength of character, a color and definition of their own" (8). This quotation suggests that the arrogance exists prior to Momaday's father's people: therefore, the idea there embodies a continuous notion of a Kiowa masculinity. This statement also implies that gender, unlike biological sexes, is culturally constructed, and the author must have experienced such gender construction, which might be, directly or indirectly, influenced hy the dominant Western culture. In the process of imagining the past, however, Momaday sometimes seems quite conscious of the influence and seems to fuse the aspect with his Indianness. There are some notable instances in the text. The first one is related to his life at Hobbs:
In my day there were two classifications of boys at Hobbs, the toughs and the sissies. I was big and strong, and so I most often aligned myself with the toughs. It was convenient to do so, for I had then a stake in the dominant society, and the world of children is simply informed by the principle of domination. On the other hand, some of boys that I like best were sissies, and I got on with them very well in the main. The truth is, I moved more easily across the dividing line, back and forth, than did most of my fellows, and I learned to deal in crude diplomacies, strategies of choice and adjustment (88).
The paragraph cited above is crucial to understand Momaday's VIew of
masculinity and gender, for it raises a major problem: what is described there itself superficially consists only of a Western notion of masculinity and heterosexism, which is different from homophobia, largely because of the author's word choice such as the "tough" (88) and the "sissies" (88). However, the paragraph should be considered by separating it into two: the surface and the lower stratum. On the surface level, the Euro-American idea of gender roles is dominant, taking the form of heterosexism which is "institutionalized valorization of heterosexual activity"15 and is, "like sexism, supported by institutions-local,state, and federal law, as well as church, marriage, and the family."16 Under the reign of heterosexism, the bipolar system, only men and women who 'adjust themselves to socially assigned gender roles are rewarded. The presence of the idea of such a system is reflected in Momaday's phrase: "[I] t was convenient to do so, for I had then a stake in the dominant society" (88). Declaring himself to be "big and strong" (88), Momaday emphasizes his Euro-Americanized masculinity which functions to secure his position in the dominant society depicted in the citation.
On another level, the very same quotation simultaneously points out one Native American view of gender-gender flexibility. The quoted paragraph connotes that Momaday or the "I" places himself on the side of majority by his own selection: his ability to mo-ve across "the dividing line" (88) of gender is suggested. Momaday is a Kiowa, and his conscious movement appears to be an incorporation of a Kiowa view of berdaches / gays into his memoirs. Concerning a Kiowa view of gender diversity, Walter Williams mentions thus: "Though Oklahoma Kiowas have a publicly expressed negative attitude toward homosexuality, gay identity is fairly common among the Kiowas and their families tend to feel positively toward them."17 Through the indication of the possibility of his relocating himself, Momaday shows a Kiowa tolerant view of gender, for Momaday's self is equal to his tribal, communal self in The Names. In addition, the indication does not
contradict Momaday's masculinity. Though Momaday's expenence might imply his somewhat sexual relationships with feminine boys, Momaday identified himself as a man, in the same way men who had sex with berdaches had done so in the past. Therefore, because of the two strata in the quotation, Momaday here appears to share both Indian and Euro-American or Westernized ideas of gender, and this inseparable, simultaneous existence of the strata appears to embody Momaday's ambiguous or contradictory sence of gender and his self.
Though in slightly different ways, the subsequent episodes about movies and his aunt Ethel's son, John, further reveal Momaday's views of gender systems. Both of the episodes serve to reinforce Momaday's masculinity and his gender identification as a male. In the first story, Momaday's preference for females is clarified. He first emphasizes the impressiveness and attractiveness of the actresses, biological females, appearing in the movies such as Ingrid Bergman, and accentuates, "how is it possible to forget Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, say, or Hedy Lamarr in White Cargo?" (89). Then, he refers to the other type of movies such as The Black Swan, which urged Momaday to play sword games which are generally associated with maleness in both Western and Indian culture. Each component of this memory-the female attraction and the sword play-points out Momaday's masculinity and maleness, and the movies did influence the construction of Momaday's notion of gender, since Momaday states thus: "For good or bad, something of my belief was fashioned there, once and for all, among the shadows"- (89).
