Spotlight on Students: Tlingit in Review

The following is a post written by one of my students in Anth 101: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.  This was an offshoot of another paper that was required of students, and this piece was so well written that it warranted publishing.  Please enjoy this great review on the Tlingit.

Veronica Chapman
Anth 101: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

            Human cultures evolve in their own and different ways.  Some are isolated by continental and geological boundaries; some are catapulted forward by science and technology.  Culture itself is an exclusively human phenomenon, and since there are only two sexes, male and female, the discussion of any culture ultimately becomes a discussion about genders and their subsequent roles.  Unlike sex, which is a biological concept, gender is a social construct specifying the socially and culturally prescribed roles that men and women are to follow (Gender and Society).  Gerda Lerner described gender in The Creation of Patriarchy as the “costume, a mask, a straitjacket in which men and women dance their unequal dance”.  Though many Western cultures have made some progress in the realm of sexual equality, there still seems to be, even in the most progressive of cultures, a battle between the sexes.

            Having come of age in America in the latter half of the twentieth century, I am familiar with the feminist movement.  In one of the most industrialized and technologically advanced countries in the world, the ancient and archaic notion that women somehow are inferior to men prevails into the twenty-first century.  Male driven politics in this country still has a strong-hold on the reproductive rights of females in the form of abortion laws and laws governing birth control products.  Women still are pressured by media and society to conform to a certain ideal the one can only be a complete woman if one marries and procreates. 

            However oppressive things may seem in this country, it is interesting indeed that immigrants from other cultures find the freedoms and independence that American women enjoy “with at least suspicion and at most contempt” (J. LaVelle Ingram, Ph.D. “ Honorary Men”).  The fear that American women instill in others from even more oppressive societies has inspired some to actually provide written instructions on how people should try to accept American women in their own society.  In “Honorary Men”: The Role of Women in America, the content is devoted to explaining to immigrants of the U.S. that American women, despite the way they dress and participate in the workforce, are “within the norms of social correctness (and beauty) that all women follow in their own cultures”.  Apparently, though we lack actual equality with our male counterparts, the freedoms we do enjoy are so offensive to those who seek to share our country, that some feel the need to apologize for us.

            Culture that understands and embraces the contributions of the female in its society, beyond the production of children, is not completely unique, though it does seem harder to find.  Even where it did and still does endure, I have found that the authors of some resources seem reluctant to report or acknowledge its existence.  Sergei Kan of Dartmouth College gives an explanation for this trend in his essay Clan Mothers and Godmothers:  Tlingit Women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940.  He states, “One major reason is that there were many more men than women among the missionaries and that the written record they left behind sheds more light on the experience of native men than on that of native women”.  The contrast between the modern American society that feels the need to apologize to new immigrants for the behavior of their own women, and an ancient North American culture that embraced the female as an important and substantial member of their society is a dichotomy worth exploring. 

            The Tlingit is such a culture, and they flourished in southeast Alaska and northern British Columbia.  Before European contact the people of this area lived in beachfront villages in large matriclan-based wooden houses.  A typical summer fishing season could provide enough salmon and other seafood to be preserved for year-round use.  Additional foods from land and sea mammals and from plants allowed for a freedom from concern for subsistence needs.  The forests also provided cedar and spruce that were used for housing, basket, tools, and boats (Ackerman and Klein pg28).

            The area in which the Tlingit existed, the islands and mainland west of the Cascades and Coast Mountains, are among the richest in the world (Ackerman and Klein pg28).  The remoteness and environment helped isolate them, which sheltered them from outside influences, until 1741 when the ships of Vitus Bering explored the coast of Alaska for Russia.  Even today the area remains sparsely populated (Ackerman and Klein pg29).  For centuries the Tlingit, Hiada, and Tsimshian cultures evolved free from any foreign or religious influences.

