Matrilineal Society In The Trobriand Island

The Trobriand Islanders are a civilization of people that live on the Trobriand Islands, mainly on the islands of Kiriwina, Kaileuna, Kitava, and Vakuta, which are located off the East tip of Papua New Guinea in the Solomon Sea. The Trobriand Islanders are a unique matrilineal society. Matrilineal means tracing descent through the mother’s line. The family on the mother’s side is closer to the child than the father and his side. So, in a matrilineal society, when a child is born, their uncle is the male authority of their lives because the uncle has the same genealogy as the mother while the father doesn’t, but the father and his side are still a part of the child’s kinship. Kinship is the study of those people ego considers as family, either

Chiefs in the Trobriand Islands don’t have much more rank than everyone else, but they do have some power and privileges. In the first chapters of the Trobriand Islanders, Weiner talks about Chief Uwelasi from the village of Tubuwada. Unfortunately, this chief succumbed to death after Weiner worked in that village. Death in the Trobriand Islands is a very big deal. All joyfulness leaves the village, especially if it’s a chief who died, and death before a very old age is thought to be caused by evil sorcery. Once the death occurs, then begins the work that follows up after the death. The ones connected to Uwelasi through their matrilineage are the owners since they are the ones in the village closest to him. The owners are the ones who inherit the person’s things and who organize the funeral and the proceedings that come. Owners are not allowed to make the grave or carry the body to the grave. The people in the village that aren’t a part of that matrilineage are the workers. Workers are the public mourners who, after the funeral, will shave their heads, paint their bodies, and wear mourning clothes, and sit beside and prepare the grave. They will be the ones who actually deliver the body, since the owners can’t. When the funeral and mourning process passes, the dead person’s bundles are distributed to anyone who was connected with the dead person. This is called Bundle Distribution and is carried out after every death.

These time periods are different for every culture. In Hispanic cultures, children are less dependent because they need to start watching younger siblings sooner and go into childhood earlier than a Caucasian infant, who stays dependent for longer. Adolescents is the time period where people start to learn more advanced situational logic in their culture. For example, this is the time period where they realize punching someone might be cool to guys, but to girls, it’s not. They start learning more important things about their culture, like language and Phonemes. Phonemes are the minimal significant sounds of a language. These are not letters, but sounds like how to pronounce the ‘a’ in apple and the ‘a’ in ate. Phonemes are important to language and important to teach kids so they don’t misspeak. It’s also important that kids know idioms so they can understand things and situations better. Idioms are morphs with culturally added meaning to help with situational logic, like how someone would say they bought a female dog rather than they bought a bitch. Idioms are important knowledge in a culture and knowing how to act in it. This is called enculturation, the process by which people come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are appropriate in the group/culture. Taking in the way of a culture is