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no:'olchwin-ding, no:'olchwin-te (To Grow Old In A Good Way): The Revitalization of Women's Coming of Age Ceremonies as Decolonizing Praxis
Under advanced contract with the University of Washington Press!
The narrative of loss is so prevalent in discussions about Native people. We are always losing something, our languages, our futures, our health, and our cultures. In this story, if we haven’t lost these things, we are on our way to losing them, one step away from an extinction that often feels inevitable and in many ways, improbably, accidental. Natives are always in the last stages of their existence. We have long past the time of the last Mohican or the last of our tribe. This is to solidify the settler colonial desire for an eventual inheriting of this land, a rightful, uninhibited, ahistorical passing of ownership from the poor, dying Indigenous to the stronger, healthier, more vibrant settler colonial society. This becomes the narrative that many are taught in classrooms, that is reflected in movies, and people that remains ever so stubbornly central to much of the scholarship written about Native people - scholarship that now builds the foundations of law, policy, history and acceptable rhetoric about Native cultures and societies. It was thought that the research and documentation being done by Western scholars was essential to preserving knowledge about Native cultures before they disappeared into the annals of history. This new historical record was built primarily by white, western educated scholars who believed that their lasting documentation would provide a glimpse into a “primitive” world of the past.
The western scholarly narrative of Indigenous women’s coming of age ceremonies has been deeply engrained with this sense of loss. We, as contemporary Native peoples, have “lost” our women’s coming of age ceremonies in some anthropological accounts just before or soon after so-called contact with western civilization. These ceremonies, once public, central parts of most every North American tribe, had become “extinct”, lost as part of the conquest and evolution of so-called primitive Indigenous people through cultural, social and spiritual assimilation.
But women’s ceremonies, aside from being written about as just another casualty of a manifest destiny that ushered in progress and civilization to a so-called vast, empty untamed wilderness, were often framed as having been willingly discarded by Indigenous peoples. Those cultures that, according to anthropologists, paid little attention to or were less public in their celebration of women’s coming of age, were supposedly more advanced and civilized prior to the invasion by western settlers. The narrative seemed to say that this was a ceremony that would have gone away naturally through time, because as time went on tribal peoples would leave their primitive state and would realize that the celebration of a woman’s first menstruation, or the continued deference and respect for women in their culture and society was somehow holding them back from progress and survival.
The narrative of loss is so prevalent in discussions about Native people. We are always losing something, our languages, our futures, our health, and our cultures. In this story, if we haven’t lost these things, we are on our way to losing them, one step away from an extinction that often feels inevitable and in many ways, improbably, accidental. Natives are always in the last stages of their existence. We have long past the time of the last Mohican or the last of our tribe. This is to solidify the settler colonial desire for an eventual inheriting of this land, a rightful, uninhibited, ahistorical passing of ownership from the poor, dying Indigenous to the stronger, healthier, more vibrant settler colonial society. This becomes the narrative that many are taught in classrooms, that is reflected in movies, and people that remains ever so stubbornly central to much of the scholarship written about Native people - scholarship that now builds the foundations of law, policy, history and acceptable rhetoric about Native cultures and societies. It was thought that the research and documentation being done by Western scholars was essential to preserving knowledge about Native cultures before they disappeared into the annals of history. This new historical record was built primarily by white, western educated scholars who believed that their lasting documentation would provide a glimpse into a “primitive” world of the past.
The western scholarly narrative of Indigenous women’s coming of age ceremonies has been deeply engrained with this sense of loss. We, as contemporary Native peoples, have “lost” our women’s coming of age ceremonies in some anthropological accounts just before or soon after so-called contact with western civilization. These ceremonies, once public, central parts of most every North American tribe, had become “extinct”, lost as part of the conquest and evolution of so-called primitive Indigenous people through cultural, social and spiritual assimilation.
But women’s ceremonies, aside from being written about as just another casualty of a manifest destiny that ushered in progress and civilization to a so-called vast, empty untamed wilderness, were often framed as having been willingly discarded by Indigenous peoples. Those cultures that, according to anthropologists, paid little attention to or were less public in their celebration of women’s coming of age, were supposedly more advanced and civilized prior to the invasion by western settlers. The narrative seemed to say that this was a ceremony that would have gone away naturally through time, because as time went on tribal peoples would leave their primitive state and would realize that the celebration of a woman’s first menstruation, or the continued deference and respect for women in their culture and society was somehow holding them back from progress and survival.
The fundamental fact is that nearly every tribe in North America has some kind of women’s coming of age ceremony. In California, these were often elaborate, public celebrations that happened after a young woman’s first menstruation. According to cultural historian Harold Driver, rituals for menstruation and coming of age “characterized by seclusion and private rituals of cleansing, are nearly universal among North American peoples” (21). Women’s coming of age ceremonies were not only regarded as important to the development of young women or as a rite of passage marking adulthood but also as a “rite of passage to the spiritual” and important to the balance and wellbeing of the community and the earth itself (Markstrom 79).
My focus throughout much of this text is on California Indian history, tribes, and tribal cultures. I have found throughout my research that there has been considerable interest in revitalization of women’s coming of age ceremonies throughout many Indigenous nations and in California especially, a number of newly realized revitalizations of women’s coming of age ceremonies has happened over the past 10-15 years.
My focus throughout much of this text is on California Indian history, tribes, and tribal cultures. I have found throughout my research that there has been considerable interest in revitalization of women’s coming of age ceremonies throughout many Indigenous nations and in California especially, a number of newly realized revitalizations of women’s coming of age ceremonies has happened over the past 10-15 years.
This book explores the cultural revitalization of women’s coming of age ceremonies to demonstrate how this revitalization articulates and supports an Indigenous decolonizing praxis (Jacob). These revitalizations are community acts of survivance and demonstrate how the decolonization process involves (re)writing, (re)righting and (re)riteing egalitarian Indigenous philosophies and feminisms. The importance here is that these revitalizations are not just about the young women or only for women in general, but instead are about community and all the diverse gendered experiences that are enveloped into a decolonized Indigenous communal spirituality and society. All people of the community are important to the enacting of this decolonizing praxis and are central to the futurities of Indigenous nations. Part of my focus is on how this gender egalitarianism, inherent to Native nations, became targeted as part of a settler colonial process intent on instilling heteropatriarchal disciplining of Native peoples, cultures and societies. In focusing on the (re)riteing aspect of this project, I am exploring how ceremony combats the ever present systemic gendered violence of settler colonialism and (re)rites systems of gender in Indigenous communities through Indigenous ceremonies.