However, it is difficult to identify exactly whether or not this masculinity is a Kiowa one: at least, even if Momaday tries to suggest his having a Kiowa masculinity, it seems somewhat affected by the Western culture, for Momaday uses the notion of a movie, a Western invention, for his self-representation. Still, the episode at least indicates Momaday's posses- sion of the Kiowa tolerant view of "deviant" sexuality, for Momaday uses the
expression that he was "utterly seduced" (89) by "movies of those days" (89).
The listed movies contain both male and female features as mentioned above, and Momaday does not specify by which movie he was seduced.
Because of the abstract, unspecified reference to the notion of the movies, the noun "movies" (89), consequently comes to possess both male and female characteristics, berdache / homosexual characteristics, indicating that the boundary of male and female genders overlaps. Momaday's expression as' such thus connotes that his identity includes an Indian sense of gender systems.
The remembrance of the days Momaday spent with his cousin John also implies the presence of berdache / homosexual aspects during Momaday's childhood. First, such aspects are suggested through Momaday's tactful use of language, which makes it possible for the reader to syntagmatically reconstruct the text. In this episode, Momaday affirms that he "loved and admired" (89) John greatly. The words such as love and admire do not necessarily mean any sexual relationships and they outwardly refer to their ordinary friendship. Nevertheless, Momaday's repetitious use of the words such as "love" (89) and "admire" (89) attaches some brand-new connotations to these words in two ways. Momaday uses the same words just before this episode when he expresses his feelings towards Kathleen and Eugenia, stating thus: "I fell hopelessly in love with a girl named Kathleen ... And when the strring became a modest turburence I fell in love again, with a dark, lithe girl whose name was Eugenia ... and so I adored her" (86). On- one hand, through repetition of these words, Momaday identifies these girls with John, suggesting John's femininity (but possibly not the masculinity in those girls) and the possibility of Momaday's homosexual acts with John. On the other, Momaday simultaneously makes a clear, psychological distinction between the girls and John by utilizing the meaningful difference between the idiomatic phrase "fall in love" and the verb "love," the former of which
suggests Momaday's more emotional involvement with the girls. By stating that he loved and adored John, therefore, Momaday determines John's female gender identity, and consequently, Momaday is emphatically identified as a male in relation to John.
Second, the presence of homosexual aspects also is indicated by the following sentences: "I had about that time discovered the dark joy of masturbation. For a time the burden of guilt lay heavily on me ... It was John who assuaged my guilt in this matter" (90). According to Waiter Williams, in some tribes, boys competed to see who could reach orgasm first by masturbating or they often had same-sex relations. Though "individuals in Native American culture generally were emotionally closer to those of their own gender than the other regardless of being sexual or non-sexual,"18 it is possible for the reader to conjecture the same-sex relation between Momaday and John. However, even if Momaday did something sexual with John, such aspects are presented only through indication between the lines possibly to make this book more accessible to everyone. In addition, the indicative way of expression itself also is a performative to depict historical fact of drastic alteration: indigenous people started to kept silence about.
berdachism in front of the Western invaders. That Momaday does not mention the detail paradoxically implies his physial relationship or at least his Native American sense of closeness with John and his intention to incorporate berdache aspects by which Momaday's cultural memories are more fully retrieved. Moreover, the fact that Momaday left what happened between John and him unspecified seems to have another significance. The act of removing such guilty feelings about masturbation requires a process of mutual understanding, a discourse. The implied discour"se between Momaday and John reminds the reader of the confessor-confessant rela- tionship in the Christian world-F oucaultian concept of "putting into discourse of sex."19 Foucault states that Christian authority in Europe
impelled people to talk about sex in the form of confession in order to consolidate their absolute control. In this episode, though the context might imply the act of confession, Momaday's confession is not mentioned at all.
r
Besides, Momaday's female-gendered cousin disaccords with the Christian social codes. Therefore, Momaday seems intentionally to caricature the implied Christian diagram so as to emphasize his tolerant Kiowa view of people like berdaches.
In the episode about John, despite the implication of homosexual acts, Momaday's maleness is still sustained from the viewpoint of one Native American tradition through his confirmation of his own gender identity, for he distinguishes himself from John thus: "He [John] knew more than I did, but not so much more that he hadn't a genuine interest in my society" (90).
