Honoring Woman
Beings that today people are gathering together with their loved ones to celebrate all that they have to be thankful for within their lives, and in keeping with that spiritual concept, we felt that we would choose today to encourage everyone to take this opportunity to truly express the spirit of gratitude with the women in your life both that are here as well as those special women in our lives who have passed away, because without them influencing your life as they have, you wouldn't be the beautifully spirited person you are and have grown to be.. and without women, you Wouldn't be!
The honoring of women is something that has been lacking for at least the last few hundred years here and of coarse we know even longer elsewhere. However, knowing the importance as well as the sacredness women have to offer our globe, we felt that perhaps it's time we address it on a public level in the hopes to enlighten you even if just a little bit.
We would like to start by inviting you to watch this very short but yet Powerful video of a poem/song of one of our personal elder council, may he now be at peace with his ancestor relations and loved ones that we hope you appreciate as well as enjoy. It really puts our focal in proper perspective.
Historically, the role of women in Native American cultures varied much more than the roles of women in Europe. The rights of women in North America varied, but most of the women did have more power and privileges than the women across the ocean. It is hard to make any generalizations about indigenous societies, because North America’s First Peoples consisted of hundreds of separate cultures, each with their own belief systems, social structures, and cultural and political practices. It;s important that you know and recognize that though we're focusing on women here, that men's and women's responsibilities were equally crucial to the functioning, even the survival, of their tribal societies and both honored and respected that reality.
Men were generally responsible for hunting, warfare, manufacturing of weapons, and nearly all society-wide political and religious operations, interacting with outsiders and the overall protection of the whole of the tribe, including the women because they knew that without women there would be no more tribe at all, therefore they had more visible, public roles and important obligation, expectation and responsibility when it came to the overall preservation aspect.
Women, on the other hand, managed the internal operations of the community. They usually owned the family’s housing and household goods, engaged in agricultural food production and gathering of foodstuffs, and reared the children. Women of both the Pawnees and Omahas of Nebraska, for example, are the ones who owned the lodge, tipi, and its contents; the fields, seeds, and implements of production; and they had the right to trade their surplus crops. On the bison hunts they often made the decision on where to camp, and in the lodge the senior wife (for sororal polygamy was the norm) was the main decision maker. Women are the ones who had the right to divorce, and since they owned the lodge, an unkind husband could find himself homeless, with only his horse and weapons to his name. The women were the ones who took care of religious items, a responsibility of the highest order too. Some of the tribes also believed that women possessed a stronger healing power, and their healing chants and herbal remedies were much more effective.
In many North American societies, clan membership and material goods descended through women. For example, the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois Confederation all practiced matrilineal descent. Clan matrons selected men to serve as their chiefs, and they deposed chiefs with whom they were dissatisfied. However, while it is true that the women generally played a subordinate role in ceremonial life and lacked formal political power (you will look in vain for a Plains Indian woman's signature on a treaty with the United States), they had types of political power that contemporary American women lacked.
Here are some of the many honorable women of tribal history that we should remember:
“Queen” Anne – leader of the Paunchy Tribe of Virginia in 1656.
Awashonks of the Wampanoag, who became chief (or sachem) of her people in the 1600s. Her signature is on the Plymouth agreement of 1671.
Queen Aliquippa, who led the Seneca tribe for more than a dozen years, reportedly having received George Washington as a guest in the mid-1700s,
Mary Brand aka “Molly” – a Mohawk leader who acted as intermediary between the British and Iroquois during the American Revolution, and while honored in Canadian history, her reputation in the U.S. is varied.
Mary Musgrove who though a bit of a rabble-rouser, acted as an intermediary between the Lower Creek and James Oglethorpe in the 1700s.
Nancy Ward of the Cherokee Wolf Clan in Tennessee, who led her people to victory at the Battle of Taliwa in 1755. She was 18 years old, and received the title “Beloved Woman”.
Net-no-kwa was an Ottowan Ojibwa woman who was considered a powerful leader in the 1780s.
Loosen: a great Chihenne-Chiricahua Apache warrior, midwife and spiritual leader. Sister to Chief Victorio, Lozen fought alongside Geronimo in the late 1800s.
Seminole Betty Mae Jumper, educated in an Indian boarding school a thousand miles from her home in Florida. She was the first of the Florida Seminoles to graduate high school, and the first woman to serve as a Seminole leader when elected head of the tribal council in 1967.
In 1987, Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to be elected chief of the Cherokee Nation. She was later awarded the highest honor a civilian can receive: The Medal of Freedom.
Ada E. Deer of the Menominee tribe served as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1993 to 1997.
Pauline Small: the first woman to be elected in the Crow Tribe to serve as vice-secretary of the tribal council in1966.
All women are sacred and special and so today we highly encourage you to be loving to all the women in your life, especially those who make a positive difference in it. Tomorrow is never promised to any of us, so seize the opportunities you can, especially the time your blessed with your mothers, sisters, daughters, wife or girlfriends, your granddaughters, aunts and especially your grandmothers... let them know they have made a positive difference and that you're grateful for all they've endured and if they've passed remember them in a loving way.
As always, we thank you ever-so-much for your interest, contributions and of coarse your continued support. Blessings to you all, may you go in a good medicine way and accumulate wonderful memories as you do!
