Speaking to Power by Lynn Wilson

Author:Lynn Wilson [Wilson, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Anthropology, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000143348
Google: cxj0DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 1134200
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Negotiating Relations

Having established some of the larger, general patterns of clan exchanges, the following concentrates on parts of stories of specific siukang events that emerged in my conversations with members of Olngebang and others. Most of the siukang exchanges I include here represent major activities that occurred regularly in people's lives during my stay in Belau, yet it is not my intention to make an exhaustive catalogue of Palauan customs, past and present, nor to record in minute detail how each of these has changed over time. Instead, I have organized the discussion around Cita's "from womb to tomb" theme and broadly trace women's participation in siukang by first discussing marriage and tying of clans, housebuying, then death and final settlements, and, finally, selecting a titleholder after the death of a chief. By focusing on these various themes and descriptions of siukang, I hope to reveal the many-layered activities that have shaped and continue to shape women's obligations within the clan and community.

As I began my research on women and siukang, I was initially drawn to give special attention to those siukang events that centered most directly on women—marriage and the birth of the first child. Later, I wondered how I could have considered such an idea because, after working with Gabriela and Cita, it seemed so clear to me that obligations of newly married clan members tend to be few and that they gradually intensify as the married couple becomes increasingly drawn into siukang throughout the life of their marriage. It is the siukang events that occur later in a woman's life, the larger events and especially the final settlement that occurs at the end of a marriage, that most significantly shape and possibly change clan relations and redefine a woman's "reputation."

Marriage, bus, does not represent a large event in Palauan siukang. Its greatest significance rests in the newly initiated tie between two clans. Gabriela and Cita described for me how marriages historically had been "arranged" and how this tying of clans through marriage generally became a matter of individual members placing their clans' collective efforts above satisfying personal preferences in marriage. The tying of clans, they continued, takes place more within the subsequent sequence of events that intensify the connection over time rather than in this single marriage event itself.

As I talked with several elder historians, my conversations often focused more on how clans "arranged" relationships rather than on the exchange at the time of marriage. In one interview I had with Ngiraklang Malsol—an eminent Palauan historian and longtime titleholder, well known for his skill in manipulating money and for working with numerous anthropologists before me—his daughter, Ucheliei, translated while he talked about the practice of mengol.54 Ngiraklang began by saying that, when he was very young, a young woman would not have been considered ready for marriage until she had participated as a mengol. Although the practice of mengol no longer takes place in Belau, it remains alive in elaborate stories that elders tell in tracing histories

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