However, Momaday's incorporation of berdache-related aspects is contex- tualized under the Westernized condition. In spite of John's genetic and cultural belonging to Indian society, Momaday's statement of John's having no genuine interest in "my society" (90) leads to the presupposition that the world of boys I men excluded or at least differentiated John. Though "my society" here means simply "my company," Momaday's word choice points out the writer's possibly conscious intent to amalgamate his personal vision with his society's. Momaday's selection of the word not only confirms the exclusion of John from all Westernized socio-cultural strata, but it also makes it possible for Momaday to justifiably avoid his personal responsibil- ity to clearly verbalize on the surface of the text his own view of berdachism or homosexual acts. Taking this process of his tactical differentiation of John into consideration, the reader recognizes the subtle presence of Western or Westernized type of gay bashing in the scene of the fight between John and other boys. On one level, this opposition is analogous to the relationship between the pre-contact indigenous people and the European invaders. On the other level, however, the same opposition is analogous to
the relationship between minorities and majorities. This stratum of the analogies shows the historic alteration of indigenous societies. Connecting the opposition with the idea of recism clarifies the situation. "Racism is not a matter of numbers but of power,,,20 and even minorities can have power when their position conforms with authority in the same way that "Sister Mary Teresa" (127) repressed Momaday's opinion with "the force" (128). Here, the boys who surrounded John have power, for they accord with what Momaday calls "the dominant society" (88). Accordingly, .Momaday's act of rescuing John, the minority, from the boys, the Westernized majority, indicates Momaday's attempt to retrieve one Indian view of gender. As a whole, this episode suggests his tolerant attitude towards diverse gender notions.
Another part including aspects of masculinity and feminity is Section Six of Part One where Momaday recreates the image of his uncle James Mammedaty, the drunk who conflicts with the Western socio-economical codes, whom Momaday "loved" (40). The noteworthy point here is that when he talks about J ames, Momaday imagines or refers to nothing masculine about his uncle, and J ames' characterization as such evokes an image of historic suffering of berdaches. First, J ames Mammedaty is presented as a defeated "coward" (41), who could not do anything to Momaday's mother as if he were castrated, though he had a gun symbolizing a phallus. This implies James' femininity. Second, Momaday describes his drunken uncle thus: "All the stories that I have ever heard concerning drunken Indians are concentrated for me in the memory of that sad, helpless man" (40). The adjective "helpless" (40) is used in another section to modify ladies as
"helpless" (111). Momaday's use of the same adjective juxtaposes the drunken man with the helpless women. The juxtaposition not only shows James' femininity, but it also makes the women stand in the same position as victims of acculturation, when American Indians' historic past is taken into consideration. Third, the author mentions how he and his cousins used to
trick James: "We liked to,jump out at him from hiding when he was drunk, most often" (40). To some extent, the way the boys ridiculed their uncle resembles the content of the following descriptions about a berdache I homosexual who lived on the Colorado River Reservation:
In his small town, Eliner is almost universally known as a homosexual.
The white townspeople consider him something of a village idiot. The Indian boys tease each other about sleeping with him, yet their teasing is somehow not rid{cule of him. Among the Indians he is accepted with equanimity, and their laughter is as much at themselves as at him21 Regardless of J ames' queerness or heterosexuality, the resemblance of the people's attitude towards J ames and Elmer functions to point out that both alcoholics and homosexuals (I berdaches I women) have been the most badly affected by Western invasions, and consequently, this idea becomes a part of Momaday's sense of his tribal history.
Furthermore, Momaday's recollection of his uncle is also crucial to understanding how Momaday represents himself in this work. One signifi- cant aspect is exhibited in the author's regretful statement of what he did to J ames: "How cruel this was we could not then have imagined; there is no telling what fearful figures we appeared to be in his soft, bleeding mind's eye" (40). Momaday's recognition of the cruel behavior is gained by Momadafs adult consciousness: the grown-up author imagines how James sees, and the way Momaday imagines how his ancestor sees, produces some sense of tradition. This act of imagination makes it possible for Momaday to recreate what he did not understand in the past and simultaneously to recreate Momaday's childhood consciousness which, in the past, did not sense the cruelty but objectively descibed John's feminity as indicated in the reproduced childlike phrases: "Jimmy, Jimmy, get under the bed, I Jimmy, Jimmy, your nose is all red I and blue, and blue"(40). The recreated
childhood consciousness, nevertheless, can feel the. sympathy of the adult . consciousness towards Jimmy. What the recreated consciousness means here therefore comes to lose its harshness. Additionally, since it is both Momaday's adult consciousness and "imagined" childhood consciousness that create the sympathy towards J ames, here Momaday's conscious emphasis on a Kiowa tolerant view of feminine men is presented to the reader. The interdependent relationship between the two aspects of consciousness might pose a question about the nature of Momaday's self-representation, and it also emphasizes the significance of imagination in
The Names: imagination sometimes seems identical to memories.
