Native Women's Roles In The Southwest

Native Women’s Roles in the Southwest In the Native American culture, women are not much talked about even though they do play an important role in the Native society. Women don’t only serve as a housekeeper, which is the generally believed myth, but they rather do other thing like farming and crafting while the men were out hunting. Native Americans even believed that women had more healing powers than the men did and thus we have heard of more medicine women than medicine men. Also, to the native culture, music and dance is an important part of the culture. Even though throughout class we have learned that women play a lesser of a role in native music and dance, they actually do a lot more to provide to their society culturally. In my …show more content…
The Navajo coming of age ceremony is the celebration in the southwest region, of a girl undergoing puberty where she is no longer a girl but a woman. The ceremony includes a song sung by the medicine man to mark the change in the girl’s status from girl to woman. After the singing is done, she runs east and she is escorted by a few men whose purpose is to keep the evil spirit away. The Southwest is not the only tribe that holds ceremonies but the region of California also holds ceremonies as such Flower Girl which has a similar meaning behind the ceremony, but not necessarily the same ritual. The other ceremony is the Navajo wedding ceremony which is quite an unique ceremony because it is a custom in the Navajo culture where the groom gets married into the brides household which is different in the case of the of the American tradition. It is said that the woman’s family gets a son instead of losing a daughter which is the opposite in many different traditions. The groom gives up his family in order to adopt his bride’s family and relative. Whenever the groom travels, he seeks shelter in the household of his bride’s relatives rather than his own (Southwest Navajo Indians). Thus, ceremonies did give importance to women in tribal …show more content…
This holds importance in Indian tribes because they are so small and compact they might not have enough members and without a new generation, none of the cultures or traditions would be passed down but would rather die off. Many Indian societies today face the danger of extinction because they do not have enough members to carry on with the traditions or many times these members lack the interest in learning more about their culture. Women play an important role as a housekeeper and provide their children with basic knowledge about the tribal society and its