As mentioned above, kinship has a larger
meaning than in English. Traditionally, long-departed
ancestors remain closely recognized kin, as do animals
related to one's totem (i.e. Bear). An example is the
Athapaskan word for inkoze (inkonze in some
sources). It is often used in different ways in different
contexts. Inkoze refers in many instances to having
power and knowledge, with no distinction between those two
terms.
However it may be used, inkoze is a gift from the
animals which, because they are persons (and because they
have more power than they need to survive), they are obliged
to share with those humans who have maintained a proper
reciprocity and a proper state of moral rectitude. "The
proper moral state" means that humans carry out certain
rituals of respect, that is, make certain sacrifices (such
as sprinkling tobacco in the place where one has taken power
roots, placing tobacco or meat offerings into the fire, and
a number of other observances e.g. proper butchering
procedure; obeying menstrual taboos; trying always to be
generous; treating human people and animal ‘people’ with
respect; avoiding sexual transgression)… Indeed, "for the
Chipewyan, maintaining good relationships with other humans
has always been extremely important in an immediate way, for
reasons of practical survival. Disruption in the human
social community also redounds to cause a breakdown in
communication with the animals – a dominant motif in stories"
(Drawn from Smith, World as Event, pp. 77)
In effect, then, traditionally animals monitored human
social order and administered judgment to humans based on
perceived imbalances. Our legal system has no equivalent to
this monitoring feature of the animals.
All of these points provide a way to comprehend and
contextualize Western studies of kinship. For example,
Hind's early book on Algonquian-speaking peoples reflects
the norms of kinship that prevailed, as well as the relative
resilience of the norms:
The ties of kindred and relationship
are of a very complex character among the Ojibways; in
more than one instance a singular exemplification of
cross-relationship occurred during our voyage on lakes
Winnipeg and Manitobah which is perhaps worthy of being
recorded, as it may serve to show the permanency of
ancient customs and traditions among families now
dwelling nearly a thousand miles west of the hunting
grounds of their ancestors. Near the mouth of the Little
Saskatchewan, we met an Indian family in small canoes
journeying towards the mouth of the Red River. The
family consisted of a young Indian, his wife and two
little children. The father was born on the shores of
Lake Winnipeg, and had never travelled east of the lake.
After a few words passed between him and a half-breed
Ojibway from Lake Superior, (Wigwam), they shook hands
and proclaimed themselves related to one another. Each
belonged, as I was informed, to the tribe which bore the
name of the ‘Bear’ and having by some means which Wigwan
could not or would not explain, ascertained this fact,
they spoke to one another as brothers. A similar
relationship was established between Wigwam and another
Ojibway on Moss River, solely as he informed me, because
his own and his newly-found friend belonged to a tribe
whose distinctive name was the ‘Bear.’ The Cree
half-breeds told me that in their communication with the
Ojibway of Lake Winnipeg, and further west, the
recognition of relationship not infrequently took place
between individuals who met for the first time and who
were born and lived in districts far apart (113).
This suggests that kinship is not based exactly on
blood-lines, but rather can have a considerable cultural
content, i.e., if one belonged to the Bear totem, one has a
solid connection to other Bear people, even if they speak a
different language and live in a different area. Kinship,
then, can have a marked cultural component.
Tellingly, Indigenous kinship is even more complex than
this. Certain life situations may suggest mythic parallels,
as Desveaux points out in Sous le signe de l‘ours;
what is striking in this study is that the
Algonquian-speaking Ojibways of Big Trout Lake in
northwestern Ontario tell mythic stories of great ancestors’
behaviour that is repugnant to today’s moral values, where,
for example, the daughters of the old Wemeshos lived
successively with a young man, a celestial being, and a
sacred animal. While such adulterous activity is decried in
ordinary society, the point is clearly not the adultery.
Rather human families reflect diversity because of their
mythic origins, requiring them to sometimes make strange
alliances in order to maintain who they really are.
In effect, then, tracking some aspect of the myth in
family life retains the tri-partite wholeness of the triad
cosmos/ human/animal of the original story. The result is
that the family is religiously-connected to the ancestor
through the marriage alliance or rejection of the same, but
is also an expression of a cosmic value system (Desveaux,
pp. 171-174).
Moreover, such an outcome begins to throw light on why
some marriage/alliances cannot/will not be made, while
others that appear so strange are successful. The reason
lies in the ancestry of the proposed new pair, and whether
their alliance will reflect something of the mythic
characteristic resident in the powerful old story. In
traditional Amerindian societies, such as we are discussing,
a very old, astute and insightful woman might retain the
mythic tales of the various families, as well as the
community as a whole, and very often, sometimes as soon as
children are born, discussions of possible alliances take
place in the background.
What seems to be going on in these discussions is an
aligning of the lives of the children with cosmic and animal
forces, forces that are held to have activated the original
ancestral connection. The result is that even in those
cultures that did not espouse totemic icons as organizing
principles among families, myth continued to give marriages
a religio-cultural meaning. Furthermore, depths of meaning
in marriage such as these indicate why traditional family
alliances were the bedrock of these cultures.
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