I ask George if he has words for girls just learning about
Native culture who might feel shunned when not allowed to
attend ceremonies while menstruating and for women who
intellectualize when the body cleanses itself that it is a
spiritual time to be in contact with ceremonies. "Women are
far, far ahead of men. It's quite hard to understand, but
when you start living the Native culture, you will. You are
like Mother Earth, who once a year in the spring, washes
herself down the river to the ocean. Everything ... all
debris is washed away. Same thing with a woman, except it's
every month. It's the power you have. You cannot enter a
lodge or a spiritual gathering because you will kill all the
prayers and offerings in there. You are more powerful than
all of it, and if you come in you can't fool the spirits. At Sundances, if a woman in her time comes near the lodge, the
singers and dancers know. I have to tell the older women to
tell the younger ones not to stay around if they are like
that. It's not because we don't like them, it's the power
they have. They're way ahead of me," George repeats.
Her rights while in the family pertain to the household.
It was her duty to skin the larger game, and the skins
became her property, and she was expected to tan them or
otherwise fit them for use. If she made them up into
articles for the use of the man, they then became the
personal property of the man, or if she made them up for the
personal use of a grown up son or anyone not a member of the
family, they became the personal property of the one for
whom they were made. But if she made them up for any other
person of use in the family they remained her own, which she
had the right to dispose of in any manner she saw fit. But
the men skinned the smaller forbearing animals, and while
the women tanned and prepared these, they remained the
property of the men and when the buffalo skins became
articles of commerce with the white people, the men took
charge of the sale of them, and of the precedes of such
sales.
As the tipis were made of skins they were the
property of the women, as were the clothing of herself ad
her children, until they were grown up, and she owned the
robes used in the family, except those belonging to the man
and grown sons, and all the domestic implements and utensils.
All the children that were the issue of her body belong to
her until they had arrived at puberty in the sense that her
right to their possession took precedence over that of her
man, their father. She is their mother (hunkupi) and they
hold her as their ancestor. Her right to control her
children took precedence over that of her husband until the
sons became of an age when they could be instructed in the
arts of the chase and of war, when the father took charge of
them, but in the tipis they were still subordinate to the
mother until they arrived at the age of manhood. (Walker
43-44)
"In the management of all ordinary domestic work the
woman’s authority was supreme. If she left a man her claim
to her rights was unimpaired, but if her man disputed it she
could maintain it only by the help of her friends whose aid
depended on their ability to enforce their wishes because of
numbers or influence. But if a woman was thrown away or
given away for punishment, she lost all rights to all her
property and her children, except babies, but the an could
permit her to take such as she wished and he granted"
(Walker 43-44).
"While the position of the woman in the family was
subordinate to the man in almost every particular, she had
certain rights which were recognized among the Sioux, as
follows. She had the right to leave a man who had taken her,
in which case her friends could take her part in the
difference, and if they thought that she had not sufficient
cause for her action they could restore her to her man, if
he so wished it. Then the only way she could escape
remaining his woman was to fly and remain in hiding from
him, or to become the woman of someone who was the more
powerful that her former man, and able to maintain his
possession of the woman, by force if need be." (Walker, 41) |