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95-406: The Tahltan cultural practices and lifeways varied widely as they were often widely separated and would have to endure varying conditions depending on their locality. In Tahltan culture it was believed that some of their ancestors had knowledge that others did not from times before a great flood. Some of these ancestors used that knowledge for the good of the people, while others used it for evil and to

190-517: A coalbed methane mining project planned by Royal Dutch Shell . The Sacred Headwaters (Klappan Valley) is home to the headwaters of the Nass , Skeena and Stikine Rivers . Not only do these rivers provide a home to important salmon stocks, Tahltan oral history holds that these headwaters are the place where the earth was first created and where Talhtan culture began. According to the Klabona Keepers,

285-409: A patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian . The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the general opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite. According to Peoples and Bailey,

380-469: A "woman-centered" society surrounding Mother Goddess worship during prehistory (in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe ) and in ancient civilizations by using the term matristic rather than matriarchal. Marija Gimbutas states that she uses "the term matristic simply to avoid the term matriarchy with the understanding that it incorporates matriliny." Matrilineality , in which descent is traced through

475-454: A constitution by which women participated in the League's political decision-making, including deciding whether to proceed to war, through what may have been a matriarchy or gyneocracy. According to Doug George-Kanentiio, in this society, mothers exercise central moral and political roles. The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown; the League was formed in approximately 1000–1450, but

570-433: A family could be traced only through the female line. This was a materialist interpretation of Bachofen's Mutterrecht . Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased material wealth, which was claimed by men. Engels said that men wanted to control women to use as laborers and to pass on wealth to their children, requiring monogamy; as patriarchy rose, women's status declined until they became mere objects in

665-533: A freak ... with her ... savage, violent streak." The Hopi (in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona ), according to Alice Schlegel , had as its "gender ideology ... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality." According to LeBow (based on Schlegel's work), in the Hopi, "gender roles ... are egalitarian .... [and] [n]either sex

760-439: A king is sufficient to constitute female government, given the amount of participation of other men in most such governments. One view is that it is sufficient. "By the end of [Queen] Elizabeth's reign, gynecocracy was a fait accompli ", according to historian Paula Louise Scalingi. Gynecocracy is defined by Scalingi as "government by women", similar to dictionary definitions (one dictionary adding 'women's social supremacy' to

855-418: A little in their additional meanings, so that gynecocracy also means 'women's social supremacy', gynaecocracy also means 'government by one woman', 'female dominance', and, derogatorily, 'petticoat government', and gynocracy also means 'women as the ruling class'. Gyneocracy is rarely used in modern times. None of these definitions are limited to mothers. Some question whether a queen ruling without

950-524: A position to control and dispense power... not unlike the nagging wife or the domineering mother." A matrilocal society defines a society in which a couple resides close to the bride's family rather than the bridegroom's family. Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, at least no matriarchal society that have completely excluded the opposite gender from roles of authority. According to J. M. Adovasio , Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no matriarchy with

1045-404: A stage of primal matriarchy"] persuasive." Kurt Derungs is a recent non-academic author advocating an "anthropology of landscape" based on allegedly matriarchal traces in toponymy and folklore. Friedrich Engels , in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that

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1140-622: A transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religion in very early historical times. From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in Neolithic Europe with matriarchal traits, which had been replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Bronze Age . However, other anthropologists warned that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies

1235-559: A wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware. After Bachofen's three-volume Myth, Religion, and Mother Right , classicists such as Harrison, Arthur Evans , Walter Burkert , and James Mellaart looked at the evidence of matriarchal religion in pre-Hellenic societies. The concept was further investigated by Lewis Morgan. According to Uwe Wesel, Bachofen's myth interpretations have proved to be untenable. According to historian Susan Mann , as of 2000, "few scholars these days find ... [a "notion of

1330-532: Is "female dominance". Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology , according to the OED , matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails" or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women" without reference to laws that require women to dominate. In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women". According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that

1425-629: Is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are held by women . In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority , social privilege , and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal , matrilocal , and matrifocal societies. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. Many societies have had matriarchal elements, but unlike

1520-480: Is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America , located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern (or Apachean ). Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 4,022,000 square kilometres (1,553,000 sq mi). Chipewyan is spoken over the largest area of any North American native language, while Navajo

