Women at the Centre - University of Ottawa

The Minangkabao and
Matriarchy: Women at the Centre
Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday
Sino-Canadian Symposium
2012 August 17-20

Matrixial/Matriarchal Webs of Meaning in
the Minangkabau Ritual Calendar
• The Minangkabau of West Sumatra,
Indonesia are the largest matrilineal society
in today’s world. They are one of 300 ethnic
groups in Indonesia, the fourth largest,
consisting of some 4 million people in their
homeland of West Sumatra and 4 million in
other parts of Indonesia. They refer to their
ritual and family system as adat
Minangkabau or as adat matriarchaat.

Indonesia

West Sumatra, Central Sumatra

Mother as the Beginning
• In Minangkabau all beginnings are
granted respect—first ancestress,
mountain of origin, original song, or
first village settled in a particular area.
That which comes first is associated
with growth (in nature) or birth from a
mother. This privileging of mother
places senior women at the social,
emotional, aesthetic, and economic
center of daily and ceremonial life.

Fieldwork in West Sumatra
• For more than 20 years I conducted field research in
West Sumatra beginning in l981 and still ongoing.
For more information, see my book Women at the
Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy, Cornell
University Press (2002).
• In this book I redefine matriarchy as the cultural
elaboration of a symbolic system in which MOTHER
and NURTURE are the dominant symbols—as
opposed to power and dominance. My article on this
redefinition appears in the recently issued Oxford
Encylopedia of Women in World History.

MOTHER MEANINGS AND
SYMBOLS
• In Minangkabau parlance all older women are
referred to as Bundo Kanduang, which
means own mother (or female relative in
matrilineal line.) The mythical Queen of the
Minangkabau is called Bundo Kanduang.
The Minangkabau state myth tells of the
exploits of this Queen and her sons who
worked together to uphold matrilineal law.
This law—called the mother’s law—gives
matrilineal descent the status of divine law.
Men and women work together to uphold this
law.

Minangkabau Ethno Philosophy
• Ritual emphasis is always on connection-to
rather than splitting-from the mother (as in
phallic consciousness)
• Mother here extends to all matrilineal female
kin.
• Males in the matrilineal line play an important
legal and teaching role as uncles.
• The role of fathers is to help wives, mothers,
and children.

Growth in Nature is the Mimetic Model
• Encounter, connection, and symbols of passageway
are based on the unfurling and blooming in nature as
a teacher
• Connecting children to mother (matrilineal) so that
children are never dislodged from their natal home
• Connecting males to their family of orientation as
well as to their family of procreation. The father
plays two roles—connected to his mother through
the matrilineal system; connected to his children
through their mother with whom fathers live in a
matri-local household.

BUNDO KANDUANG-PROVERB
Bundo Kanduang (our own mother) is the
butterfly of the traditional house
She is the one who owns the key of the clothes
chest and the jewelry box
She is the center where the threads of the fish
net meet
She is the finery of the village
She is sovereign through her dignity
The one who is greatly honored
The one to whom we take all our problems
The one who receives our last wishes when we
die.

PROVERB--GROWTH IN NATURE IS OUR
TEACHER
Take the small knife used for carving
Make a staff from the lintabuang tree
The cover of pinang flowers becomes a
winnow
A drop of water becomes the sea
A fist becomes a mountain
Growth in nature is our teacher

THE SOCIAL ROLE OF NATURE:
HOUSES FACE SACRED MOUNTAIN

MATRILINEAL HOUSEHOLD

RECONSTRUCTED PALACE OF BUNDO
KANDUANG: TOURIST ATTRACTION

Minang/kabau—VICTORIOUS BUFFALO
• Connection to nature/nurture is reflected in
story of the origin of the Minangkabau
• War between the Javanese and the people of
the highlands of West Sumatra was decided
in a buffalo fight
• The Javanese put forth a huge bull buffalo
• The local people put forth a starved baby
buffalo
• Who won the fight? The baby buffalo,
because males protect the young and women
nurture life in the village. Life cycle
ceremonies dominate village life.

WEDDINGS: KNIT VILLAGE SOCIAL
TIES.BRIDE’S FAMILY COLLECTS
GROOM

King and Queen at Marriage

Nature provides the coordinates of
• Examples:
daily living.
• Houses are positioned to face the
sacred mountains.
• Merging of nature and culture includes
merging Islam, which came to villages
in l9th century, into Matrilineal family
compound

Islamic Prayer House in Matrilineal
Compound

Male and female work together in
different ways
• Symbolically, males are likened to the
trees that shelter
• Women to the foundation post of the
matrilineal long house
• Men are likened to the fern leaf tendril
• The nurture of women is alluded to in
the story about the buffalo calf who
fought the war that gave the
Minangkabau their name

How this works in ritual calendar
• Women articulate and generate webs of social
connection through life cycle rituals [Birth, marriage,
marriage difficulties, death]
• Women as a group spin, weave, and interconnect
social webs through material acts—getting the
bananas—symbolic of the males exchanged in the
wedding ceremony; cooking foods emblematic of a
real/symbolic philosophy of creation, generation,
life, growth; tying the webs of social connection
through gifts representing the connection of
nature/culture; male/female;ancestors/spirits;
old/young.

Male View: quote from famous
male leader
• In nature all that is born into the world is born from
the mother, not from the father. Fathers are only
known by a confession from the mother. Adat
knows that the mother is the closest to her children
and is therefore more dominant than the father in
establishing the character of the generations.
Thus, we must protect women and their offspring
because they are also weaker than men. Just as
the weak becomes the strong in nature, we must
make the weaker the stronger in human life. If the
mother abandons or doesn’t recognize her own
child, adat exists to recognize the child’s descent
line and to ensure the child’s worldly welfare.

Focus on Connection, Cleft, Growth, and
Nurture in Human and Language Evolution
• S. Hrdy (1999) argues based on evolutionary
data that maternal strategies played a central
role in the evolution of humanity. K. Hawkes
(2004) elaborates on this theme in introducing
“the grandmother hypothesis”—the development
of menopause in human women allowing
grandmothers to spend time in nurturing future
generations. D. Falk (2004) argues for the role
of “motherese” in the development of
language—mother-infant gestural and vocal
interactions.

Further thoughts
• Also relevant is the work of archaeologist O. Soffer and
her colleagues (2000;2007) who have marshaled
convincing data for the key role of women in a variety of
early cultural developments in the Paleolithic. Quite
separate, but very relevant, is psychoanalyst B.
Ettinger’s work (2006) development of a paradigm for
“matrixial subjectivity” which she contrasts to “phallic”
subjectivity theorized by Freud and later by Lacan. This
paradigm grounds psychic processes in connection,
gestation, birthing, and mothering. I argue that this way
of thinking is reflected in the early female figurines,
suggesting that the evolution of thought was matrixial
before it became patriarchal.

Oldest Figurine: 35,000 years. Found
in German cave near Tubingen

Animal images in same cave (same
small size as female figurines)