Kinship, Family, and Social Organization

Indigenous oral narratives and archaeological and linguistic research indicate that the earliest form of social organization among the Nisga’a, Gitksan, and Tsimshian peoples were paired single-clan villages composed of several housegroups, each led by a head chief and other lesser chiefs. From the earliest times the clans were interconnected through patterns of intermarriage, since marriage within one’s clan is incestuous. Reciprocal exchanges of services and feasting to mark rites of passage and other ceremonial events also linked opposite clans. At some point the paired single clan villages came to occupy one village site. While intermarriages eventually broadened the links among communities, the underlying system still holds. For example, there are no Gitksan villages with more than three clans, and where there are three, two of them tend to function ceremonially as one.

Housegroups, or houses, are extended matrilineal family groups which each belong to one of the four clans. The members of a housegroup share the same history of origin and the crests derived from that history. The housegroups are also the landowners in these societies, each owning discrete watersheds, mountains, and other continguous geographical territories, both on the mainland and on the coastal islands. The four clans represented among the Coast and Southern Tsimshian, Nisga’a, and Gitksan are the eagle, wolf, raven, and killer whale; among the Gitksan and some Nisga’a, the killer whale is replaced by the fireweed. All members of a clan consider each other brothers and sisters, and marriages must be with members of other clans. There are now elected band councils and chief councillors in all the communities, but these function largely in administering the affairs of the village.

Each housegroup has a series of names that are associated with territories, and these are ranked in importance. The most powerful houses and chiefs of each clan are the leading chiefs of the village, and, of these, the most powerful is considered the leading house and chief. There are minor variations in these arrangements among the Tsimshian, Nisga’a, and Gitksan. However, in all of the communities decision making is by consensus and involves all the chiefs and the matriarchs, who bring the other people into the discussion at various points in the process through clan meetings and informal consultations. The primary responsibility of the chief or matriarch is to manage the territory of the house, to provide for each of its members, and to meet the social and ceremonial obligations of the housegroup as a whole. While the position of chief and matriarch is inherited, a number of individuals may be eligible for any one position; a rigorous education system ensures that the one chosen will have the needed qualities of leadership and service. One metaphor that has been used to convey a chief’s role is that the chief is married to his territory; although the chief holds power, he does so on behalf of his family as well as their ancestors and descendants. The chief’s wife is as important as the chief himself, and marriages were for a long time carefully arranged to ensure the well-being of the entire community.

Chieftainships have been strictly maintained and bear many responsibilities to their house and community. When the Nisga’a Land Committee was renamed the Nisga’a Tribal Council in 1955, the member communities decided to utilize the “common bowl philosophy,” whereby decisions are made by the elected council as advised by the hereditary chiefs in concert with elected community officials (village governments). Among the Coast and Southern Tsimshian communities, the territories are sometimes identified with clan groups rather than with housegroups, but the underlying system is basically the same. The Tsimshian Tribal Council has undertaken an “umbrella” role to facilitate the pursuit of land rights by all of its member communities, and it is assisted in its activities by an advisory council of chiefs. Among the Gitksan, the housegroup system has retained the broadest functionality and the house chiefs comprise the membership of the central organization.

The adawx is the charter of a housegroup. These family histories are private property, and the right to tell the history, and to show the symbols of its ownership, is exclusive to a set of relatives; this group may be quite large, and there may be branches in several different communities; many of the same adawx occur among the Gitksan, Tsimshian, and Nisga’a. The crests are symbols of ownership and are displayed at feasts and ceremonial events, and artists produce beautiful objects to dramatize these events. Totem poles are the best-known crest art, but housefront paintings, ceremonial robes and blankets, carved and painted boxes of cedar, frontlets, masks, jewellery, and tools and utensils are also produced.

The feast or potlatch is a social institution of central importance. Potlatch ceremonies include the highest forms of artistic and ritual expression and the distribution of the most treasured forms of wealth. At the feast the affiliations of each person and his or her connection with the whole community are acknowledged, and, at the same time, the continuance of the house and the ownership of its territories are ensured through the sharing of wealth. There are many types of feasts, marking, for example, a marriage, a death, or a totem-pole raising. In a modern death feast hosted by the Laxgibuu (wolf clan), the women of this group ensure that the food is prepared and contribute material goods. The men welcome and seat the guests and act as spokespersons. Each person fulfils his or her responsibilities and financial contributions are made by various categories of relatives in turn: wolf clan members, children of the wolf clan (members of other clans whose father’s clan is wolf), the spouses of the wolf clan, and so on. The spouses of the wolf clan might dance or perform in a humorous manner as they donate their contributions to help to lighten the grief and sorrow of the family and to speed their healing. Payments are made by the wolf clan to each of the people and groups that provide services, including repayments of obligations owed by the deceased chief. The name of the chief is passed on to his nephew, designated by him before his death. Over the course of a year, everyone in a community may participate in many such events hosted by each clan, a process that binds them together as a community.

Today, the socio-political system of the Nisga’a, Gitksan, and Tsimshian persists in spite of concerted efforts on the part of government agencies to undermine and replace it with the Euro-Canadian system. For example, although the Indian Act banned the potlatch in the nineteenth century, the Tsimshian peoples continued to feast. During the era of repression, defiance of the potlatch ban was relatively open in more remote communities in which agents of the state did not reside. In the communities where police, Indian agents, and missionaries resided, people feasted in their homes and in some places covered their windows to avoid detection if the feast lasted into the night. Some charges were laid under the anti-potlatch law, but they were not effective in ending the practice.

The efforts of missionaries had more impact. People in several communities voluntarily pledged to abandon feasting, and, in a few villages, ceremonial regalia was burned, sold, or surrendered at the instigation of the missionaries, some of whom amassed extensive personal collections of finely made objects in the process. Yet, even in those villages that gave up their regalia, the feast system is being used in the 1990s and in fact has experienced a great resurgence. There are some difficulties in maintaining the system today. The lack of recognition of native land rights in many areas is a major problem since the ownership of land is the foundation of the potlatch tradition. As well, careful regulation of marriage partners to ensure clan exogamy – a crucial feature of the system in past times – is no longer practical; a creative practice of clan adoptions has sprung up as an adaptive substitute mechanism with political control in the house maintained by those who are entitled by birth.