In addition to Momaday's use of language as a mean of self-representation, the way he uses photographs, which not only provide the reader and Momaday with visual effects, but also a key to imagining the past in th€
present, to comprehend Momaday's tribahdentity and to reshape the whole meanings of the written part of the text, plays a significant role in this autobiography. The way Momaday uses these old photographs, which seem to have inspired his identity in him, without retouching their original shapes, might be Momaday's conscious efforts to recreate the past as faithfully as possible. What should be noted first is pictures on the genealogical chart and the way Momaday selects these photographs for the chart. Except for Momaday's own photograph (photographs of Ah-kgoo-ahu, Natachee, and Anne Ellis do not exist), all of the photos on the chart are taken from photos which are inserted into the body of the text. Besides, Momaday there chooses a picture in which he wears a suit connoting the Western notion of maleness instead of something performative of Indianness as his parents do in their photos. Significantly, only this photo shows Momaday'sgrown-up figure though Momaday's other pictures in the body of the text are those which were taken during Momaday's juvenile period, his pre-oedipal period, when infants possess biological sexes but no gender. Momaday's conspi-
cuous selection of the picture of the grown-up figure itself therefore seems to be a performative of his. self-representation-Momaday's conscious or unconscious intention to reinforce, respect and retrieve a Kiowa masculinity.
Moreover, all of the pictures in this book are interdependently connected to the contents of Momaday's narrative. In this case, his choice of the photo relates itself to his childhood experience concerning his appearance, which he describes thus:
As a child, especially, my features belied the character of my ancient ethnic origin ... And as recently as my undergraduate days someone sitting next to me on the side of the swimming pool asked me from what part of Asia I had come. "Northern Mongolia," I replied ... In Hobbs, I was suspected of that then dreadful association. Nearly every day on the playground someone would greet me with, "Hi'ya, Jap," and the fight was on (85-6).
Especially the event during his college days seems to affect his choice of his own photos. His picture on the genealogical chart embodies Momaday's feelings suggested by the phrase "Northern Mongolia" (86). In other words, to some extent, this is a political counterargument against the image of the stereotyped Indians, and his politics is also a part of his own, his family's and his tribal histories.
It is probable to think that his experience concermng his appearances influences the formation of Mo~aday's character so strongly that his adult personality, trauma, or politics might have affected this autobiographical work. In fact, Momaday's self-consciousness reflects on his view of others under the form of an obsession with appearances, Momaday's frequent use of adjectives such as "good-looking" and "handsome" are examples of his concern with appearances. Momaday describes his father, Pohd-lohk, a young pueblo man, and Quincy Tahoma, for instance, to be "good-looking"
(36,45,134,151), and the way Momaday defines Lupe Lucero as "a wizened
child" (148) is another.
The way Momaday chooses four other childhood pictures taken prior to his rigid gender construction brings up another significant point to the reader. His incorporation of the influential childhood experience about his belied mien into The names suggests that Momaday may schematically take advantage of the Freudian theory with which he is no doubt familiar.
Momaday appears to attempt to recreate his and his tribal identities by negating the pervading, male-centered theory after he roughly constructs the theoretical diagram in the text. First, according to the Euro-American theory, he draws a diagram seen in the descriptions about his belied look, and the diagram comes to imply that Momaday was affected by the Western bipolar notion. Second, his conscious gendering of his childhood photos, however, indicates his intention to attain his tribal identity both through his positive affirmation of the Native American idea of gender construction in some Native American societies that people can choose their own gender by their own will and through his conscious negation of the Freudian diagram which he depicts. The idea of one Native American view of gender construction is most clearly seen in one of his photos, where Momaday is a little older than he is in the other photos and plays with a wooden horse.
According to WaIter Williams, feminine boys used to be judged whether they were berdaches or not by adults: the adults showed the boys both feminine and masculine toys and found out the boys' gender by observing which toys they chose. The picture seems to reflect such custom: the boy in the photo makes his conscious choice of living as a male. The function of this photo thoroughly reinforces what Momaday does by using his other pictures and the quoted passages about his appearance, and it also implies the significant role of a horse in the book as mentioned later.
