"(JB: Certain anthropologists, such as Elsie Clew Parsons, have "written off" Laguna, saying it no longer has a kiva, it's no longer really a Pueblo. Parsons comes close to saying it's not even Indian. How do you respond to that point of view?) ALLEN: I usually laugh because it's such a limited point of view. But then I say, "Okay, why are people always looking further back?" They've got to find a utopia-the perfect place-and Indians always fail them. Indians are always not quite something or other, whatever the something or other is that they want. People will come up to you and say, "There aren't any Indians anymore. You know, Indians put Pampers on their babies! They watch T. V.!" And all of this means that Indians are not Indian to the white world which loves Indians and is looking for the lost noble savage or something like that. I will say Parsons's work in itself indicates that they were so thoroughly primitive, so thoroughly wilderness people, that how she could write them off simply astonishes me."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesLiterary criticsCritics from the United States20th-century poets from the United StatesFeminists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paula_Gunn_Allen
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Paula Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen (October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Native American, and Arab-American descent, she identified with her mother's people, the Laguna Pueblo and childhood years. She drew from its oral traditions for her fiction poetry and also wrote numerous essays on its themes. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary works and wrote two biographies
114 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Paula Gunn Allen →
Related Quotes
"The power of imagination, of image, which is the fundamental power of literature, is the power to determine a people’…"
"The planet, our mother, Grandmother Earth, is physical and therefore a spiritual, mental, and emotional being. Planet…"
"Can we, as scholars and teachers facing the twenty-first century, fail to realize that "something there is that does …"
"In America, law substitutes for custom. In America, society substitutes for love of family, comrade, village, or trib…"
"The Indian way includes ample room for vision translated into meaningful action and custom and thought, and it is bec…"
"The community is the greatest threat to the American Individual Ethic; and it is the community that must be punished …"
"There is a widespread belief that we, Native American and nonnative alike, have nothing to celebrate. All too many be…"
"I am Laguna, woman of the lake, daughter of the dawn, sunrise, kurena. I can see the light making the world anew. It …"
"When I was small, my mother often told me that animals, insects, and plants are to be treated with the kind of respec…"
"Timelessness—that place where one is whole."