1615-527: Is a matriarchy among Black families in the United States, because a quarter of them were headed by single women; thus, families composing a substantial minority of a substantial minority could be enough for the latter to constitute a matriarchy within a larger non-matriarchal society with non-matriarchal political dynamics. Etymologically, it is from Latin māter (genitive mātris ), "mother" and Greek ἄρχειν arkhein , "to rule". The notion of matriarchy

1710-557: Is also debated, since it may fall in either the Pacific Coast group – if that exists – or into the Northern group. The records of Nicola are so poor – Krauss describes them as "too few and too wretched" (Krauss 2005) – that it is difficult to make any reliable conclusions about it. Nicola may be intermediate between Kwalhioqua–Tlatskanai and Chilcotin . Similarly to Nicola, there is very limited documentation on Tsetsaut . Consequently, it

1805-516: Is an outline of the classification according to Keren Rice , based on those published in Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999). It represents what is generously called the "Rice–Goddard–Mithun" classification (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:73), although it is almost entirely due to Keren Rice. Branches 1–7 are the Northern Athabaskan (areal) grouping. Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai (#7) was normally placed inside

1900-416: Is debatably part of the Pacific Coast subgroup, but has marginally more in common with the Northern Athabaskan languages than it does with the Pacific Coast languages (Leer 2005). It thus forms a notional sort of bridge between the Northern Athabaskan languages and the Pacific Coast languages, along with Nicola (Krauss 1979/2004). Using computational phylogenetic methods, Sicoli & Holton (2014) proposed

1995-542: Is derived from the noun matriology that comes from Latin word māter (mother) and Greek word λογος ( logos , teaching about). The term matriology was used in theology and history of religion as a designation for the study of particular motherly aspects of various female deities. The term was subsequently borrowed by other social sciences and humanities and its meaning was widened in order to describe and define particular female-dominated and female-centered aspects of cultural and social life. The male alternative for matriology

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2090-537: Is difficult to place it in the family with much certainty. Athabaskanists have concluded that it is a Northern Athabaskan language consistent with its geographical occurrence, and that it might have some relation to its distant neighbor Tahltan. Tsetsaut, however, shares its primary hydronymic suffix ("river, stream") with Sekani, Beaver, and Tsuut'ina – PA *-ɢah – rather than with that of Tahltan, Tagish, Kaska, and North and South Tutchone – PA *-tuʼ (Kari 1996; Kari, Fall, & Pete 2003:39). The ambiguity surrounding Tsetsaut

2185-555: Is distantly related to the Athabaskan–Eyak group to form the Na-Dene family , also known as Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit (AET). With Jeff Leer 's 2010 advances, the reconstructions of Na-Dene (or Athabascan–Eyak–Tlingit) consonants, this latter grouping is considered by Alaskan linguists to be a well-demonstrated family. Because both Tlingit and Eyak are fairly remote from the Athabaskan languages in terms of their sound systems, comparison

2280-471: Is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'" Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism. With respect to a prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age , according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy ... means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power." According to Adler, in

2375-442: Is hopeless. Love and Shanklin wrote: When we hear the word "matriarchy", we are conditioned to a number of responses: that matriarchy refers to the past and that matriarchies have never existed; that matriarchy is a hopeless fantasy of female domination, of mothers dominating children, of women being cruel to men. Conditioning us negatively to matriarchy is, of course, in the interests of patriarchs. We are made to feel that patriarchy

2470-400: Is inferior." LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in ... political decision-making." According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer live as they are described here" and "the attitude of female superiority is fading". Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilineal" and "the household ... was matrilocal". Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that

2565-445: Is natural; we are less likely to question it, and less likely to direct our energies to ending it. The Matriarchal Studies school led by Göttner-Abendroth calls for an even more inclusive redefinition of the term: Göttner-Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", effectively defining matriarchy as non-patriarchy. She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by

2660-481: Is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and she interprets utopian matriarchy as an invented inversion of antifeminism . From the 1970s, ideas of matriarchy were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism such as Riane Eisler , Elizabeth Gould Davis , and Merlin Stone , and expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft , by

2755-557: Is not emphasized in third-wave feminism . J.F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society. According to Rohrlich, "many scholars are convinced that Crete was a matriarchy, ruled by a queen-priestess" and the "Cretan civilization" was "matriarchal" before "1500 BC," when it was overrun and colonized by the patriarchy. Athabaskan language Athabaskan ( / ˌ æ θ ə ˈ b æ s k ən / ATH -ə- BASK -ən ; also spelled Athabascan , Athapaskan or Athapascan , and also known as Dene )

