She Bathes in a Sacred Place: Rites of Reciprocity, Power, and Prestige in Alta California

In the very private lives of Yurok women, the onset of menarche inscribes a spaciotemporal continuity with sacred power and sacred past. In traditional Yurok culture, a girl's initiation ceremony served as the template for an ongoing monthly sequestration ritual known as Apurowak.Theorization on the significance of women's menstruation seclusion practices can be done through reanalysis of myth, ritual, autonomy, sacrifice, and affective symbol system in the context of Yurok history and culture. Objective means for locating and identifying sites of difference from European cultural theorization are best summarized in the didactics of ritual scratching sticks—the visual metaphor for the sacred in women's rites of seclusion. As an ideological counterstructure that can challenge and ultimately change stratifying features of existing categories of rites of reciprocity, Apurowak points to and establishes a theoretical position that can suggest the positive aspects of menstrual blood in ritual context. This interdisciplinary approach relies on the critical and cultural studies emerging from the discourse by women of color, in particular, Chela Sandoval's theory and method of "differential" oppositional consciousness, and the interpretive and comparative work in anthropology and religious studies research. The development of rites of reciprocity, the making of a feminist aesthetic, and the identification and valorization of women's centered rituals are all themes that can call up a new subject position, one that can begin to decenter from Judeo-Christian concepts of menstruation as a signifier of societal ills that mandate sequestration of the perceived danger posed by women's blood. The continuity of the ritual and religious life of Yurok women is an exercise in the sovereignty of the Yurok cultural community.

Ritual and religious life for Native American women has long been an area of ontological displacement in the history and comparative studies of religions. ¹ It is better understood in terms of cultural strength and of enduring cultural patterns. A critical rethinking of the role of "women of color" ² in religion underscores the need for reappropriating meaning in a living system that creatively evolved from an ongoing conversation with an indigenous Creator—a concept of balance enacted through women's rites of reciprocity. In Yurok culture of northwestern California, a "moontime" woman is described as "she who bathes in a sacred place" (Apurowak). ³ The metaphor elaborates the significance women are given for the maintenance and regeneration of Yurok culture's ethos, feminist aesthetic, and psychic terrain through ritual menstruation seclusion practices. In this study I highlight theories that can interpret and define the ritual use of scratching sticks and sequestering gender rites of reciprocity in the context of Yurok myth and history. This research is motivated by my desire to locate sites of difference from theorization in the West that simply stresses taboo andpollution theories in various discussions on menstruation seclusion practices. Articulation of the sacra in Yurok women's seclusion practices is also a creative response to the ways in which women have been secondarily positioned in the interpretative priority of homo religiosus(Gross 1974).

I am introducing a theory on the significance of a separate ritual and religious life ⁴ for Yurok women by focusing on the origin and original use of ritual scratching sticks—the visual metaphor that can best express moments of transcendent experience and regenerative action in Apurowak. Development of a hypothesis of significance necessitates the study of "form-meaning" ⁵ and function of scratching sticks, the material dimension in gender systems that can best articulate an exclusively female mode of religiosity, ritual praxis, and psychic terrain. The didactics in ritual use of scratching sticks in Apurowak is a new dimension to the study of ritual objects by suggesting that scratching sticks do not merely function as representational objects; because of their religious value, they may be seen as a tool that moves energy, a technology...