The sketchy drawing of the Devil's Tower, which is inserted in Section One of Part Two, functions to point out Momaday's maleness in relation to
Momaday's self-representation. First, the drawing is presented as Momaday's representation because Momaday attaches a hand-scribed phrase, "Tsoai of my name, Tsoai-talee" (69). This proves that what the drawing connotes is identical with Momaday's self. Second, needless to say, the drawing alludes to a Kiowa myth in which a boy metamorphosed into a bear. The noteworthy fact that there is only one boy out of eight children in the mythical story elucidates Momaday's maleness. Because of the single- ness of Momaday and the drawing, the contents of the legend itself function as a part of Momaday's identity, which is combined with mythical and historic aspects, as seen in Momaday's comment: "Notions of the past and the future are essentially notions of the present. In the same way an idea of one's ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self" (97).
Momaday's similar sense of self is reflected on the following paragraph:
Monument Valley: red to blue; great violent shadows, planes and prism of light. Once, from a window in the wall of a canyon, I saw men on horseback, far below, two of them, moving slowly into gloaming, and they were singing. They were so far away that I could only barely see them, and their small, clear voices lay very lightly and for a long time on the distance between us (68).
As indicated in the author's allusion to the mythical story of "a horse that died of shame after its owner committed an act of cowardice" (155), a horse symbolizes male masculinity in relation to its rider. In the quotation cited above, Momaday does not specify the two men's identities in the same way that myth or legend in general universalizes its core story. The unspecificity of the two men on horseback verifies the continuous presence of the tribal history and the mystification of Momaday's memories, by which he removes the limitation of a personal sphere. Though their voices are the only element connecting Momaday to the two men, Momaday's identification with those men is clearly suggested by the word "us" (68) which shows the psycho logic-
al union between Momaday and the men. Momaday himself is thus fused into a historical, communal self which simultaneously becomes his own self, and consequently, his masculine feature is stressed here.
The other three episodes in the autobiography dealing with horses is significant to identify the nature of Momaday's masculinity. First, one of the examples is related to his family and tribal history and is presented through Momaday's paternal grandfather .Mammedaty's way of life, especially through the process of Mammedaty's decision to be a farmer. Momaday explains the characteristics of a Kiowas thus: "the Kiowas were hunters and had never had an agrarian tradition, and indeed they were at best disdainful of their neighbors the Wichitas, Creeks, and Osages, who were planters" (29).
The quoted passage suggests a Kiowa view of occupations: hunting as masculine; agriculture, feminine. Though this episode shows the historic fact that the alteration of the environment was largely due to the Western invasion which is synecdochically suggested by the word "law" (28), Momaday's reference to the "hunting horse" (94), which signifies the masculinity of hunting, Mammedaty's decision as such does not mean his loss of identity, spirituality and masculinity. Mammedaty's decision rather puts an emphasis on masculinity: though Mammedaty repressed his male pride as a hunter, he retrieved his masculinity by being "proud of" (29) what he did.' Consequently, through the change of his inner viewpoint, Mammedaty successfully transforms the character of farming into a masculine occupation; Momaday seems to respect this psychological process of Mammedaty's alteration. Besides, I alluded to "tobacco" (20) in relation to the harmonious Indian culture; the "tobacco," symbolizing agriculture, IS at least male-identified and is presented as one of socio- economical/cultural constituents. This might be another proof of Momaday's approval of Mammedaty's masculinity. In this imagined life of Mammedaty, which is described through cultural memories, not blood
memories, Momaday therefore implies the possibility of fusing (not merging) Native American culture with Euro-American: this view is reinforced by the descriptions of the change of Mammedaty's religious life from "a peyote priest" (32) to "a Christian" (32) and by the existence of Mammedaty's two photographs. In the photo on page 58, Mammedaty wears a suit, but the other photo on page 95 shows the characteristics of what Americans think of as stereotyped Indians. Still, despite the difference of Mammedaty's costumes in the photographs, the person appearing in the two pictures is still Mammedaty: this simultaneously indicates the possibility of the fusion of two cultures and the possibility of Mammedaty's preservation of the Native American sense of masculinity. Moreover, Momaday here positions himself as a male by identifying himself with Mammedaty through an imaginary reconstruction of Mammedaty's life history, insisting that Mammedaty "is the inscrutable reflection of [Momaday's] own vague certainty" (93).