2850-400: Is patriology, with patriarchy being the male alternative to matriarchy . In their works, Johann Jakob Bachofen and Lewis Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother-right , female rule , gyneocracy , and female authority . All these terms meant the same: the rule by females (mother or wife). Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the "mother-right" inside households, it was

2945-436: Is sometimes used, and, while more accurate, still does not reflect the full complexity of their social organization. In fact, it is not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions. They have aspects of a matriarchal culture: women are often the head of the house, inheritance is through the female line, and women make business decisions. However, unlike in a true matriarchy, political power tends to be in

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3040-546: Is spoken by the largest number of people of any native language north of Mexico. The word Athabaskan is an anglicized version of a Cree language name for Lake Athabasca ( Moose Cree : Āðapāskāw '[where] there are reeds one after another') in Canada . Cree is one of the Algonquian languages and therefore not itself an Athabaskan language. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of

3135-435: Is the 'dominant or exclusive focus on women', is opposed to androcentrism , and "invert[s] ... the privilege of the ... [male/female] binary ...[,] [some feminists] arguing for 'the superiority of values embodied in traditionally female experience'". Some people who sought evidence for the existence of a matriarchy often mixed matriarchy with anthropological terms and concepts describing specific arrangements in

3230-498: Is usually done between them and the reconstructed Proto-Athabaskan language. This resembles both Tlingit and Eyak much more than most of the daughter languages in the Athabaskan family. Although Ethnologue still gives the Athabaskan family as a relative of Haida in their definition of the Na-Dene family, linguists who work actively on Athabaskan languages discount this position. The Alaska Native Language Center , for example, takes

3325-498: Is why it is placed in its own subgroup in the Rice–Goddard–Mithun classification. For detailed lists including languages, dialects, and subdialects, see the respective articles on the three major groups: Northern Athabaskan , Pacific Coast Athabaskan , Southern Athabaskan . For the remainder of this article, the conventional three-way geographic grouping will be followed except as noted. The Northern Athabaskan languages are

3420-580: The Bulkley Valley against a project planned near Telkwa, British Columbia . In a unanimous 2003 resolution, the Union of B.C. Municipalities asked for a moratorium on coal-bed methane mining in the province. Since 2005, the Klabona Keepers, a group of Tahltan elders, have watched the road leading through Tahltan territory towards the Sacred headwaters (Klappan Valley) in opposition to development there, specifically

3515-505: The Goddess movement , and in feminist Wicca . "A Golden Age of matriarchy" was prominently presented by Charlene Spretnak and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler, but, at least for the Neolithic Age, it has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in works such as The Inevitability of Patriarchy , Why Men Rule , Goddess Unmasked , and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory . The idea

3610-575: The Tahltan Nation , which comprises the membership and governments of the Tahltan First Nation and Iskut First Nation . Ten thousand years ago, the Tahltan people used obsidian from Mount Edziza to make tools and weapons for trading material. This is the main source of obsidian found in northwestern British Columbia. Coal-bed methane extraction had already been the subject of protests in

3705-518: The Tanana Chiefs Conference and Alaska Native Language Center prefer the spelling Athabascan . Ethnologue uses Athapaskan in naming the language family and individual languages. Although the term Athabaskan is prevalent in linguistics and anthropology, there is an increasing trend among scholars to use the terms Dené and Dené languages , which is how many of their native speakers identify it. They are applying these terms to

3800-551: The Yukon and Northwest Territories , as well as in the provinces of British Columbia , Alberta , Saskatchewan and Manitoba . Five Athabaskan languages are official languages in the Northwest Territories, including Chipewyan ( Dënesųłıné ), Dogrib or Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì , Gwich'in (Kutchin, Loucheux), and the Northern and Southern variants of Slavey . The seven or more Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages are spoken in

3895-505: The patriarchal , a complete exclusion of men in authority have not been recorded in history. According to the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women." A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey,

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3990-621: The 1861 book by Bachofen, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World . Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison , several generations of scholars, usually arguing from known myths or oral traditions and examination of Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies might have been matriarchal, or even that there existed

4085-606: The B.C. government announced that Shell would be withdrawing its plans to explore and drill for coalbed methane gas in the Tahltan Territory. According to the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition , Shell has launched a lawsuit against Talhtan elders for loss of revenue. The Klabona Keepers have filed a counter-suit for failure to consult. Employment opportunities have come from natural resources development in recent years. Because of various concerns over