            Left alone and blessed with a prosperity that not many indigenous people enjoyed, the Tlingit culture is multifaceted and complex, a characteristic of Northwest Pacific Coast peoples with access to easily exploited rich resources.  In Tlingit culture a heavy emphasis is placed upon family and kinship and on a rich tradition of oratory.  Wealth and economic power are important indicators of status, but so is generosity and proper behavior, which are all signs of “good breeding” and ties to aristocracy.  Art and spirituality are incorporated in nearly all areas of Tlingit culture, with even everyday objects such as spoons and storage boxes decorated and imbued with spiritual power and historical associations (New World Encyclopedia).

            According to the website Canada’s First Peoples, the assigned roles of men and women are as follows: men were responsible for all the hunting and fishing, building (longhouses), carving (canoes, totem poles); women stayed near the home, doing work on land, were responsible for all domestic chores, such as cooking, cleaning, and child rearing.  Women also dug for clams and shellfish and collected berries from nearby forests.  The women also pounded and softened cedar bark for weaving and making clothes.  Marriages were always between people from different clans.  Clans were individuals identified with their matrilineal clan (naa), a large group of people related by shared genealogy, history, and possessory rights.  The Tlingit clan functions as the main property owner in the culture, thus almost all formal property amongst the Tlingit belongs to clans, not to individuals (New World Encyclopedia).  When a man decided to marry a woman, he paid her father an agreed amount before the wedding.  After the birth of the couple’s first child (born into the mother’s clan), the wife’s clan paid her husband an amount equal to the initial wedding payment.  After the payment, the marriage was annulled and the woman could chose to stay with her husband or leave him.

            In his essay, “Clan Mothers and Godmothers:  Tlingit women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940”, Sergei Dan states:  “These gender roles were ordered by a rather rigid division of labor, with the men bringing home fish and game and the women turning them into food, clothing, and other household items.  In addition, women collected berries and edible plants as well as crustaceans, all of which were important parts of the diet but somewhat lower in status than meat and fish.  The process of the latter made the woman the essential contributor to Tlingit survival”.  The whole Tlingit economy of subsistence and luxury wealth rests ultimately on the stores of dried salmon prepared by the women.  The cutting and smoking of fish, in this wet climate, are tasks requiring far more skill and experience than catching the fish (De Laguna 1983:81).

            The New World Encyclopedia also states:  “Because of the heavy emphasis on clan and matrilineality the father played a relatively minor role in the lives of his children.  Instead, the father’s primary role was filled by the mother’s brother, the children’s maternal uncle, who was of the same clan as the children.  This man would be the caretaker and teacher of the children, as well as the disciplinarian.  The father had a more peripheral relationship with the children, and as such many Tlingit children have very pleasant memories of their fathers as generous and playful while they maintain a distinct fear and awe of their maternal uncles who exposed them to hard training and discipline”.

            In much of the literature on traditional culture and in the words of contemporary elders, the role of mother in the past seems strikingly different from the role of mother in Euro-American culture today.  Mother as nurturer is not the strong theme.  Grandmother often appears in that role.  Care of young children was often in the hands of grandmother, who received help from others in the family.  De Laguna (1957:507), quoting informants, writes, “The grandchild loved the grandmother more than their own mother and father, because their grandmother is always there’ commented a second woman.  ‘We love our grandchildren better than our own children,’ said a third”.  In other words, the day-to-day child care that has become defined as the primary responsibility of mother in Euro-American culture was not an all-encompassing role in traditional culture but one shared by many, especially grandmothers and grandfather (Ackerman and Klein pg42).

            Second, successful mothers who are able to increase their wealth and able to sponsor potlatches or aid with potlatches held by kin groups could effectively raise the status of all individuals within that group.  In other words, a highly successful woman could raise her own status and those of all clan mates, including her children.  Since the gathering of wealth was so clearly an important woman’s role, women were often important organizers of a potlatch even if a man might sponsor the event.  The good mother or good sister or even good wife, was a strong, successful individual who could honor herself and her kin (Ackerman and Klein pg44).

