We are the women of daylight; of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days.

An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation.

True shamans live in a world that is alive with what is to rationalist sight unseen, a world pulsing with intelligence.

The shadows cannot speak.

Some feminist critics debate whether we take our meaning and sense of self from language and in that process become phallocentric ourselves, or if there is a use of language that is, or can be, feminine. Some, like myself, think that language is itself neither male nor female; it is creatively expansive enough to be of use to those who have the wit and art to wrest from it their own significance. Even the dread patriarchs have not found a way to 'own' language any more than they have found a way to 'own' earth (though many seem to believe that both are possible).