Peggy Reeves Sanday
Matriarchal Values and World Peace:
The Case of the Minangkabau
One of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia, numbering some four million
in their homeland province of West Sumatra, the Minangkabau are famous
in Indonesia for their matrilineal social system, matriarchal values and
dedication to Islam. They are also known for their business
acumen and literary flair. Banks, bookstores, and institutions of
higher education in the cities, satellite dishes and schools in the villages
make this modern society all the more interesting for its matriarchal values
in a world torn by conflict, strife, and male dominance.
From 1981 to 1999 I visited West Sumatra nearly
every year to study what the Minangkabau refer to as adat matriarchaat,
the term they use for their matriarchal customs. In this
paper I examine the relationship between these customs and the Minangkabau commitment
to peaceful social relations. My goal is to demonstrate
that matriarchal values grow out of a social philosophy in which the emphasis
is on cooperation. Viewed from the Minangkabau perspective, matriarchy
is not about "female rule," but about social principles and values
rooted in maternal meanings in which both sexes work together to promote
human well being. Just as they nourish the vulnerable rice
seeds in the rice nurseries before planting them in the fields and then
keep the young shoots carefully watered and weeded so that they will grow
strong, the Minangkabau nourish the weak and vulnerable so that society
will be strong.
The following analysis is based on participant-observation of life
in the rural villages and cities of the highland heartland of Minangkabau
culture and on interviews with intellectuals and religious officials in
the coastal capital city. These sources provide a unique vision of
a society in which matriarchal values are expressed at the level of natural
philosophy and social reality.
Nature is our Teacher
The social philosophy of the Minangkabau differs dramatically from
Western ideals stressing competition and "survival of the fittest." Growth
in nature is the model on which the Minangkabau construct their social
contract. From this model they derive the principle that nurture is the
primordial foundation for the social order. This principle is expressed
in a well known proverb.
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.
This proverb introduces the animistic foundation for both the Minangkabau matriarchaat and
matrilineal law. When I asked people for an exegesis of the
proverb they usually answered by saying that people derive the rules of
culture by observing the benign aspects of nature. Ibu
Idar, a female leader and my hostess in the village where I lived, explained
that the imitation of nature means that people learn not just from what
supports life but from what destroys it as well. "Our
adat teaches us to take the good from nature (alam) and throw away the
bad," she said.
According to the above proverb, what grows in nature provides the wherewithal
for rudimentary implements for food and shelter (first three lines.) Social
well being is found in natural growth and fertility (second three lines)
according to the dictum that the unfurling, blooming, and expansion of
growth in nature provides a lesson for social relations. As
plants grow from seedlings, trees from transplanted branches, the sea from
a trickle of water, and mountains from a clump of earth so do people. Like
the seedlings of nature, people and emotions must be patiently fed so that
they will flower and grow to their fullness and strength. Thus nurture is
the natural law which humans should follow in devising social rules.(1)
Many adat leaders and intellectuals in the urban and rural areas of West
Sumatra write about the role of nature in adat social philosophy. According
to Pak Idrus Hakimy, a religious and social leader whose books of
proverbs are widely read in the villages and the cities, nature is the
source for adat rules and beliefs.
We study everything around us: human life, animals,
plants, mountains, hills, and rivers. Nature surrounds us in all the events of our lives. We
learn from the good in nature and throw away the bad. The rules
of adat are
based in nature. Like nature, adat surrounds us.
Taufik Abdullah, a well known Minangakbau social scientist, cites
a proverb which goes one step further to suggest that adat is sacred because
it is a primordial aspect of nature.
When nothing was existent, the universe did not exist
Neither earth nor sky existed
Adat had already existed.(2)
The principle of matrilineal descent is a corollary of the logic making
adat imminent in nature. In another interview, Pak Hakimy had
this to say:
Matrilineal adat is in accordance with the flora and
fauna of nature in which it can be seen that it is the mother who bears
the next generation and it is the mother who suckles the young and raises
the child. As
we all know, Minangkabau adat comes from nature according to the
proverb Alam takambang jadi guru (growth in nature is our
teacher.) 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.(3)
Similar sentiments were expressed by an adat leader in the village I lived
for many years. In l985, Dt. Nago Besar, who was then at the apex
of the male adat ladder, explained to me that the matrilineal system
was originally devised so that children would always have a family, food,
and ancestral land. Speaking rhetorically he asked, "If
a child is born without a father, or we don't know who the father is, where
can the child find pusaka (land, titles, and ancestral house)
and food? Like growth in nature, we always know from whom the child
descends: the mother."
