Clan System Anishinaabe People from Canada - Essay Example

Clan system Anishinaabe people (Canada) Just like majority of the Algonquian speaking people in the North America, the Anishinaabe people base their kinship systems on totems or patrilineal clans. I was surprised to learn that this meant that if a child was born, he was born in the clan of its father. Children that were born with English or French fathers were regarded as outsiders to the clan and the Anishinaabe community unless they were adopted by an Anishinaabe father. They were at times refereed to as ‘white’ due to their fathers regardless of their mothers being from the Anishinaabe community as the had no representative position in the Anishinaabe community. The people could shelter these women and their children but they did not have similar positions with children born with Anishinaabe fathers in the society. Doodem which is their word for clan was borrowed from the English word totem. The clans which are mostly based on animals are very instrumental in conventional occupations, marriages and inter tribal relations. Even in modern day, the clan remains a very crucial part of the Anishinaabe identity (Basil 9). I came to understand that Anishinaabe’s understanding of kinship was very complex and included not only the nuclear family but also the extended family as well. It is regarded as a merging kinship system that is modified. As with any bifurcate merging kinship system, the children basically share similar kinship term with their parallel cousins since they are all part of the same clan. The bespoke system permits younger siblings to share similar kinship terms with cross cousins who are younger. The complexity vanishes further from the speaker’s instantaneous generation but some of the complexity is retained with women relatives. This kinship system reflects the philosophy of the Anishinaabe people of balance and interconnectedness among all the living generations as well as of all other generations from the past and of the future. Additionally to the Anishinaabe totem, clans belonging to other tribes are regarded as being related to the clans of Anishinaabe if they share the same designation. Consequently for instance, blending of an Anishinaabe bear clan and a Cherokee bear clan person would be regarded as illegal and even incestuous by most of the conventional community groups. The Anishinaabe was considered as a merging modified bifurcate system since the people would not only speak about mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother, grandfather but would as well speak of younger sibling, elder brother, parallel aunt, cross uncle, cross cousin of opposite gender, female sibling of opposite and same gender, male sibling of same gender just to mention but a few. Sibling would have similar term with their parallel cousins just like any bifurcate kinship system since they were from the same totem. However, with this modified system, younger siblings are allowed to share the same system of kinship with younger cross cousins. I had very informative and enjoyable experience learning about the clan system of the Anishinaabe people. I came to understand that the Anishinaabe people were divided in to numbers of clans or odoodeman that were normally named for animal clans. According to the oral traditions of the Anishinaabe people, when these people were living along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the huge midis beings emerged out of the sea and taught the ‘mide way of life’ to the people of Waabanakiing, six or seven big beings that stayed behind to teach came up with the doodems for the people who lived in the east. I came to teach about the five original clans of the Anishinaabe people which are: Moozwaanowe (tiny moose tail) Nooke (bear). Aan’aawenh (pinail duck). Baswenaazhi (crane). Wawaazisii (bullhead). Traditionally, each of these bands had a self governing council that consisted of clans or community leaders with the band most of the time being identified by the principle of totems. I was amazed to discover that even in meeting other people; their conventional greeting amongst themselves was asking the other what their totem was so that they can establish the social conduct among the meeting parties as enemies, friends or family (Basil 3). Another thing that I found interesting in this clan system was their naming system. The Naming Ceremony, which kept in mind the sacrifices of novel Man in naming everything, needed that a medicine individual be requested by the mother and the father to look for a name for their child. The searching can be done through dreaming or prayer, meditation or fasting and the spirits would provide a name (Gross 450). At a meeting the medicine individual would burn tobacco as an offering and pronounce the name to every direction of the four sides and all the people who were there would repeat the name when the religious person calls it out. The spirit world would then accept and identify the face of the kid as a thing that is living for the first time. The ancestors and the spirit world then guard the child and organize a place for her or him when their life ends. At this ceremony of naming, the parents request for four women and four men to act as the sponsors of the child. These sponsors vow in the public to guide and support this child. The ceremony of naming is thought to have been started by the inventive Man. Can such a governance system be restored, developed and survive in the modern day? I personally do not think that such a governance system can be restored, developed or survived in present day. Today, there has been emergence of gender equality rules and non discriminatory rules. The Anishinaabe clan system seemed to have a lot of discriminations that can not be tolerated today. Everyone has a right in the society and the fact that this clan system viewed children that were born outside the Anishinaabe society as outcasts make the system unfit for modern day life (Denial 13). In modern day life, people have also disregarded the various ceremonies and rituals that were being performed earlier. Even if some of these ceremonies are still performed today, they are not performed exactly the way they were being done earlier. They are carried out with some sort of modernity. This makes the Anishinaabe clan system totally unfit for modern day life. How did you feel participating in such a vigorous simulation of clan governance? I had a very good and informative experience carrying out this vigorous simulation of clan governance. The exercise gave me a very good opportunity to learn about the cultures of the early kinship systems and compare them with modern day governance systems. This expanded my knowledge a great deal and also my creative writing skills and governance. Works cited Basil, Johnson. The Manitou’s, the Spiritual World of the Ojibway: Harper Collins Publishing. 1983. Print. Basil, Johnson. Ojibway Heritage. Harper Collins Publishing. 1990. Print. Denial, Catherine. Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. 2013. Print. Gross, Lawrence. “The comic vision of Anishinaabe culture and religion”. American Indian Quarterly, Vol 26, (2002), 436-459. Print. Read More