Post by Spirit of the Owl Woman on Apr 21, 2009 23:54:52 GMT -5
I must say that if you are researching relatives and not familiar with the cultural or the religious aspects of those relatives, you will be unable to truly do serious research about your ancestors. Nor will you understand. At least, in my opinion, trying to do research from the mind of a contemporary living in 2009, on the mind set and circumstances of the 1800's Sioux man or woman does not quite hit the mark. Thus, I must confess this journey has lead me on to another path of learning and an attempt to understand all that took place, emotionally, mentally, physically, psychologically to the people I am connected with. People I share a specific DNA composite with. Not only to understand them but to understand myself and all that I inherited from them, all good, but in addition, challenges to be faced and overcome.
(Charles) Eastman proclaims, ". . . it has been said that the position of women is the test of civilization." The Sioux wife did not take the name of her husband nor enter his clan, and the children belonged to the clan of the mother. All of the family property was held by her, descent was traced in the maternal line, and the honor of the house was in her hands. He continues that modesty was her chief adornment. Also, a Sioux woman who had attained to ripeness of years and wisdom, or who had displayed notable courage in some emergency was sometimes invited to a seat in council. Her early and consistent training, the definiteness of her vocation, and above all her profoundly religious attitude gave her a strength and poise that could not be overcome by any ordinary misfortune.
This is why in some instances, I found men who took the wife's name on the ICS records. Neither the male or female Sioux was really superior to the other, they both had true identities and roles to perform and each was counted. I had sensed this all along, but since recently delving into kinship laws and familial relationships, I thought I just might share this with those who are not so familiar with traditional Sioux cultural as I was when first embarked on this journey searching for my relatives and just where I belonged.
Once women had a place of honor in the Sioux culture; The Sioux worshiped the male and female in symbols as the Great Grandfather Spirit (as man or animal, most especially the sacred wolf) and glorified with the myth of the White Buffalo Cow Woman; the woman who brought the scared pipe and tobacco with the instructions that they be used for prayer. Quoting from Lone Man's telling of the story, "The tribe shall depend upon it for their necessary needs...By this pipe the tribe shall live."
Some interpretations suggest she brought the moral/sexual laws to the people, i.e, consider the story, and the one who wanted to rape her and the other who did not. From this story she brought about the kinship laws. For our people, the control of sexuality was an important aspect of the symbolic duality between animals and humans.
Husbands and wives had no more than 3, possibly 4 children, any more was considered inappropriate by the clan and caused people to talk. And, under normal conditions these children were spaced approximately 4 years apart. This I perceive would have made healthy and emotionally stable human beings. And, the male who had children in this manner was considered a man in control of his appetites, a man who could discipline himself. The people were a balanced people, then.
All Sioux under the kinship system recognized themselves as part of a common kindred, all were related. (As Grandma on this site states "We are all related.") And it provided the foundation for social unity and moral order. Kinship were the most basic cultural structures defining the social system; they formed a network that potentially embraced all members of society and related to them as well to the sacred powers of the world at large. Kinship had no prescribed boundaries. This system of potentialities and its structure made sense of all human interactions and provided a comforting sense of orderliness to the universe.
Social structure and the religious dimensions are two aspects of our people that cannot be separated. They are ONE and the same. They are the contract the Sioux people had with WakanTanka, which unites and connects all forms of being in to an unbroken chain of relationships.
By restricting kinship to genealogy, the social-structural approach fails to note that the Sioux define relationship in terms of a set conceptual categories and the logical relationships among them is based on proper "feeling' and behavior, rather than on concrete links of marriage and birth. Blood genealogy is a product brought by the white man and his Indian Census Schedules, noting blood quantum, changing the system to patriarchal and dismissing the fact that the Sioux people and their cultural and religious systems was ingrained in their reality that we were all related. We are all relatives. So hard for the white man to conceive, not that he wanted to, because he was superior. (Note: A superiority complex is a disguise for an inferiority complex.)