4180-515: The Chinese. According to Seekins, "in [the year] 40, Trung Trac was proclaimed queen, and a capital was built for her" and modern Vietnam considers the Trung sisters to be heroines. According to Karen G. Turner, in the third century A.D., Lady Triệu "seem[ed] ... to personify the matriarchal culture that mitigated Confucianized patriarchal norms .... [although] she is also painted as something of

4275-461: The Hopi believed in "life as the highest good ... [with] the female principle ... activated in women and in Mother Earth ;... as its source" and that the Hopi had no need for an army as they did not have rivalries with neighbors. Women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems (in contrast to male predominance within

4370-500: The Iroquois were absolutely dependent upon the crops they grew, whoever controlled this vital activity wielded great power within our communities. It was our belief that since women were the givers of life they naturally regulated the feeding of our people....In all countries, real wealth stems from the control of land and its resources. Our Iroquois philosophers knew this as well as we knew natural law. To us it made sense for women to control

4465-597: The Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre-class society "where women and men share equally in production and power." According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of the word [matriarchy], despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power." Matriarchy has often been presented as negative, in contrast to patriarchy as natural and inevitable for society, and thus that matriarchy

4560-671: The Northern group – has been called a "cohesive complex" by Michael Krauss (1973, 1982). Therefore, the Stammbaumtheorie or family tree model of genetic classification may be inappropriate. The languages of the Southern branch are much more homogeneous and are the only clearly genealogical subgrouping. Debate continues as to whether the Pacific Coast languages form a valid genealogical grouping, or whether this group may instead have internal branches that are tied to different subgroups in Northern Athabaskan. The position of Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai

4655-553: The Northern languages. Reflecting an ancient migration of peoples, they are spoken by Native Americans in the American Southwest and the northwestern part of Mexico . This group comprises the six Southern Athabaskan languages and Navajo. The following list gives the Athabaskan languages organized by their geographic location in various North American states, provinces and territories (including some languages that are now extinct). Several languages, such as Navajo and Gwich'in, span

4750-460: The Pacific Coast grouping, but a recent consideration by Krauss (2005) does not find it very similar to these languages. A different classification by Jeff Leer is the following, usually called the "Leer classification" (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:72–74): Neither subgrouping has found any significant support among other Athabaskanists. Details of the Athabaskan family tree should be regarded as tentative. As Tuttle and Hargus put it, "we do not consider

4845-574: The Pacific Northwest of the United States. These include Applegate, Galice, several Rogue River area languages, Upper Coquille, Tolowa, and Upper Umpqua in Oregon ; Eel River, Hupa, Mattole–Bear River, and Tolowa in northern California ; and possibly Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie in Washington . The seven Southern Athabaskan languages are isolated by considerable distance from both the Pacific Coast languages and

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4940-870: The basis of female influence upon the whole society. The authors of the classics did not think that gyneocracy meant 'female government' in politics. They were aware of the fact that the sexual structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both sexes. A matriarchy is also sometimes called a gynarchy , a gynocracy , a gynecocracy , or a gynocentric society, although these terms do not definitionally emphasize motherhood. Cultural anthropologist Jules de Leeuwe argued that some societies were "mainly gynecocratic " (others being "mainly androcratic "). Gynecocracy, gynaecocracy, gynocracy, gyneocracy, and gynarchy generally mean 'government by women over women and men'. All of these words are synonyms in their most important definitions, and while these words all share that principal meaning, they differ

5035-452: The boundaries: these languages are repeated by location in this list. For alternative names for the languages, see the classifications given later in this article. Eyak and Athabaskan together form a genealogical linguistic grouping called Athabaskan–Eyak (AE) – well- demonstrated through consistent sound correspondences , extensive shared vocabulary, and cross-linguistically unique homologies in both verb and noun morphology . Tlingit

5130-556: The constitution was oral until written in about 1880. The League still exists. George-Kanentiio explains: In our society, women are the center of all things. Nature, we believe, has given women the ability to create; therefore it is only natural that women be in positions of power to protect this function....We traced our clans through women; a child born into the world assumed the clan membership of its mother. Our young women were expected to be physically strong....The young women received formal instruction in traditional planting....Since

5225-426: The definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings (...) [and] were too vague to be scientifically useful". Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth , a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in