Such sentiments should not be taken as support for the claim made by 19th
century evolutionists in Europe and the U.S. that matriliny derives from
ignorance about the father's role in conception. The
l9th century was a time when there was considerable speculation about a
period in cultural evolution when women ruled. Whether this
period was labeled the time of mother-right or matriarchy there
was wide agreement that female rule was prior to patriarchy and was based
on ignorance about paternity.(4)
I doubt that ignorance of the father's role in conception explains matriarchal
values in any society past or present. One can't help
but wonder why Western social scientists seem unable to understand the
meaning of women-centeredness in anything other than male terms. The
Minangkabau are aware of the father's biological role, but chose to ignore
it in favor of the social well-being of the mother-child bond. They
think that males can fend for themselves, but mothers and their children
need social support. As Pak Hakimy told me:
Here we elevate the weak instead of the strong. Women must be
given rights because they are weak. Young men must be
sent away from the village to prove their manhood so that there will be
no competition between them and their sisters.(5)
This is not to say that there is no role for the father,
only that it is not tied to the transmission of ancestral property rights. True
to their tendency to emphasize growth rather than competition and aggression,
ideas about the role of the father is designed on the model of nurture
in nature. Once again a proverb communicates the message.
Fern leaf tendril, balimbing nuts
Shake the shell of a coconut
Plant pepper with the roots
Seat your child and guide your nephew
Think about your village people
Prevent your village from destruction
And keep up the tradition.
The lines of this proverb describe expectations for the roles of father
and uncle. Like the inward folding of the fern tendril, wrapped around
itself, a father should wrap himself around his family, custom, and the
affairs of the village. Like the outward curve of the stem of the
tendril the uncle acts as a leader and guides his nephews and nieces. As
a father a man is expected to "seat" his children (i.e. love
them) and as an uncle he must lead his nephews (educate them).
"The uncle comes when he is called by his sister to discipline her
children," Pak Hakimy informed me. "A mother will
say to a naughty child: 'Look your uncle is coming. Please be good.' Fathers
and uncles are expected to work together to help provide financial support
to the families of their sisters and wives," he concluded.(6)
The Importance of Negotiation in Resolving Differences
The Minangkabau place great value on accommodation and consensus in handling
conflict. A prime example of how accommodation works is illustrated
by the story the Minangkabau tell about how matrilineal adat came to be
wedded to patrilineal Islam in the course of their history.
The story often begins with a proverb: Adat came down; Islam came up. This
means that adat originated in the interior mountainous heartland of Minangkabau
culture long ago, some say before the time of Christ, and went down to
the coast. Islam came much later, brought by traders to the coastal
regions, sometime between the 14th and 16th centuries, and went up to the
mountains. The two achieved an accommodation and lived
in peaceful coexistence until a few well known Islamic officials who were
educated in Mecca sought to purge Minangkabau culture of adat customs
such as matrilineal descent by force. Those supporting the
accommodation of adat and Islam stood their ground by forming an alliance
in order to defend their sacred adat traditions against the purist tendencies
of the local Islamist assault.
The struggle brought on the Padri war in the late l8th and early l9th
centuries. The moderate wing won the struggle with the
help of the Dutch. The accommodation of adat and Islam involved the
purging of some adat practices (like gambling) and the strengthening
of others. Matrilineal descent, the lynch pin of adat Minangkabau, was
placed in the most sacred of adat categories on a par with Islam. This
is the only adat category which is considered so sacred that, like Islam,
it cannot be changed. Because both are handed down from the
godhead neither contradicts nor competes with the other.
The accommodation of adat and Islam in this case is a prime example of
the distinction often drawn between cultural and political Islam
in the Islamic world. Political Islam (also called Islamism)
refers to the wholesale destruction of local culture in the interest of
ruling by the laws of the Holy Book. Political Islam did not take
hold in West Sumatra due to the outcome of the Padri War and the accommodation
of adat (local custom) and Islam. The accommodation meant that
cultural Islam prevailed instead. Cultural Islam is found in
those parts of the Islamic world where communities subscribing to the "five
pillars" of Islamic practice live in syncretism with traditions that
can be traced to centuries-old pre-Islamic traditions.
The importance of cultural Islam in West Sumatra became more
apparent to me in the aftermath of the 9/11 disaster in New York. During
a visit in August of 2002 the subject of Bin Laden came up a number of
times. Although for some he was the Islamic David who confronted
the American Goliath, he was not a leader to be followed. The
people I talked to said that the Islam they were taught prohibits violence
and the use of force. They emphasized the Minangkabau
practice of achieving social goals through negotiation and discussion,
not through force. One man said that his Islamic education
stressed the importance of thinking about others. Do unto others
as you would have others do unto you, he said in so many words.
