Program 16: Lesson 14 - Kinship and Descent, pt.1

Faces of Culture - "Kinship and Descent, pt.1"

Narr: You are the child of your parents, who are the children of their parents, who are the children of their parents, and on, and on, stretching centuries beyond the memory of humankind.

Each of us is a part of a present that is intimately tied to the past. Each of us has a place in the line of descent that links us to previous generations.

Whether we trace back two generations or 20, go through the male line, female line, or both, our pattern of descent helps determine whom we recognize as our relatives, whom we include in our kinship group, people tied to us by blood, marriage and adoption.

In many societies, it is kinship groups that help organize the daily domestic activities that must be accomplished for survival.

While in other societies groups based on descent from a common ancestor serve the political, economic and religious functions that make the society work as a whole.

Yet in many societies throughout the world, kinship and descent are critical, dynamic parts of their cultures.

Such is the case with the Mendi who live in the Highlands of New Guinea, an area inhabited by their ancestors for almost 30,000 years.

They trace their descent so far past human memory that their descent groups called "clans" are based not on known individuals, but on mythical or "totemic" ancestors, often an animal or an element of the natural world.

These clans are gathering for a special "cassowary exchange."

They are but a few of the over 600 clans that serve as the basic political, economic and social units of the Mendi culture.

Each clan is composed of many "lineages," smaller descent groups headed by a known ancestor. Among the Mendi, descent is reckoned through the male line, a "patrilineal" system of descent.

Elsewhere in the New Guinea region, on the islands of Chambri Lake, live some 1,500 people whose society is divided into two descent groupings called "Moieties."

Here, everyone traces their descent from either the "Sun Moiety" which guards the bush, or the "Moon Moiety" which is the "Keeper of the Lake."

They play music to appease dangerous spirits and gods who are an integral part of one moiety or the other. Their daily lives are consumed with trying to maintain a balance between the people and the Spirits of the Moieties.

(People playing their music.)

Narr: These women live on the Trobriand Islands off the southern coast of New Guinea. Their suggestive dances display open sexuality in a culture which believes that a man serves no function in procreation except as the "Opener of the Way."

To the Trobriand Islanders a father is not perceived of as a blood relation to his child. And like 15% of the cultures in the world, descent is traced through the female, a "matrilineal" system of descent.

Here, the closest male relative of the mother, often her brother, serves for her children many of the functions a father does in our society.

The Trobriand Islanders, the Chambri Lake People, and the Mendi all live in Papua, New Guinea. Yet each of these cultures structure their patterns of descent differently. Still for each, descent groupings solve problems of succession, inheritance, and social order.

In settled communities throughout the world, for generation after generation, descent has been one means of perpetuating a culture, a people, and organizing a society.

In contrast, in our society, political, economic and religious institutions serve many of the functions that descent groups do in other cultures.

Mobility is of prime importance for us. The nuclear family allows the needed independence and freedom of movement that a large interdependent descent group cannot.

When we get together with large groups of relatives, it is usually only on special occasions. Most of our daily interactions are not with our relatives, for our culture values self-reliance, independence, and individuality.

For us, descent is mostly a fascination with the past.

In the largest genealogy library in the world, over 2,000 people a week come to trace their ancestry, and search for their roots from among over 70 million family histories.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints maintain the Library and continually expand their records. They hope to perform certain key ceremonies such as baptism and marriage for every individual who ever lived on earth, so that they will have a choice in the afterlife to live the way of the Mormon Church.

The records in the Library provide a starting point for tracing one's heritage. Other tools for learning about family histories include pedigree charts naturalization and immigration certificates, historical society records, family bibles, and old photographs.

Knowing about our father's and mother's ancestors helps us to trace our family's past and to begin to answer the question, "Who am I?"

For the anthropologist in the field, the need to understand kinship information is often more secular, immediate and essential.

Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon has spent years among the Yanomamo of Venezuela doing fieldwork on their political organization.

Because they are a tribal society, groups based on kinship and descent form the basis of their social and political organization.

In order to understand this culture, Chagnon needed to gather detailed kinship and descent information.

"This is her daughter, and raiders stole her daughter. That's why she's crying."

Narr: Yanomamo villages are organized around a number of patrilineages, groups who reckon descent from a known male ancestor.