5320-458: The disadvantage of others. Raven is considered to be the protagonist hero against these evil ancestors. Tahltan social organization is founded on matriarchy and intermarriage between two main clan designations. The two main clans of Tahltan people are Tses' Kiya (pronounced Tses-kee-ya) ( Crow ) and Chiyone (pronounced Chee-oanah) (Wolf) . These two clans are further subdivided into four parties: Contemporary Tahltan society constitutes itself as

5415-449: The double kinship system, which developed there .... [and which] combined matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of family structure and assigned equal importance to both lines." Chiricosta said that other scholars relied on "this 'matriarchal' aspect of the myth to differentiate Vietnamese society from the pervasive spread of Chinese Confucian patriarchy," and that "resistance to China's colonization of Vietnam ... [combined with]

5510-528: The element of exclusion is known to have existed. Anthropologist Donald Brown 's list of human cultural universals ( viz. , features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs, which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology , although there are some disagreements and exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals". The hypothesis

5605-484: The entire language family. For example, following a motion by attendees in 2012, the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dené Languages Conference. Linguists conventionally divide the Athabaskan family into three groups, based on geographic distribution: The 32 Northern Athabaskan languages are spoken throughout the interior of Alaska and the interior of northwestern Canada in

5700-432: The exchange trade between men, causing the global defeat of the female sex and the rise of individualism and competition. According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by August Bebel , according to whom matriarchy naturally resulted in communism , while patriarchy was characterized by exploitation. Austrian writer Bertha Diener (or Helen Diner), wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930),

5795-459: The fact that Trung Trac's mother's tomb and spirit temple have survived, although nothing remains of her father", and the "society of the Trung sisters" was "strongly matrilineal". According to Donald M. Seekins, an indication of "the strength of matriarchal values" was that a woman, Trưng Trắc , with her younger sister Trưng Nhị , raised an army of "over 80,000 soldiers ... [in which] many of her officers were women", with which they defeated

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5890-613: The female line, is sometimes conflated with historical matriarchy. Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy , especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau . The 19th-century belief that matriarchal societies existed was due to the transmission of "economic and social power ... through kinship lines" so that "in a matrilineal society all power would be channeled through women. Women may not have retained all power and authority in such societies ..., but they would have been in

5985-529: The field of family relationships and the organization of family life, such as matrilineality and matrilocality. These terms refer to intergenerational relationships (as matriarchy may), but do not distinguish between males and females insofar as they apply to specific arrangements for sons as well as daughters from the perspective of their relatives on their mother's side. Accordingly, these concepts do not represent matriarchy as 'power of women over men' but instead familial dynamics. Anthropologists have begun to use

6080-447: The first work to focus on women's cultural history, a classic of feminist matriarchal study. Her view is that all past human societies were originally matriarchal, while most later shifted to patriarchy and degenerated. The controversy intensified with The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology, focusing on the reconstruction of earlier myths that had conjecturally been rewritten after

6175-402: The following classification for the Athabaskan languages based exclusively on typological (non-lexical) data. However, this phylogenetic study was criticized as methodologically flawed by Yanovich (2020), since it did not employ sufficient input data to generate a robust tree that does not depend on the initial choice of the "tree prior", i.e. the model for the tree generation. Proto-Athabaskan

6270-403: The governing role). Scalingi reported arguments for and against the validity of gynocracy and said, "the humanists treated the question of female rule as part of the larger controversy over sexual equality." Possibly, queenship, because of the power wielded by men in leadership and assisting a queen, leads to queen bee syndrome , contributing to the difficulty of other women in becoming heads of

6365-426: The government. Some matriarchies have been described by historian Helen Diner as "a strong gynocracy" and "women monopolizing government" and she described matriarchal Amazons as "an extreme, feminist wing" of humanity and that North African women "ruled the country politically" before being overthrown by forms of patriarchy and, according to Adler, Diner "envision[ed] a dominance matriarchy". Gynocentrism

6460-647: The hands of males, and the current culture of the Mosuo has been heavily shaped by their minority status. In India, of communities recognized in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some ... [are] matriarchal and matrilineal" "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian". According to interviewer Anuj Kumar, Manipur , India, "has a matriarchal society", but this may not be scholarly. In Kerala, Nairs, Thiyyas, Brahmins of Payyannoor village and Muslims of North Malabar and in Karnataka, Bunts and Billavas follow

6555-450: The hands of women." Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non-alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine the environment in which the next generation is reared." According to Cynthia Eller , "'matriarchy' can be thought of ... as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power