The subject of Bin Laden and 9/11 sparked many comments about the perils
of globalization. It was clear that people in West Sumatra felt that
9/11 was a cry against globalization in the form it was taking in the world. However,
they didn't agree with the Islamist solution. There were two kinds
of globalization Minangkabau intellectuals worried about: Western capitalism
and anti-Western Islamism. Urban professionals and intellectuals
reject both forms of globalization as "a clash between two politicized
universalisms." They expressed a longing
for a more humane model of globalization for their country and the world
based on cultural and spiritual values in the context of "democracy
building and creating good governance." Minangkabau
intellectuals proudly say that the social ideology and practices of adat
represent the first true democracy in the world, going back millennium. Among
other things, today democracy means protecting local culture from the onslaught
of Western materialism and the imposition of militant Islamism.
Respect for Senior Women
The Minangkabau system of values interweaving accommodation, consensus
decision making, and nurture is upheld by the dominant symbol of adat
matriarchaat in village life, Bundo Kanduang. This
symbol has mythic, historical, sacred, and deeply personal meanings. Bundo
Kanduang means "my own mother." It is both a royal title
reserved for the mythical Queen Mother of the Minangkabau and a title applied
to senior women in their ceremonial roles. The
emphasis on "my own mother" also reflects the deep emotional
attachment the Minangkabau feel for the mother who raised them.
The role and meaning of Bundo Kanduang is expressed in the following proverb:
Bundo Kanduang 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.
The butterfly metaphor in this proverb has aesthetic and social meanings. In
Minangkabau weaving and house carving, the butterfly symbolizes the
senior woman in full adat regalia -- finely dressed, laden with gifts,
the conveyor of good fortune, and good will. In this guise she is
Bundo Kanduang, our own mother who is the dominant symbol of the common
good. The butterfly is also associated with the central pillar of
the traditional house, which is the oldest pillar because it is the first
erected. Thus center, origin, and maternal symbol are joined, an
association frequently found in Minangkabau symbology.
Owning the
key to the clothes chest and the jewelry box, as mentioned in the second
line of the proverb, also carries aesthetic and social meanings. This
is a subject which many women discussed with me because it has material
implications for the lives of their daughters. In addition to the
implication of finery, the clothes and jewelry are part of the sacred pusaka
(ancestral) objects so important in ceremonial displays and safeguarded
for passing from mother to daughter. The jewelry represents
a woman's economic acumen in her ability to translate rice and garden surpluses
into gold jewelry as an investment for a daughter's future. The jewelry
is money in the bank for cashing in when funds are needed to stage a ceremony,
especially a wedding ceremony. The savings may also be called upon
for buying livestock as a form of investment.
The clothes in the chest are the adat costumes of fine gold or silver
weaving handed down from mother to daughter in the wealthier families to
don for special adat ceremonies. The chest is also the place where
the ancestral dagger (kris) is stored for use by the males who inherit
the ancestral title on ceremonial occasions. Thus, the chest represents
the material repository of adat as it is passed from one generation to
the next.
The idea that the senior woman of the household is "the center
where the threads of the fish net meet," evokes the image of this
woman as hostess to the many guests that flow into her house for the life
cycle ceremonies she and the women of her lineage organize. Because the
ceremonies are so public, sometimes with most of the village attending,
it is easy to see how through ceremonial activities women knit the threads
of the village social tapestry. Women do this on a regular basis,
not just in staging their own ceremonies but through helping one another.
Finally, there is the personal tie to the mother expressed in the last
lines of the proverb. The emotional meaning of this tie is
evident not just in this proverb but in the many lamentations for the mother
sung on the village stage by female bards during the entertainment part
of village ceremonies. One that is particularly moving in the
mournful cadence of the music and voice of the female singer is about coming
home from far away and finding one's mother gone and the ancestral house
of one's birth boarded up. It ends with these verses:
--If my dear mother is at home
My worries are over.
When I am sad, she soothes my heart.
When I need her, she gives advice.
--Without her I am nothing.
With whom will I talk?
I feel so lost, I can only cry.
It is late, I must hurry home….Oh, Mother.
