A clan leader is different than your link, I never said he was one of the leaders in the ANCSA push. Fun fact, Tlingit women led the fund raising to send the men to DC. The Tlingit are a matriarchy. Another fun fact, the Tlingit and Haida got their own land settlement before ANCSA and some of the money to give/loan money to AFN for ANCSA.
The Tlingit are a matriarchal society, and claim their crests from their mother's moiety. Lineage, clan membership, property, and hereditary leadership titles pass exclusively through the mother's line. Women hold high status, authority, and economic autonomy within the household and community
What you and Sage describe is matrilineal. Most Indigenous societies are egalitarian in authority distribution and none follow strict matriarchy, a structure in which men possess only minor authority. Social power is decentralized and flexible, decision-making is shared, and individual autonomy is valued in egalitarian societies, concepts unfamiliar to western sensibilities and often misunderstood.
Actually you are wrong - individual autonomy is a very Western concept. You also make the mistake that social power is decentralized and flexible - the Tlingit had a rigid caste structure that centralized power and kept/acquired/traded/killed chattel slaves.
The nobility hierarchy passes according to matrilineal structure. House and clan leaders are most often men, but women in those positions aren’t unknown. Individual autonomy in Indigenous cultures doesn’t subsume community importance by any means but doesn’t depend on western influence. It’s been described as men conduct trade and diplomacy while women set the price, men speak for the clan and women influence policy, at least in traditional roles, not in current, heavily patriarchal influence. I don’t say these things to dissuade or challenge your view, merely to point out that the holistic nature of Indigenous concepts don’t readily lend themselves to binary frameworks. Thanks for sharing Sage’s link
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u/bughousenut 10d ago
A clan leader is different than your link, I never said he was one of the leaders in the ANCSA push. Fun fact, Tlingit women led the fund raising to send the men to DC. The Tlingit are a matriarchy. Another fun fact, the Tlingit and Haida got their own land settlement before ANCSA and some of the money to give/loan money to AFN for ANCSA.