Furthermore, the reader also should notice that Mammedaty's change of perspective functions to define Mammedaty's kinsmen who "gave them- selves up to self-pity and despair" (29) to be feminine and situates them in the same position as Momaday's uncle lames. Many of Mammedaty's kinsmen were unable to adjust to the socio-economical / cultural change.
Their situation as such is quite suggestive. They used to be constiuents of the Native American economy, but they came to be outside of the economic system. At the same time, because of their assignments of feminine characteristics, Mammedaty's kinsmen are positioned on the same level as berdaches who also used to be indispensable constituents of some Native American communities. In general, the socio-economic system itself one of factors producing discrimination, and the socio-economically encoded discrimination itself functions as a social constituent, though the function differs from society to society. Under the mainstream Western socio- economic system, as seen in this particular scene, Mammedaty's kinsmen,
who lost their economical roles and who are figuratively identical with berdaches, are expelled from the altered situation. They, both the kinsmen and berdaches, fail to accord with the newly codified Western socio- economical roles and with the idea of "real" men, and accordingly, they are underprivileged there. Thus, the condition of Mammedaty's kinsmen is not only a family history but is an incorporation of the historical sense of the Western invasion, and the victimization of berdachism is also indicated through Momaday's assignments of Mammedaty's kinsmen's gender.
The imagined existence of Mammedaty is contrasted with the existence of Theodore Scott, Momaday's maternal grandfather: as the book approaches the end, though Mammedaty's presence could be sensed throughout the book, the presence of Theodore Scott fades. Momaday's contrastive treatment of Theodore as such finally points out Momaday's attempt to respect a Kiowa masculinity. First, it might be Theodore's occupational and personal position implying femininity that causes Momaday's distinctive manipulations. Different from Mammedaty, agriculture was Theodore Scott's first job without any direct experience of hunting, though his ancestors "kept to the woods all their lives, hunting, trapping, and fishing"
(14). This lack of immediate experience attaches to Momaday's mind the idea of Theodore's being less masculine. Second, the relationships between Theodore and his brother Granville is analogous to the relationship between the law (the dominant or Westernized culture) and the outlaw (the Indian culture), and when Theodore is juxtaposed with Gran who "was wild in spirit" (14), Theodore is presented as a less masculine figure. These two pieces of information seem to affect Momaday's way of imagining the two ancestors. In his imagination, Momaday links Mammedaty with a horse but links Theodore with "a mule" (106): Theodore is presented as a less masculine character. Nevertheless, unlike people such as Mammedaty's kinsmen, Theodore is in the socio-economical system. Since Theodore has
no direct expenence of hunting, his being in the society suggests that Theodore is more Westernized than Mammedaty. As mentioned before, Momaday identifies himself with Mammedaty, but he refuses to identify himself with Theodore as seen in Momaday's disagreement with Theodore's view: "He did not mind; resentment and self-pity had no part in the remembrance, but it seems a curious thingto me" (14). Momaday's deliberate differentiation of the two here elucidates Momaday's intention to retrieve his tribal identity and Momaday's preference for stronger masculinity, an original Kiowa masculinity.
The other two examples of stories dealing with horses are externally more personal. Both of the stories reveal Momaday's sense of masculinity and femininity. The first one focuses on horse riders "John Cagero" (130) and
"Decay Yazzie" (131) whose name Momaday "imagined" (131). Momaday minutely observes the appearances of both of the riders and describes their physical features. First, John Cajero's masculinity is emphasized thus: "He was ... strong in his mind and body, and he was a first-rate horse man ... his manner easy and confident" (130). Momaday poetically mentions this man with great admiration, for he states that he was watching the man "so intently" (131). On the oth~r hand, even though both of them did the same performance, Momaday, at first, did not even perceive the existence of the girl. For Momaday, she "came from nowhere" (131). This not only reilJ,f?rces Momaday's admiration of John Cajero, but also this points out Momaday's slighting what she does, not what she is, for Momaday describes the Navajo girl by using the adjectives like "lithe" (131) and "10vely"(131), which generally modify feminine objects. The notable aspect here is that this episode is the only part in which a woman rides on a horse, and this fact poses two problems which are complementary to each other. One is whether Momaday has a negative idea about masculinity coexisting in a biological female. The other question is from whose or what point of view the
descriptions are provided. Generally, the Navajo is thought to be the only tribe in which the "berdache terminology applies to morphological males and females,,,22 and interestingly, the girl is a Navajo. Except that the girl did horseback riding, which is more common among men, in the same manner the man did, there is no indication that she might be a "nadle" (the Navajo term for a "berdache") or so-called Amazon. In Momaday's mind, she is merely a biological woman whose "beauty" (131) he might be interested in.
