Domination simply doesn’t exist

In honor of Indigenous People’s Day (formerly honoring that white guy who stumbled onto land this side of the Atlantic):

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.
– Eduardo Galeano, Los hijo de los días (2011)

Heide Goettner-Abendroth founded the International Academy HAGIA for Modern Matriarchal Studies because she got fed up with the male dominated power structures at conventional institutions. Her book Matriarchal Societies: Studies on Indigenous Cultures Across the Globe was released in Germany in 2010, translated into English in 2012, and into French this year. As part of the French release Goettner-Abendroth talked to Annabel Benhaiem of HuffPost France.

In these matriarchal societies the founding principle is the power to give life. There is no such thing as an abandoned woman or child. Men who “behave properly” toward children are called “good mothers.”

The values of the society:

They are egalitarian, considerate and nurturing, in the sense that taking care of others and their well-being is self-evident. … Everyone is respected, regardless of their age or sex. They take care of the elderly until their death. There are no hierarchies among people. Decisions are made by consensus, unanimously. They conduct a sharing economy and condemn the concept of accumulation.

Some might think this could only work in small societies, but several of them are quite large.

The author was asked if women abuse power at men’s expense:

No. They do not consider it power as such, but responsibilities they are obligated to assume. They do often have control of the purse strings, not to keep the money for themselves, but to distribute it fairly and to ensure that the clan will never lack the things it needs.

Their societies are organized in such a way that the idea of domination simply doesn’t exist. These societies are largely peaceful, but they do know how to use weapons to defend themselves — for example, in the indigenous communities in the Amazon and North America. It’s not that they are better than us, but the way their societies are structured facilitates a state of peace.

Rape and prostitution don’t exist because women and their sexuality are respected.

I’ve long complained about patriarchy and the hierarchy that system demands of society and that the system leads to supremacy and destruction. It is good to see examples of societies that are not built on hierarchy and to show such a world is possible.