Because each individual belongs to one of these and is allied to others, when conflicts arise, they inevitably involve entire descent groups.

This fight erupted during Chagnon's first week in the field between members of the village where he was staying and visitors from another village. Chagnon was able to spontaneously film much of the fight.

Yet, Chagnon, himself, wasn't able to understand the complexities involved until he had gathered enough information to interpret the fight in terms of village lineages and alliances between them. His data revealed that the fight involved members of three lineages who lived in two villages.

The visitors who stayed in one part of the host village came from a village that was made up of members of two Lineages, A and B. Members of the host village belonged to Lineages B or C. All Lineages are interrelated through various marriage ties.

Some years ago members of Lineage B of the host village left to join a different village because of simmering conflicts. But one faction in the host village had recently asked them to return.

This woman, Sinabimi, is a member of the host village and a part of Lineage B. She was allegedly beaten by Mohesiwa, one of the visitors and a member of Lineage A after an argument over food protocol.

The infuriated brother of Sinabimi takes his club and hits the attacker, Mohesiwa. Mohesiwa's brother comes to defend him. Their mother comforts him. At this point the fighting is between kinship groups of Lineages A and B. There was a standoff.

The fight is resumed and further escalated when Sinabimi's husband and brother who are members of the third Lineage, C, grab axes.

The fight continues now with members of Lineage A fighting members of Lineage C. The brother of Sinabimi's husband attacks Mohesiwa, but Mohesiwa's kinsmen have siezed the axe handle. Mohesiwa's younger brother comes to his aid again, but this time he discards his machete and also takes up an axe. But he is hit and collapses.

Members of Lineage B are torn between the descent group they were born into and the one they are allied to by marriage.

The leader of Lineage B stays away from the fighting to avoid taking sides.

Because of their prestige, older members of Lineage A, are able to step between the warring factions.

These men are the kinsmen of Mohesiwa.

By Yanomamo kinship terminology, he regards them as "fathers" and their positions are enough to defuse the conflict.

For the moment the fight is settled, but the tension remains.

This fight was not just an irrational outburst of shouting, axes, machetes, and insults as it might appear, it was a complex interaction between individuals, village lineages and kinship obligations.

In a tribal society like the Yanomamo, which has no other formal means of adjudication or political organization, descent groups are all important, and village leaders who exercise some authority do so, because of their position in their own descent group.

Descent groups are at the core of both social harmony and conflict.

Like the Yanomamo, the Mendi of New Guinea, at one time resolved old animosities and disputes by fighting between descent groups, but, the government has now outlawed such hostilities.

So, the Mendi had to find a substitution for interclan warfare and its related functions, the establishment of rank and prestige, a means of building or strengthening alliances, settling economic scores.

For the Mendi, the "cassowary contest" now provides a replacement for interclan warfare. The cassowary contest can take years to properly plan.

During the event each clan will take turns going into near bankruptcy to buy expensive cassowaries, which will be offered to members of other clans.

The host clan boastfully tallies their offering. Each clan member will kill and display his cassowary. The birds will be ceremonially cooked and eaten.

In a few days the visiting clan will be the host clan. It will be their chance to reciprocate and demonstrate their prestige by the extent of their giving. As long as each clan has displayed the maximum generosity, both clans win. Honor and a new peace is achieved.

What appears to be a colorful social ceremony, also serves as a political conference resulting in financial disarmament between clans.

While the cassowary contest is one of the most memorable clan competitions in a Mendi's life, the purchasing or terminating of an "anti-ghost cult" provides a major opportunity for clans to cooperate.

Malicious ghosts permeate the Mendi world. So fearful are they of upsetting a jealous ghost that once someone is buried, they never mention his name again.

The ghosts are a threat to all, so different clans must work together in an anti-ghost campaign. The cult will entice the ghosts to a spirit house where they can be contained and appeased with ritual pig sacrifices.

In many cultures a cult is based on a clan ancestor to emphasize shared descent. But among the Mendi a cult must be purchased from another clan to the south of them. This can strengthen interclan cooperation at a spiritual and economic level.

For as long as they can remember, this southern clan has been the only one who knows the secrets of the cults. But before they can buy a new cult, they must ceremonially dismantle the old cult, which has served to protect them against the ghosts for seven years.

It is now waning in strength, so the clans must gather in a carefully coordinated ceremony.