Momaday's way of observing this girl, Momaday's objectification of this girl as a beautiful object, therefore implies the presence of the Westernized assigned gender roles in his consciousness. One of the other instances supporting his view of female roles as such is seen in Momaday's use of the word "Mrs." (134). Th'is word itself endorses the notion of the Euro- American heterosexism, and Momaday uses it only once when he narrates thus: "Mrs. Toya baked excellent apple pies" (134). The rarity of Momaday's use of the word highlights his thought to connect women with a Christia- nized gender role, domestic work. Judging from these two cases, the Western notion of the gender system, rather than that of the Native American one, seems to be woven into Momaday's Indian identity in this episode.
Another story concerning horses is about Momaday's horse named
"Pecos" (155). Before beginning the episode, Momaday narrates how crucial horses are for him to establish his identity:
I sometimes think of what it means that in their heyday ... the Plains Indian culture ... is also known as "the horse culture" and "the centaur culture," that the Kiowas tell the story of a horse that died of shame after its owner committed an act of cowardice, that I am a Kiowa, that therefore there is in me, as there is in the Tartars, an old sacred notion of the horse. I believe that at some point in my racial life, this notion must needs be expressed in order that I may be true to my nature (155).
The allusion to the Kiowa horse tale stresses the significance of bravery and
heroism for the Kiowas, and consequently, it defines the Kiowa culture as masculine. This particular episode presents Momaday's views of gender and cultures through descriptions of two contrastive horses. One of the horses is a "half-wild" (156) stallion, whose "wilderness" (157) Momaday appreciates, and he comments, "[T]he longer I looked at the stallion the more I admired it"
(156). He respects the house in the same way he respects John Cajero the horse rider. At this point, the attitude of Momaday towards the half-wild horse seems to intimate his longing for retrieval of Indian masculinity, and he seems to present this masculinity as a part of his self-representation through his acquisition of the half-wild horse, for which he barters his own horse. On the contrary, however, Momaday's masculinity in this episode turns out to be different from the orginal Kiowa masculinity when Momaday inserts the descriptions of Momaday's own horse, Pecos, which possesses both a less masculine feature, which is suggested by it's being a "gelding"
(155), and a masculine feature of a "hunting horse" (155). Pecos is thus schematically contrasted with the half-wild horse according to the degree of their masculinity. Despite the difference of the characteristics of the two horses, both of the horses belong to indigenous people: Momaday and his friend "Pasqual Fragua" (156). The oppositive diagram of the two horses accordingly shows the analogous relationship between the pre-contact Indian culture and the post-contact one: the half wild horse figuratively embodies the pre-contact Indian culture; Peocos, the post-contact one. This opposition is also similar to that of Mammedaty and Theodore, the latter of whom is less masculine. Nevertheless, here, Momaday's preference of Pecos to the "half-wild" (156) stallion, Momaday's emphasis on the post-contact indigenous culture, is clearly confirmed because of both his concordance with Pecos and his dissension with the half-wild stallion, the latter of which is seen in Momaday's confession about his trade: "I had made a bad bargain, and I wanted my horse back, but I was ashamed to admit it" (157).
Momaday's intention of this emphasis is clarified when Pecos' outward physical feature is considered. Pecos is biologically a stallion though it is gelded: the feature reminds the reader of berdache-like characteristics.
Momaday joins this feature with the idea of the post-contact society where people discording with socio-cultural / economical codes are repressed. By doing so, preserving his masculinity, he appears to suggests the possibility of accommodation to the dichotomous culture-the promising possibility of retrieval of a Kiowa tolerance towards minorities. Because of the importance of horses to Momaday, he seems to present this idea as a part of his diverse identities, his self-representation. In fact, it is on Pecos' back that Momaday acquired this "different view of the world" (155), which is a part of his self, in his imagination.