6650-551: The headwaters and, in June 2007, 14 different environmental groups sent a joint letter to Shell opposing the project. Representatives from Shell assert a determination to reach consensus in the community and note that the elected Tahltan Central Council (TCC) agreed to the exploration. Chief Jerry Asp was forced to resign in 2005 after protests from Tahltan members accusing him of a conflict of interest because of his involvement with two pro-development organizations. On December 18, 2012,

6745-679: The headwaters, but in 2005 four Shell employees who arrived at the band office in Iskut were turned away by a group of elders and no drilling occurred that summer. Non-violent blockades in 2005 and 2006 delayed development efforts and led to the arrests of 13 protesters. Talhtan territory was the site of half of all the mining exploration in British Columbia during 2006. Protests in Smithers have been as large as 600 people. David Suzuki and Wade Davis have both criticized plans for coal-bed methane mining in

6840-576: The land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of the Mother Earth. We did not own the land but were custodians of it. Our women decided any and all issues involving territory, including where a community was to be built and how land was to be used....In our political system, we mandated full equality. Our leaders were selected by a caucus of women before the appointments were subject to popular review....Our traditional governments are composed of an equal number of men and women. The men are chiefs and

6935-498: The lands, the parties involved balance development and environmental aspects. Talk of an Alaska-Canada railroad traversing Tahltan lands recurs every so often with feasibility studies being done. Tahltan is a poorly documented Northern Athabaskan language . Some linguists consider Tahltan to be a language with three divergent but mutually intelligible dialects. Other linguists consider these to be separate languages. The number of speakers are below. Matriarchy Matriarchy

7030-467: The languages of North America. He acknowledged that it was his choice to use this name for the language family and the associated ethnic groups: "I have designated them by the arbitrary denomination of Athabascas, which derived from the original name of the lake." The four spellings— Athabaskan , Athabascan , Athapaskan , and Athapascan —are in approximately equal use. Particular communities may prefer one spelling over another (Krauss 1987). For example,

7125-506: The largest group in the Athabaskan family, although this group varies internally about as much as do languages in the entire family. The urheimat of the Athabaskan family is most likely in the Tanana Valley of east-central Alaska. There are many homologies between Proto-Athabaskan vocabulary and patterns reflected in archaeological sites such as Upward Sun, Swan Point and Broken Mammoth (Kari 2010). The Northern Athabaskan group also contains

7220-425: The matrilineal system. Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has said that the Minangkabau society may be a matriarchy. According to William S. Turley, "the role of women in traditional Vietnamese culture was determined [partly] by ... indigenous customs bearing traces of matriarchy", affecting "different social classes" to "varying degrees". Peter C. Phan explains that "the ancient Vietnamese family system

7315-447: The most linguistically conservative languages, particularly Koyukon, Ahtna, Dena'ina, and Dakelh/Carrier (Leer 2008). Very little is known about Tsetsaut, and for this reason it is routinely placed in its own tentative subgroup. The Nicola language is so poorly attested that it is impossible to determine its position within the family. It has been proposed by some to be an isolated branch of Chilcotin. The Kwalhioqua–Clatskanie language

7410-422: The points of difference between the two models ... to be decisively settled and in fact expect them to be debated for some time to come." (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:74) The Northern group is particularly problematic in its internal organization. Due to the failure of the usual criteria of shared innovation and systematic phonetic correspondences to provide well-defined subgroupings, the Athabaskan family – especially

7505-442: The political and ceremonial systems)." The Clan Mother, for example, was empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair since there was no "countervailing ... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure". The Iroquois Confederacy or League, combining five to six Native American Haudenosaunee nations or tribes before the U.S. became a nation, operated by The Great Binding Law of Peace ,

7600-622: The position that recent improved data on Haida have served to conclusively disprove the Haida-inclusion hypothesis. Haida has been determined to be unrelated to Athabaskan languages. A symposium in Alaska in February 2008 included papers on the Yeniseian and Na-Dené families. Edward Vajda of Western Washington University summarized ten years of research, based on verbal morphology and reconstructions of

7695-659: The practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree, before this practice was overthrown by the patriarchy". Tacitus claimed in his book Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones woman is the ruling sex." Anne Helene Gjelstad describes the women on the Estonian islands Kihnu and Manija as "the last matriarchal society in Europe" because "the older women here take care of almost everything on land as their husbands travel