The three leaders or domos of the southern clan will use their secret magic to help their northern neighbors purge the old cult.

It will take them three days and nights, a time when interclan solidarity will be strengthened through ritual. The ceremony also provides opportunities for other bonds between clans to be cemented.

Every morning contingents of young warriors in formal costume enter from different assembly areas to parade. It is a chance for the men of visiting clans to show off and look over the local women.

Strong incest taboos prohibit Mendi men from meeting many eligible women under normal circumstances. An interclan gathering provides many new possibilities.

One of the important functions of descent groups in most cultures is the regulation of marriage. For the Mendi marriages between lineages forge valuable alliances.

In the evenings, the Mendi women will sing bold invitations. The men will spend the night visiting female prospects and introducing themselves.

This kind of informal drama will be interspersed with the cult activities prescribed by the domos of the southern clan.

First the opossum of the "Opossum Cult" they have purchased must be killed and stripped of its flesh.

Then the male clan members will rush the spirit house, and use the jaws of the thousands of pigs they have sacrificed to make symbolic corpses.

The next day the climactic funeral of these corpses culminates the clan's special gathering.

The girls with their courting songs. Five hundred men marching, then rushing to the spirit house. And in a final frenzy, it is over.

In societies like the Mendi's, religious, political, economic and social activities are interwoven and inseparable from descent groups, which are the only recognized organizing structures of the culture.

The Mendi are horticulturists. On a daily practical level, these ties can organize the land tenure, division of work, and other subsistence needs.

Linking generation with generation through the male line, descent groups allow Mendi culture to continue as it has for thousands of years.

For the horticulturists of the Trobriand Islands the ways of the people are handed down not so much from father to son, as from mother's brother to son.

(Men singing.)

Narr: Their descent groups are based on matrilineal descent, so it is the men in the mother's family who fulfill the functions we associate with a "father" in our culture.

Although the Trobrianders have a matrilineal society, the men hold the positions of political leadership. These positions, however, are handed down through the mother's bloodline.

(Children's voices.)

Narr: In this ranked society, a boy receives his status from his mother's descent group, called a dala.

Most Trobrianders are not intimately familiar with their ancestors, but a boy being trained for dala leadership must be able to recite his genealogy to prove his worthiness and show his closeness to his prestigious ancestors.

(Boy chanting.)

Narr: Non-hereditary status in this horticulturist society is determined by one's generosity in yam giving. This, too, is influenced by the matrilineal organization of the culture.

A man tends his garden to give his yams to his sister and her husband, not to his own wife. In turn, a woman's husband who belongs to a different dala is obliged to support his sister's family.

Because the Trobrianders do not recognize a child's biological father to be a blood relation, he is often treated as a stepfather would be in our culture.

A husband has little authority in his wife's family; he is far more important in his sister's family. The uncle nephew relationship is at the heart of the culture's social structure.

(Shell trumpets.)

Narr: During the annual "yam festival" several matrilineages gather to celebrate the harvest and distribute their bounty.

Their festival dances and songs portray their relaxed attitude about sex, an attitude which often occurs in cultures which do not associate sex with procreation.

When missionaries came to christianize the Trobrianders, they had difficulties with such thinking.

Conversely, the Trobrianders had problems understanding a "Father in Heaven" or "Christ who was his Son." The concept of a "father and son" was foreign to their way of thinking. So today, the matrilineal Trobrianders still perform their dances.

For the Trobrianders, the Yanomamo, and the Mendi, descent provides groups that promote political and social order and pass on a culture from generation to generation.

Among the Yanomamo, the lineage your father belongs to can determine your political and family alliances and obligations.

(Ritual dancing.)

Narr: For the Mendi, the political, economic and religious ceremonies of the culture are all intertwined with clans which provide the culture's basic social structure.

In our own individualistic culture, descent plays a relatively unimportant role. Yet, we are people who by and large, come from countries where descent is still often important.

From the nations of Europe and Russia to the Empires of the Far East, to the Chiefdoms of Africa, the ruling power was passed on through ties of blood and marriage.

(Music and crowd cheering.)

Narr: Throughout the world and throughout history, groups based on descent have played vital roles.

Like looking at others and then ourselves in the mirror, appreciating the effect of descent in other societies can help us see ourselves and our own culture in new ways.