Additionally, Momaday's incorporation of the post-contact Indian idea into his self is seen in Momaday's sense of the confrontation between natural landscape and landscape with trains. Concerning his feeling about the trains which represent Euro-American culture, Momaday explains thus:
They [trains] seemed not to intrude, that is, as machines do in so many of the landscape of our time; or perhaps this is merely my sense of things, having long ago taken that country side as I found it, cut through with glinting rails and puffing trains. Like the red wall above them, they made an ordinary stratum on the scene. I try to imagine that large expanse without them, but then there is a flaw in the design. For in my mind's eye, too, a train stitches black across the plain (70).
As seen in the imaginative scenery with trains, the dominant society altered some systems of Native American cultures. The landscape is unnatural without the trains, even in Momaday's imaginative memories. This is another instance of Momaday's Indian identities, which are inevitably influenced by the Euro-American clture. Nevertheless, Momaday here seems to utilize deliberately the idea of Westernization so as to recreate his
personal and tribal identities in The Names. To some extent, he "synthesizes the West. He fuses past and present, ... Indian and non,Indian.,,23
The hunting culture in reality was destroyed or diminished, as the Indian societies lost their lands because of Euro,American take-over. As Paula Gunn Allen suggests, this kind of influence might have replaced the egalitarian societies with the hierarchical societies. This autobiography, The Names, written by N. Scott Momaday is his imaginative journey consciously to retrieve and reconstruct his and his tribal identities and masculir:ity.
Along the way, he includes many representations of masculinity, femininity and gender in various ways, employing orality, which is suggested by his repetitious use of words, phrases and images, as the connector of different episodes in the text. Throughout the book, Momaday basically tries to believe in the value of a Kiowa masculinist perspective, though it IS
sometimes affected by a Western one and though it is sometimes difficult to distinguish it from a Western one. At least, he shows his Kiowa tolerant attitude towards socio,culturally / economically excluded biological males such as berdaches. However, he has some trouble in some cases dealing with representations of females. There are male genders and female genders, not a male gender and a female gender in reality: all of the genders overlap to some extent. Still, Momaday fails to accept especially masculine female figures such as the horse rider, Decay Yazzie. In his attempt at self,representation, especially concerning his view of female gender roles or femininity, Momaday seems to be influenced by the dominant Euro-American cultural notion.
NOTES
1 Here, I intentionally simplify the Western notion of autobiographies to make a clear contrast between the Western autobiographies and the Native American ones, but I do not exclude the ideas such as Jerome Bruner's that an
Euro-American "autobiography can be read not only as a personal expression, as a narrative expressing 'inner dynamics,' but as a cultural product as welL" See Jerome Bruner. "The Autobiographical Process." The Culture of Autobiography.
Ed. Robert Folkenflik (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993) 39.
2 According to Walter Williams, the word "berdache" originates in the French language, ~nd it basically refers to the androgynous Native American males possessing ceremonial role and occupying respectable positions in many tribal cultures (,though the term is sometimes applied to both males and females).
Berdachism and ceremonialism were inseparably connected, and many Native American religions accept berdaches in the same way they accept other variation from the norm. Most of berdaches wore female-like dress, and in sexual life with men, they normally were passive homosexual partner. Needless to say each tribe has its own definition of the phenomenon. "Berdachism" does not always exist in all of the Native American tribes. However, even if tribes which are normally thought not to have such a custom, and even if there is no document left in the tribes, the tribal people testified that there were some people as such. The visible phenomenon was severely affected by the Euro-American invasion because of berdachism's outward similarity to male homosexuality towards which Western societies have had negative attitudes. For instance, around 16th Century, Spanish explorer Balboa ordered Indians accused of sodomy to be eaten alive by dogs.
3 Jonathan Weisman, "Researcher vows to protect 'gay gene,'" The Oakland Tribune 22 Feb. 1994
4 1. B. Capers, "Sex (ual orientation) and Title VII," Columbia Law Review 91 (1991): 1660
5 1. B. Capers, "Sex (ual orientaion) and Title VII" 1160
Under the Euro-American bipolar gender, system, people who confirm a bipolar view of gender are rewarded as "real" men and. "real" women; people who disaccord with the socio-economically encoded gender roles are underprivileged.
6 Paula Gunn Alien, The Sacred Hoop (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986) 41-2 'Paula Gunn Allen sometimes seems to weaken her discussion through an
oversimplified presentation of notions of gender seen in diverse Native American cultures. Still, she offers an important position on gynocracy in this book;
especially, her confident implication that a Kiowa tribal society also used to be