            Another unexpected surprise for the European traders and missionaries was, as reported by Jones (1914:51), “no person is more stubborn than the average Tlingit women”, while Krause (1956:136) noted “frequently the women carry on the trading and they are even more inclined to be stubborn than the men”.  Many likewise were surprised that often women were given their husbands’ money to handle for them.  Jones (1914:15) put it most bluntly:  “The husband’s earning are wholly turned over to his wife.  She is, therefore, the banker of the household.  If he desires to make a purchase he must appeal to her and get her consent”.  In a more poetic turn of phrase, James H. Condit (1926:257) complained that a particularly bothersome Tlingit woman “evidently believed that the hand that pulls the purse string rules the world as well as the hand that rocks the cradle”.  Apparently their financial sensibilities are much the same today.  Modern informants contend this tradition was a practical response to the fact that “men are foolish with money” and a good women’s role includes the protection of her family’s wealth (Ackerman and Klein pg35).

            So for centuries, through the separate but equally important roles of both the men and women of the Tlingit, they all enjoyed a level of wealth and luxury and a kind of equality that few societies achieve.  Eventually, though, outside influences did intrude.  Foreign traders, explorers, and missionaries found their way to the Pacific North West and all its many treasures and made their presences known.  With the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867 full-scale efforts to change the culture reached throughout the Tlingit communities (Ackerman and Klein pg32).

             In modern society the territory of the Tlingit is complicated by the fact that they are spread across the border between the United States and Canada.  The Tlingit people envision the land from around Yakutat south through the Alaskan Panhandle and including the lakes in the Canadian interior as being the Lingit Aani, the Land of the Tlingit (New World Encyclopedia).

            So now they live as most Americans, in single family homes with their nuclear families.  The shamans are gone, but the stories and the rituals remain.  They now have to live with all the same inequalities that the rest of us do in this modern and advanced society.  They have had to integrate themselves into a cultural quagmire of segregation, Christian ideologies, prejudices, and sexual stereotypes that come from centuries of female oppression.

            Though I am sure the Tlingit had their inner conflicts and struggles, just like any other people, the system that they developed could be a lesson to us modern Americans.  The structure of their clans and the way they raised their children prepared all, male and female, for the roles they would eventually fill, and both sexes were important for the survival of all.

            In America, if you ask any parent, “What do you want for your children?”  The answer is overwhelmingly, “I want them to be happy”.  The problem with this is that it leaves it to the child to figure out what that means.  To be happy is a very esoteric ideal, hard for most adults to decipher.  Whether our children, boys or girls, will be happy or not I think depends on how we prepare them to be contributing members of this society or culture.  The role that an individual takes on as an adult these days is up to the individual itself.  This, I think, makes it all the more important for us to have a direction or purpose, so as to not wander aimlessly.  To be a productive member of society, sometimes is no more than to not be a burden to that society.  Whether we choose to do work based on gender stereotypes or we choose to go against the norm, should not make our roles any less or more important.  It is said that we must learn from the past so as not to repeat it.  In the case of the Tlingit, their original culture, and their balance between the sexes, maybe it would be worth repeating.

                                                                   Works Cited

Ackerman, Lillian, and Laura F. Klein.  Women and Power in Native North America. Norman:

            University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Ingram, J. LaVelle. Honorary Men:  The Role of Women in America

            <http://www.lifeintheusa.com/people/women2.htm

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy, Oxford University Press, 1986.

Kan, Sergei.  Clans Mothers and Godmother’s: Tlingit Women and Russian Orthodox 

            Christianity, 1840-1940.  American Society for Ethnohistory, vol.43, no,4, Native

             American Women’s Responses to Christianity, (Autumn, 1996)

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Tlingit.aspx

http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_groups/fp_nwc6.html

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tlingit

http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/gender.html