The Role of the Mother's Brother
In l896, E.B. Tylor wrote an article entitled "The Matriarchal Family
System" in which he concludes that because the mother's brother holds
household authority in matrilineal societies like the Minangkabau, we cannot
speak of matriarchy.(7) In
my book, Women at the Center, I argue that Tylor's conclusion
was based on the misleading definition of matriarchy as female rule --misleading,
because the definition was devised with patriarchy in mind rather than
being based on observing behavior and world view in societies like the
Minangkabau in which the dominant social symbols and ceremonies are women-centered.
Matriarchal values in societies like the Minangkabau constitute
a system of social interaction in which no one social group holds final
power over another. The Minangkabau fit what Riane Eisler calls a "partnership" society.(8) Final
power rests in adat , not in people. Matrilineal
adat is considered sacred and cannot be changed. Uncles
have authority, but so does Bundo Kanduang. The authority shared
between the Mamak (mother's brother) and Bundo Kanduang is interdependent. One
cannot operate without the other; both show mutual respect. This
is the Minangkabau way based on their system of tali budi (good
relations.)
The Minangkabau way holds adat up as the final arbiter, the law
to which all are subservient. When the Mamak meet
in the village council house to settle disputes, the titled male leaders
refer to the body of law codified by the original adat lawgivers, sons
of the first Bundo Kanduang. This body of law establishes a
procedure for the resolution of disputes according to "mupakat,''
consensus decision-making in search of the truth. Mutual agreement
is the ultimate sovereign in Minangkabau life. Any one who stands
in the way of truth by acting discourteously or resorting to the use of
force is exiled from the community or shunned.
The primary function of the Mamak is to resolve disputes, negotiate marriage
with their sisters, confer titles on new candidates, and engage males from
other lineages in an official exchange of speeches at adat ceremonies. In
addition to his role along with senior women in negotiating marriage, theoretically
it is the responsibility of the Mamak to look after the young people of
his clan by helping them find spouses. In practice, this job falls
to the mothers involved in a potential union.
In dispute settlement, the Mamak of a village resolve competing claims
over land which can lead to harsh words and outright conflict in the village. The
process is very careful and deliberate for the proceedings must follow
consensus decision making in searching for the truth according to
the saying:
Loosen that which is tight
So that the sound is like a tinkle rather than a crash.
With respect to the members of his own immediate extended family, the
man who inherits the Mamak title oversees the management and use of ancestral
land in conjunction with his sisters. Because this puts
him in a position where he could abuse clan interests for his own profit,
the man chosen to receive a title must display more than the correct genealogical
link. He must be deemed honest, truthful, straightforward, and strong
enough to uphold the rules of adat.
A man who breaks these rules by selling land without the appropriate agreement
from his female relatives suffers the consequences of the curse of the
ancestors. The symbolism of the curse seems to have been devised
with the Mamak in mind. On the one hand the Mamak is likened to a
tree; on the other the curse of the ancestor refers to the illness which
afflicts those who break the oath of the ancestors to respect matrilineal
rights to property. The fate of the man who breaks this oath is likened
to the decay and slow death of a tree bored in the middle by bees
Conclusion
Based on observing adat matriarchaat in Minangkabau village life,
I object to the Western definition of matriarchy as female rule. Defining
matriarchy as the mirror image of patriarchy is based on two faulty assumptions. The
first assumption is that women must be like men to occupy a central
position in society. The second is that social prominence for
either sex is founded only in social power as we know it, which always
means power over people. Neither assumption is compatible
with the role that democratic values and maternal meanings play in Minangkabau
daily life.
Defining matriarchy either in terms of female rule or by reference solely
to mother goddesses blinds us to the social complexities of women's actual
and symbolic role in partnership societies. Not finding
cases in which women are rulers in society or in heaven, mainstream scholars
looked no further and proclaimed universal male dominance. This
is a mistake because it underrates the vital role that maternal meanings
play in upholding the social fabric and human well being in many societies.
If we think of Minangkaau social meanings as forming an intricately woven
tapestry of values, the mutually supportive role played by adat matriarchaat and
Islam stands out as a major theme. One provides a defense against
the destructive consequences of Western capitalism and the other guards
against falling lockstep into a simplistic anti-Western Islamism. The
synergy of the connection acts as a hedge against the decline of either. Backed
by religion, adat is better able to withstand the global capitalist formations
sweeping Indonesia. With solid roots in adat practice, cultural
Islam is better able to withstand militant Islamist trends . The
adat ceremonies organized by women play an essential role in this struggle
by reminding young men, who might otherwise be guided by the seductive
pull of political Islam, of their cultural roots and responsibilities. In
a world where young men in many countries seem to have lost their cultural
bearings in turning to indiscriminate violence, it is a relief to
know there are societies like the Minangkabau.
