The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Membership in a certain clan related one to many people in very
close ways, though the biological connection might be so distant
as to be practically nonexistent. This facet of familial ordering
has been much obscured by the presence of white Christian
influence and its New Testament insistence that the term
“family” refers to mother, father, and children, and those others
who are directly related to mother and father. In this construct,
all persons who can point to common direct-line ancestors are in
some sense related, though the individual’s distance from that
ancestor will determine the “degree” of relationship to other
descendants of that ancestor.
Among many American Indians, family is a matter of clan
membership. If clan membership is determined by your mother,
and if your father has a number of wives, you are not related to
the children of his other wives unless they themselves happen to
be related to your mother. So half-siblings in the white way
might be unrelated in an Indian way. Or in some tribes, the
children of your mother’s sister might be considered siblings,
while those of your father’s brother would be the equivalent of
cousins. These distinctions should demonstrate that the concept
of family can mean something very different to an Indian than it
does to a non-Indian.
In gynecentric systems, a unified household is one in which
the relationships among women and their descendants and sisters
are ordered; a split household is one in which this is not the
case. A community, then, is an ordering of sister relationships
that determine who can depend on whom for what. Male
relationships are ordered in accordance with the maternal
principle; a male’s spiritual and economic placement and the
attendant responsibilities are determined by his membership in
the community of sisterhood. A new acquaintance in town might
be asked, “Who is your mother?” The answer identifies the
person and determines the ensuing relationship between the