Paula Gunn Allen's main claim is that Native American women face a constant challenge of knowing and affirming who they are as persons and as members of human society. That is because they are obliged to straddle the demands of two cultures, white and Indian, that are opposite in many ways and that place often opposite demands on women. Even so, they are uniquely the constant embodiments and transmitters of Native American tradition, which is itself under constant assault by Anglo-American values and norms. Yet the challenge is especially acute for Native American women. It helps explain the title of Allen's essay: Identifying precisely where she comes from is problematic because identity cleavages are embedded into her personal experience. That fact in turn makes a problem out of explaining what that place is "like," except to articulate the content of the identity split that informs her experience.
Allen gives examples of the identity split typical of many Native American women, beginning with tribal identity and with the images of women valued in that context. She proceeds to the identity split occasioned by formal Anglo-American education, which was hostile to tribal identity and history and had a different master narrative of what tribal identity was (savage) in any case. Only the oral tradition "has prevented the . . . ultimate disruption of tribal ways" (Allen 445). She cites her mother's habit of telling her stories, which she later realized was one method of preserving the oral tradition. As for exposure to Anglo-American culture more generally, Allen contrasts the ethos of competence and self-reliance typical of tribal life and white culture's devaluing of such attributes in women, preferring instead a deferential and dependent social role of them--and for Native American peoples in general--and expecting fully that the women will effortlessly acquiesce in those roles. The trouble is that it takes effort, and Allen cites t...