Although I went to West Sumatra looking for female power, I came home
many years later with a more nuanced understanding of what matriarchal
values can do in the world. It is not female power per
se that counts. Values are the key. If competitive, combative
values rule – such as the cowboy mentality which suffuses North America's
presentation of its national self in today's world – it doesn't matter
which sex rules because the end result will be the same: assertiveness,
violence, and preemptive warfare. On the other hand, if working on
behalf of equality, human rights, children, the world's poor, and against
environmental depletion are the values that drive social thought, it also
doesn't' matter who is at the helm for we all know, male and female
alike, that this is the only way to protect a gradually disintegrating
world for future generations. Our concern should not be with
who rules, but with protecting the vulnerable in the interest of peace
and social well being for all. If this goal were one of the world's
priorities, we would enjoy an unparallel era of peace.
1. This
is my interpretation of the proverb based on discussions with many adat
experts.
2. Quoted by Abdullah, Taufik "Modernization
in the Minangkabau World: West Sumatra in the Early Decades of the Twentieth
Century." In Culture and Politics in Indonesia,
ed. Claire Holt, Benedict Anderson, and James Siegel, 179-249. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, l972, p.231.
3. Interview, l985.
4. J.
J. Bachofen and Lewis Henry Morgan presented strong arguments for sovereign
female authority in the mid-l9th century. Bachofen introduced the
notion of maternal law which he defined as government of the family
and of the state in his l861 book Das Mutterecht (see Bachofen
l967.) Morgan
described mother right among the matrilineal Iroquois and, like Bachofen,
spoke of gynecocracy in early human society. Although, this
might seem to credit Bachofen and Morgan as the discovers of matriarchy
defined as female rule, neither actually used this term.
According to the classicist Stella Georgoudi (l992:450-451),
although matriarchy is considered to have been Bachofen's great
discovery, compared by French feminists in the early 20th century with
Columbus' discovery of America, the term does not appear in his work. Rather,
Georgoudi points out, matriarchy was forged later in the l9th century by
analogy with patriarchy. As far as I can surmise E. B. Tylor (l896)
is the first to use this term in the context of anthropological analysis.
Although Bachofen and Morgan didn't actually use the term
matriarchy they can be credited with the association of matriarchy with
female rule because of the degree to which both conflated gynecocracy and
mother-right. As
Georgoudi notes, Bachofen used these terms side by side as if to say
these were inextricable characteristics. Thus, where he found matrilineal
kinship, Bachofen assumed gynecocracy.
Lewis Henry Morgan, the father of American anthropology,
can be credited with the most extensive and earliest examination of the
social meaning of matrilineal descent. His famous League of the Iroquois
was first published in l851, ten years before Bachofen published Das
Mutterrecht. In
his later work however Morgan seems to have been influenced by Bachofen
when he spoke of Iroquoian mother-power and claimed that mother-right
and gynecocracy among the Iroquois...is not overdrawn (l965[l881]:66.)
The notion that mother-power represents an ancient phase
of human life, illustrates the second most important attribute that came
to be associated with matriarchy: its evolutionary priority to patriarchy. For
example, Bachofen associated mother-right with the pre-Hellenic peoples
and patriarchal forms with the more advanced Greek culture (1967:71.)
His preference for one over the other is seen in his conclusion regarding
the triumph of paternity, which he said liberates the spirit from nature
and sublimates human existence over the laws of material life (l967:109.)
5. Interview, l985.
6. Interview, 1985.
7. Tylor (l896.)
8. Eisler (1987.)
Literature
(Including Selected Works on the Minangkabau)
- Abdullah, Taufik, l972, "Modernization in the Minangkabau
world: West Sumatra in the early decades of the twentieth century", in Culture
and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt, Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, pp. 179-249.
- Bachofen, J.J., 1967, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected
Writings of J.J.Bachofen. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
- Eisler, Riane, 1987, The Chalice and the Blade, San Francisco:
HarperCollins.
- Georgoudi, Stella, 1992, "Creating a Myth of Matriarchy",
in: A History of Women:I, From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, Pauline
Schmitt Pantel, Editor, pp. 449-463, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Morgan, Lewis Henry, 1851, League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee,
or Iroquois. Rochester : Sage & Brother, 1965 [1881]. Houses and house life of the American
Aborigines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Tylor, Edward Burnett, 1896, "The Matriarchal Family System",
in: Nineteenth Century, Vol. 40:81-96 (l896).
