The Sacred Hoop Poem Analysis

Joy Harjo is a writer that enjoyed writing about events or situations that pertained to her life. She was a women’s rights activist but enjoyed writing about her Native American culture and how she believed the environment and all living things had a deeper, more spiritual connection. Her Native American background is crucial to be aware of when reading her poems. She incorporates her beliefs within her writings and that’s what makes her writing so deep in meaning. Her work usually shows an ecocriticism viewpoint. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Harjo’s writing can be related to the essays “The Sacred Hoop” written by Paula Allen, and “Nature and Silence” written by Christopher Manes. “The Sacred Hoop” helps the reader understand the deeper connections people share with the environmental world around them. “Nature and Silence” encourages the reader to understand that nature has a voice, in the sense that

everything is alive. These essays help the western reader read Harjo’s “Eagle Poem” as a ceremonial work that shows how individuals are connected to nature as a larger unity, and to see the differences in views between Western and Native American cultures.
“Eagle Poem” was one of Joy Harjo’s most famous pieces of poetry. This poem was written as a ceremonial testament to the beauty of nature and everything it consists of. Most Westerners live everyday as if the only thing that matters is themselves and how they survive. They fail to realize that nature has an enormous impact on our lives and yet, when problems within the environment arise, they tend to ignore the problems. The only time these problems spark interest is when they start to directly affect people. In reality, any negative affect on the environment affects human beings and how they live. “To the non-Indian, man is the only intelligence in phenomenal existence (often in any form of existence). To the more abstractionist and less intellectually vain Indian, man’s intelligence arises out of the very nature of being, which is, of necessity, intelligent in and of itself, as an attribute of being.” (Allen 5). By this Allen was trying to say that without nature and the physical world in which we co-exist with, we would have no source of intelligence. Just by living our daily lives, we learn and experience new things that shape and mold us into the people we are.

Harjo’s beliefs about her environment stem mostly from her Native American Culture. She uses the word “eagle” instead of referring to it as “the eagle”. This shows how she refers to the animal as an individual and not just some wild animal. The Indian lifestyle envisions all life to be sacred and everything in it makes it important. “In the Native American system, there is no idea that nature is somewhere over there while man is over here, …. All are seen to be brothers or relatives, …, and necessary parts of an ordered, balanced, and living whole.” (Allen 4). Allen’s claim supports Harjo’s view by showing how Native American don’t view themselves as the greater species. They view themselves as equals to their counterparts. This is because in order to live in a functional world, everything must be considered equal. Meaning nothing can be more important than something else. Western thinkers tend to think the opposite of this and have a very anthropocentric view on life where they believe humans are the center of the universe and everything else is inferior. This however is not the case when reading Harjo’s work.

The Western reader may have trouble understanding how Harjo envisions the eagle as an individual and why she feels as if she has a personal connection with it. Harjo believes that there are things we “can’t see, can’t hear” (5) such as the way animals speak. Native American culture believes that there are languages between all living things. Just because we are unable to hear or understand these languages doesn’t mean we should act as if they aren’t there. “Although nature cannot verbally speak with us it does not mean we cannot communicate.” (Manes 340). We communicate with non-humans in many different ways. Trees cannot physically speak to us but we can tell the age of a tree by looking at how many rings its stump had after we cut it down. Birds singing in the spring time we interpret as their mating calls, or songs, when they are in their mating season. We can communicate with animals such as gorillas by teaching them sign language through the process of classical conditioning. Just because humans cannot fully understand animals’ or objects’ thoughts and languages doesn’t mean we should act as if they don’t think or speak at all.

The eagle is a symbol of life and freedom, and is also a connection to man’s spiritual potential.

Harjo used imagery when she says, “circled of motion” as to show how majestic and beautiful life can be. Understanding Harjo’s view can be further understood by reading “The Sacred Hoop”. The sacred hoop is a symbol Allen uses to show the Indian’s perception on a circular, dynamic universe “where all things are related, are of one family, then what attributes man possesses are naturally going to be attributes of all beings.” (Allen 5). Harjo’s perception is that the eagle represents our lives. We are beautiful creatures, we are dynamic, and our lives seems to always come full circle. The circle of life is never ending. From the time we are born to the time we die, we are always impacting our environment just as the environment is impacting our

lives.

Most Western readers will read Native American literature and have difficulties grasping their concepts and ideas. Allen’s essay of “The Sacred Hoop” helps the reader to further understand Harjo’s “Eagle Poem” in the aspect that we coexist with everything in our environment. Humans and the environment are a living whole. Manes essay “Nature and Silence” helps the reader understand why everything in the environment is living and just as important as humans. The Native American concepts may be hard to grasp but when looked at very closely they can be quite eye opening. If Humans continue to act as they do, not caring about the environment and doing whatever they please, there might not be a future for us in the coming years. Hopefully we end our path a self-destruction before it is too late.