First of all, I would like to say very good job to Christina, Shadow, Daniela, and Federico. Your lecture post was wonderfully made and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Wiwa peoples.
From reading about the Wiwa peoples, I learned about their spiritual and cosmological beliefs, and I thought it was really interesting how they had the “law of mother” and how women were believed to have a closer connection to nature and given special roles (e.g. singing and dancing in Maleba). What made me reflect was that this phenomenon of feminine influence in their belief systems is not only exclusive to the Wiwa peoples, I’ve been noticing it from the start of the course. For example, for the Shipibo-Konibo peoples, they have Kéne and only women can see it. Another example is the Garifuna and ereba making which is almost exclusive to women. Furthermore, almost all the Indigenous groups we have talked about in this course view earth as “mother earth”, not “father earth”. I don’t know why this is so prominent in Indigenous belief systems and I think it would be really interesting to know why. How is it that all these Indigenous groups are from all over the world, yet have the same feminine influence in the belief systems? In a way, I think this happens in Western culture too. For example, in the Catholic faith, women have special roles. There are nuns, who have a very different role from priests, and there’s the Virgin Mary, who acts as a motherly figure to believers.
Hola Andrea,
I realy enjoyed reading your reflection on the Wiwa lecture. I haven’t linked the feminity of nature to my Catholic faith. I really appreciate your insight. I have been reading your posts and I really liked them. Thank you for sharing your culture from El Salvador with all of us. I hope the last week of classes is going well.
Hi Andrea! Thank you for your reflection and I am so glad you enjoyed the blog! I personally believe that the separation of men and women, nature and culture, spirituality and materialism in western society are interconnected. Women are inherently connected to nature due to our biological design to give birth, which if you think about it, is literally the manifestation of spirits into physical world. The fact that we live in a world where nature is objectified, spirituality stigmatized and women viewed as obsolete is unnatural and actually product of decades of diligent efforts to keep it that way, starting with witch hunt in the 1600s.
Hey Andrea, thank you for your post! It was really thought-provoking. Like Fernanda, I hadn’t connected the role of women in the Catholic tradition to anything we’ve learned, and this is because I’ve always viewed Western religions to be a bit oppressive toward women.
I feel like one of the big differences between Western society and the Indigenous groups we’ve studied is that women in Western society may be “idolized” or venerated, or hold special roles like in the Catholic faith but are not endowed with “useful” traits like owning property, working, etc… they seem to hold more “symbolic” roles as caregivers, mothers, nurtureres etc. (Even if this is now changing, the change is relatively new). Whereas for cultures like the Garinagu, for example, matrifocality and women’s capabilities have been an entrenched part of their culture for a long time.
I’m just curious why there is such a difference in perceptions of women (Western being more “idolized” and Garinagu being naturally “equal” to men). The West seems to be “behind” some Indigenous groups in this way. Why?
Hi Avery!
Thank you for responding to my post. I would like to say though, that I disagree with what you said about women in the Catholic faith “… not endowed with “useful” traits like owning property, working, etc… they seem to hold more “symbolic” roles as caregivers, mothers, nurturers etc.”. I think this is a perception many people have, yet I think it’s flawed, and I think it’s partly dependent on what you perceive to be “useful” traits. For instance Mother Theresa, I would argue that she had very “useful traits”. I think that being a caregiver is not any less than being a banker. I also think that women owning property and working isn’t contradictory to the Catholic belief. There have been many Queens that are considered Saints, they owned property and worked. I mean..I am a Catholic woman studying finance!
Hi Andrea!
Yes it is very interesting to think about and makes me wonder if these are roles that evolved naturally over time (just like the well known roles of man the hunter and woman the gatherer in hunter-gatherer societies) or if there were some beliefs in place that caused these differing roles to occur. I wonder as well if indigenous tendencies to feminine worship have ties to matriarchal belief systems (whereas western cultural beliefs stem from patriarchal systems), since some indigenous groups were matriarchal pre-colonization. Very interesting!