Albuquerque, NM

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.”
Off the Reservation

Paula Gunn Allen

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The Woman Who Owned the Shadows

Paula Gunn Allen
Studies in American Indian Literatur…

Paula Gunn Allen
Louisiana Creoles

Andrew J. Jolivette, Paula Gunn Alle…
The Sacred Hoop

Paula Gunn Allen
Grandmothers of the Light

Paula Gunn Allen
Skins and Bones

Paula Gunn Allen
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An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.
“For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.”
“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 . . .; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled.”
“Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.”

Published Sources for the above Quotations:
F: “In “Words of Women Quotations for Success,” by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997.”
R: “”The Sacred Hoop,” 1986.”
A: “In “Words of Women Quotations for Success,” by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997.”
N: “”The Sacred Hoop,” 1986.”
K: “In “Words of Women Quotations for Success,” by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997.”

Poet’s Corner
Paula Gunn Allen

Nationality: American
Career: Poet, essayist, novelist
Variant name Paula Marie Francis

As a scholar and literary critic, Paula Gunn Allen (born 1939) has worked to encourage the publication of Native American literature and to educate others about its themes, contexts, and structures. Having stated that her convictions can be traced back to the woman-centered structures of traditional Pueblo society, she is active in American feminist movements and in antiwar and antinuclear organizations.

Paula Gunn Allen is one of the foremost scholars of Native American literature as well as a talented poet and novelist. She also collects and interprets Native American mythology. She describes herself as a “multicultural event,” citing her Pueblo/Sioux/Lebanese/Scottish-American ancestry. Her father, E. Lee Francis, born of Lebanese parents at Seboyeta, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village north of Laguna Pueblo, spoke only Spanish and Arabic until he was ten. Due to the lack of a Marionite rite in the area, he was raised Roman Catholic. He owned the Cubero Trading Company and was Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico from 1967 through 1970. Her mother, Ethel, is Laguna Pueblo, Sioux, and Scots. She converted to Catholicism from Presbyterianism to marry Francis.

Allen’s great-grandfather, the Scottish-born Kenneth Gunn, immigrated into the area in the 1800s and married her great-grandmother, Meta Atseye, whose Indian name was Corn Tassel. Meta had been educated at the Carlisle Indian School to be, as Allen says in her introduction to Spider Woman’s Granddaughters, “a literate, modest, excruciatingly exacting maid for well-to-do white farmers’ and ranchers’ wives,” but “became the farmer-rancher’s wife instead.” Her grandmother, half Laguna, half Scottish-American, Presbyterian, first married a Sioux (Ethel’s father) and then remarried a German Jewish immigrant, Sidney Solomon Gottlieb. Her mother grew up speaking and writing both English and Mexican Spanish.

Allen was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village abutting the Laguna and Acoma reservations and the Cibola National Forest. She attended mission schools in Cubero and San Fidel, but she did most of her schooling at a Sisters of Charity boarding school in Albuquerque, from which she graduated in 1957. Her 1983 novel The Woman Who Owned the Shadows and some of her poetry draws from this experience of being raised Catholic. However, Allen is well aware of the conflicting influences in her background: Catholic, Native American, Protestant, Jewish, and Marionite. In an interview with Joseph Bruchac for Survival This Way, Allen says: “Sometimes I get in a dialogue between what the Church taught me, the nuns taught me, and what my mother taught me, what my experience growing up where I grew up taught me. Often you can’t reconcile them.”

Her novel speaks to this confusion as the main character attempts to sort through the varying influences to reclaim a Native American women’s spiritual tradition. On her journey, her protagonist uses traditional Laguna Pueblo healing ceremonies as well as psychotherapy, the Iroquois story of Sky Woman, and the aid of a psychic Euro-American woman.

Allen received both her bachelor’s degree in English (1966) and her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing (1968) from the University of Oregon after beginning her studies at Colorado Women’s College. She had three children and is divorced. She received her doctorate in American studies with an emphasis on Native American literature (1975) from the University of New Mexico. Two other writers from Laguna Pueblo are related to Allen — a sister, Carol Lee Sanchez, and a cousin, Leslie Marmon Silko.

Contributions to Native American …http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/poets/bio/allen_p.htmOn a calendar: a few mentions of WOmen in History.

A calendar of memories…also do remember Helen Keller?

1973 – Robyn
Smith becomes first
female jockey to
win a major race
(The Paumonok
Handicap at
Aqueduct).
1
Research these facts and more with free resources available
at www.gale.com/free_resources
1978 – Bette Davis
becomes the first
woman to win
American Film
Institute’s Life
Achievement
Award.
1962 – Track and
field star Jackie
Joyner-Kersee is
born.
1933 – Frances
Perkins becomes
first female
member of the U.S.
President’s Cabinet
(Secretary of
Labor).
1962 – Marilyn
Monroe wins
Golden Globe
Award: World’s
Favorite Actress.
1806 – Elizabeth
Barrett Browning is
born.
1992 – Nicole
Stevenson swims
short course world
record for the 200-
meter backstroke.
National
Women’s Day
1953 – First woman
army doctor is
commissioned.
1912 – Girl Scouts
of America is
formed.
1906 – Susan B.
Anthony dies.
1991 – American
Kristi Yamaguchi
wins World Ladies
Figure Skating
Championship.
1964 – Olympic
speed skater goldmedalist
Bonnie
Blair is born.
1997 – Pamela
Gordon is elected
the first female
prime minister of
Bermuda.
1852 – Harriet
Beecher Stowe
publishes “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.”
1994 – Anne P.
Sidamon-Eristoff
is named
chairwoman of
Museum of
National History.
1972 – Congress
sends Equal Rights
Amendment to the
states for
ratification.
1934 – Gloria
Steinem is born.
1973 – The first
women are
admitted as
members of the
London Stock
Exchange.
1912 – First Lady
Helen Taft and the
wife of the Japanese
ambassador plant the
first two Japanese
cherry trees along the
Potomac River.
1982 – Louisiana
Tech defeats
Cheney in the first
NCAA Women’s
Basketball
Championship
tournament.
1918 – Pearl Bailey
is born.
1933 – U.S.
Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg is born.
30 31
1945 – Anne Frank
dies.
1913 – Harriet
Tubman dies.
1833 – Susan
Hayhurst becomes
the first female
pharmacist.
1912 – Campfire
Girls is created.
1950 – Olivia de
Havilland wins Best
Actress Oscar for
her role in The
Heiress.
1899 – Dorothy
Constance Stratton
– first director of
Coast Guard
Women’s Reserve –
is born.
1932 – Amelia
Earhart is the first
woman to fly solo
across the Atlantic.
“How important it is
for us to recognize
and celebrate our
heroes and she-roes!”
– Maya Angelou

One step leads to another…there are lots of notable Albuquerque and New Mexican women: finding them isn’t, at first, easy online…but as with any journey there are always twists and turns and unexpected discoveries. More is soon: