Native American Women - Guardians Of Culture, Belief & Traditions

Native American Women - Guardians Of Culture, Belief & Traditions

Photographer: Milan Rosan

Model: Leah E. Morris is rocking our Rasta Style Native American Headdress - 90cm

Since most of our pictures show beautiful women wearing our Indian headdresses we want to take a minute to write about the role that the feminine gender had in the native American society. This is however not easily written as this varied between the tribes, regions and sometimes even from band-to-band within a tribe.

Some tribes, such as the Apaches, learned both boys and girls the most important skills like following tracks, hunting, riding horses, cooking and using weapons.  However in most tribes men were responsible to provide food and to protect the community. As men were frequently leaving the village to go hunting, women stayed in their homes which left them more time to grow crops, look for the children and to gather wood. 

Most tribes were quite patrilineal however women could maintain their authority at home since this was the place were they spend most of their time. Indian headdresses were only worn by men which had the simple reason that each feather had to be earned in a battle - where women practically did not take part.

However since most of the work was done by women they were much respected by the opposite gender. When men were gone hunting women made sure that traditions and myths were still practiced and were therefore also the guardians of their culture. Our Western point of view makes us think that the native American women must have been unhappy with their role in society as it was a lot of hard and domestic work. Even though women were not allowed to wear American Indian headdresses they had their own way of wearing culturally significant jewelry. Indigenous Indian women were proud individuals because they understood themselves as the guardians of the language and belief and maintained therefore the confidence and power of their indigenous Indian culture.