Blood connection to our ancestor's point of view or belief was not and is not only how they are related. It was a spiritual relating to all camps and clans and in no way how we perceive our ancestor's today as we search for blood-lines. It is thought provoking when researching and I come across a real man who stands his ground and takes his wife's name and does not look back. He stood for the traditional ways. He stood for the future. He stood for you and me.
We are all related. We are all ONE.
(Charles) Eastman proclaims, ". . . it has been said that the position of women is the test of civilization." The Sioux wife did not take the name of her husband nor enter his clan, and the children belonged to the clan of the mother. All of the family property was held by her, descent was traced in the maternal line, and the honor of the house was in her hands. He continues that modesty was her chief adornment. Also, a Sioux woman who had attained to ripeness of years and wisdom, or who had displayed notable courage in some emergency was sometimes invited to a seat in council. Her early and consistent training, the definiteness of her vocation, and above all her profoundly religious attitude gave her a strength and poise that could not be overcome by any ordinary misfortune.
This is why in some instances, I found men who took the wife's name on the ICS records. Neither the male or female Sioux was really superior to the other, they both had true identities and roles to perform and each was counted. I had sensed this all along, but since recently delving into kinship laws and familial relationships, I thought I just might share this with those who are not so familiar with traditional Sioux cultural as I was when first embarked on this journey searching for my relatives and just where I belonged.
Once women had a place of honor in the Sioux culture; The Sioux worshiped the male and female in symbols as the Great Grandfather Spirit (as man or animal, most especially the sacred wolf) and glorified with the myth of the White Buffalo Cow Woman; the woman who brought the scared pipe and tobacco with the instructions that they be used for prayer. Quoting from Lone Man's telling of the story, "The tribe shall depend upon it for their necessary needs...By this pipe the tribe shall live."
Some interpretations suggest she brought the moral/sexual laws to the people, i.e, consider the story, and the one who wanted to rape her and the other who did not. From this story she brought about the kinship laws. For our people, the control of sexuality was an important aspect of the symbolic duality between animals and humans.
Husbands and wives had no more than 3, possibly 4 children, any more was considered inappropriate by the clan and caused people to talk. And, under normal conditions these children were spaced approximately 4 years apart. This I perceive would have made healthy and emotionally stable human beings. And, the male who had children in this manner was considered a man in control of his appetites, a man who could discipline himself. The people were a balanced people, then.
All Sioux under the kinship system recognized themselves as part of a common kindred, all were related. (As Grandma on this site states "We are all related.") And it provided the foundation for social unity and moral order. Kinship were the most basic cultural structures defining the social system; they formed a network that potentially embraced all members of society and related to them as well to the sacred powers of the world at large. Kinship had no prescribed boundaries. This system of potentialities and its structure made sense of all human interactions and provided a comforting sense of orderliness to the universe.
Social structure and the religious dimensions are two aspects of our people that cannot be separated. They are ONE and the same. They are the contract the Sioux people had with WakanTanka, which unites and connects all forms of being in to an unbroken chain of relationships.
By restricting kinship to genealogy, the social-structural approach fails to note that the Sioux define relationship in terms of a set conceptual categories and the logical relationships among them is based on proper "feeling' and behavior, rather than on concrete links of marriage and birth. Blood genealogy is a product brought by the white man and his Indian Census Schedules, noting blood quantum, changing the system to patriarchal and dismissing the fact that the Sioux people and their cultural and religious systems was ingrained in their reality that we were all related. We are all relatives. So hard for the white man to conceive, not that he wanted to, because he was superior. (Note: A superiority complex is a disguise for an inferiority complex.)
Blood connection to our ancestor's point of view or belief was not and is not only how they are related. It was a spiritual relating to all camps and clans and in no way how we perceive our ancestor's today as we search for blood-lines. It is thought provoking when researching and I come across a real man who stands his ground and takes his wife's name and does not look back. He stood for the traditional ways. He stood for the future. He stood for you and me.
We are all related. We are all ONE.