7790-410: The premise of a mother-child dyad as the core of a human group where the grandmother was the central ancestor with her children and grandchildren clustered around her in an extended family. The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household'. Matristic: Feminist scholars and archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas , Gerda Lerner , and Riane Eisler label their notion of

7885-527: The proto-languages, indicating that these languages might be related. The internal structure of the Athabaskan language family is complex, and its exact shape is still a hotly debated issue among experts. The conventional three-way split into Northern, Pacific Coast, and Southern is essentially based on geography and the physical distribution of Athabaskan peoples rather than sound linguistic comparisons. Despite this inadequacy, current comparative Athabaskan literature demonstrates that most Athabaskanists still use

7980-706: The seas". Bangladesh The Khasi and the Garo people residing in the Sylhet and Mymensingh regions are two of the top matriarchal societies of Bangladesh . Possible matriarchies in Burma are, according to Jorgen Bisch, the Padaungs and, according to Andrew Marshall, the Kayaw . The Mosuo culture, which is in China near Tibet , is frequently described as matriarchal. The term matrilineal

8075-425: The sharing of power equally between the two genders. According to Diane LeBow, "matriarchal societies are often described as ... egalitarian ...", although anthropologist Ruby Rohrlich has written of "the centrality of women in an egalitarian society." Matriarchy is also the public formation in which the woman occupies the ruling position in a family. Some, including Daniel Moynihan , claimed that there

8170-482: The term matrifocality. There is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy . Matrifocal societies are those in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position. Anthropologist R. T. Smith refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system whereby the mothers assume structural prominence. The term does not necessarily imply domination by women or mothers. In addition, some authors depart from

8265-461: The three-way geographic grouping rather than any of the proposed linguistic groupings given below, because none of them has been widely accepted. This situation will presumably change as both documentation and analysis of the languages improves. Besides the traditional geographic grouping described previously, there are a few comparatively based subgroupings of the Athabaskan languages. Below the two most current viewpoints are presented. The following

8360-489: The valley is used for fishing, hunting, and trapping. It is the site of a Tahltan burial ground and a cultural camp where Talhtan youth can learn their culture in the summer. In 2004, Shell was awarded the oil and gas rights to the Klappan Valley, one of British Columbia 's largest coal deposits with an estimated 230 km (8 trillion cu ft) of methane . That year, Shell drilled three exploratory wells at

8455-469: The view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror or inverted form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play a central role in these practices ' ". Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally, ... [" matriarchy "] means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in

8550-417: The view that Vietnam was originally a matriarchy ... [led to viewing] women's struggles for liberation from (Chinese) patriarchy as a metaphor for the entire nation's struggle for Vietnamese independence," and therefore, a "metaphor for the struggle of the matriarchy to resist being overthrown by the patriarchy." According to Keith Weller Taylor , "the matriarchal flavor of the time is ... attested by

8645-502: The women clan-mothers....As leaders, the women closely monitor the actions of the men and retain the right to veto any law they deem inappropriate....Our women not only hold the reins of political and economic power, they also have the right to determine all issues involving the taking of human life. Declarations of war had to be approved by the women, while treaties of peace were subject to their deliberations. The controversy surrounding prehistoric or "primal" matriarchy began in reaction to

8740-711: Was defined by Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746), who first named it ginécocratie . According to the OED , the earliest known attestation of the word matriarchy is in 1885. By contrast, gynæcocracy , meaning 'rule of women', has been in use since the 17th century, building on the Greek word γυναικοκρατία found in Aristotle and Plutarch . Terms with similar etymology are also used in various social sciences and humanities to describe matriarchal or matriological aspects of social, cultural, and political processes. Adjective matriological

8835-602: Was most likely matriarchal, with women ruling over the clan or tribe" until the Vietnamese "adopt[ed] ... the patriarchal system introduced by the Chinese." That being said, even after adopting the patriarchal Chinese system, Vietnamese women, especially peasant women, still held a higher position than women in most patriarchal societies. According to Chiricosta, the legend of Âu Cơ is said to be evidence of "the presence of an original 'matriarchy' in North Vietnam and [it] led to

8930-477: Was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination." According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern European cultures that never really resembled the alleged universal matriarchy. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity

9025-402: Was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism , and have gained popularity as indigenous and gender research advances. Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups." The Cambridge Ancient History (1975) stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess is probably a reflection from

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