Totem
A totem (derived from the Ojibwe or Ojibwa word doodem) is an object considered sacred, usually carved in wood, or a symbol that serves as a emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
Although the word totem itself is an anglicization of the Ojibwe term, and both the word and the beliefs associated with it are part of the Ojibwe language and culture, belief in spirits and guardian deities it is not limited to the Ojibwe people. Similar concepts, with different names and with variations in beliefs and practices, can be found in various cultures throughout the world. The term has also been adopted, and sometimes redefined, by anthropologists and philosophers from different cultures.
Contemporary movements of contemporary neo-shamanic, New Age and mythopoeic men who are not involved in the practice of a traditional tribal religion are known to use "totem" for personal identification with a tutelary spirit or spirit guide. However, this can be seen as cultural misappropriation.
Ojibwe doodemen
The Anishinaabe peoples are divided into several doodeman, or clans, (singular: doodem) named primarily for animal totems (or doodem, as an Ojibwe person would say this word). In Anishinaabemowin, ode' means "heart". Doodem o clan would literally translate as 'the expression of, or having to do with, ones heart', with doodem referring to extended family. According to Anishinaabe oral tradition, in prehistoric times the Anishinaabe lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean when the great beings Miigis appeared from the sea. These beings taught the Mide way of life to the Waabanakiing peoples. Six of the seven great Miigis beings left to teach established the odoodeman for the peoples of the east. The five original Anishinaabe totem poles were Wawaazisii (bull's head), Baswenaazhi Aan'aawenh echo, i.e. crane), Aan'aawenh (pintail duck), Nooke (cuddly, i.e. bear) and Moozwaanowe ("little" moose tail).
Totem Poles
Totem poles of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America are monumental poles carved with many different designs (bears, birds, frogs, people, and various supernatural beings and aquatic creatures). They serve multiple purposes in the communities that make them. Like other forms of heraldry, they can function as crests for families or chiefs, tell stories belonging to those families or chiefs, or commemorate special occasions. These stories are known to be read from the bottom of the pole to the top. superior.
Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders
Spiritual and mutual relationships between Aboriginal Australians, Torres Strait Islanders and the natural world are often described as totem poles. Many indigenous groups object to the use of the term "totem pole" imported from Ojibwe to describe a pre-existing and independent practice, although others use the term. The term "token" has replaced "totem" in some areas.
In some cases, such as the Yuin of coastal New South Wales, a person may have multiple totems of different types (personal, family or clan, gender, tribal and ceremonial). The lakinyeri or clans of the Ngarrindjeri were associated with one or two plant or animal totems, called ngaitji. Totems are sometimes linked to remains of relationships (as in the case of Wangarr relationships for the Yolngu).
Torres Strait Islanders have auguds, usually translated as totem poles. An augud could be a kai augud ("main totem") or mugina augud ("small totem").
Early anthropologists sometimes attributed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander totemism to ignorance of procreation, with the entry of an ancestral spiritual individual (the "totem") into the woman which is believed to be the cause of the pregnancy (rather than insemination). James George Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy wrote that Aboriginal people "have no idea that procreation is directly associated with sexual intercourse, and strongly believe that children can be born without it" 34;. Frazer's thesis has been criticized by other anthropologists, including Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in 1938 Nature.
Anthropological Perspectives
Early anthropologists and ethnologists such as James George Frazer, Alfred Cort Haddon, John Ferguson McLennan, and William Rivers identified totemism as a shared practice among indigenous groups in unconnected parts of the world, typically reflecting a stage of human development.
Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan, following the research fashion of the 19th century, approached totemism from a extensive in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869, 1870). McLennan did not seek to explain the specific origin of the totemic phenomenon, but sought to indicate that the entire human race had passed, in the antiquity, by a totemic stage.
Another Scottish scholar, Andrew Lang, in the early XX century, argued for a nominalist explanation of totemism, namely, that local groups or clans, by selecting a totemic name from the realm of nature, were reacting to the need to differentiate themselves. If the origin of the name was forgotten, Lang argued, a mystical relationship between the object followed, from which the name was derived. name, and the groups that bore those names. Through nature myths, animals and natural objects were regarded as relatives, patrons, or ancestors of the respective social units.
British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer published Totemism and Exogamy in 1910, a four-volume work based largely on his research among indigenous Australians and Melanesians, together with a compilation of the work of others writers in the field.
By 1910, the idea that totemism had common properties across cultures was being challenged, and Russian-American ethnologist Alexander Goldenweiser subjected totemic phenomena to harsh criticism. Goldenweiser compared indigenous Australians and British Columbia First Nations to show that the supposedly shared qualities of totemism—exogamy, naming, totem descent, taboo, ceremony, reincarnation, guardian spirits, and secret societies and art—were actually expressed. very differently between Australia and British Columbia, and between different towns in Australia and between different towns in British Columbia. He then extends his analysis to other groups to show that they share some of the customs associated with totemism, without having totems. He concludes by offering two general definitions of totemism, one of which is: "Totemism is the tendency of certain social units to associate themselves with objects and symbols of emotional value."
The founder of a French school of sociology, Émile Durkheim, examined totemism from a sociological and theological point of view, trying to discover a pure religion in very ancient forms and claimed to see the origin of religion in totemism.
The leading representative of British social anthropology, AR Radcliffe-Brown, took a totally different view of totemism. Like Franz Boas, he was skeptical that totemism could be described in a unified way. In this he was opposed by the other pioneer of social anthropology in England, Bronisław Malinowski, who wanted to somehow confirm the unity of totemism and approached the issue more from a biological and psychological point of view than from an ethnological point of view. According to Malinowski, totemism was not a cultural phenomenon, but the result of trying to satisfy basic human needs within the natural world. As far as Radcliffe-Brown is concerned, totemism was made up of elements that were borrowed from different areas and institutions, and what they have in common is a general tendency to characterize segments of the community through a connection to a portion of the community. nature. In opposition to Durkheim's theory of sacralization, Radcliffe-Brown took the view that nature is embedded in the social order rather than secondary to it. At first, he shared Malinowski's view that an animal becomes totemic when it is "good to eat." He later came to oppose the usefulness of this view, as many totems, such as crocodiles and flies, are dangerous and unsavory.
In 1938, the structural functionalist anthropologist AP Elkin wrote Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them. His typologies of totemism included eight "forms" and six "functions".
The forms identified were:
- individual (a personal totem),
- sex (a totem for each gender),
- half (the "tribu" consists of two groups, each with a totem),
- section (the "tribu" consists of four groups, each with a totem),
- subsection (the "tribu" consists of eight groups, each with a totem),
- clan (a group with common descent sharing a totem or totems),
- local (people who live or were born in a particular area share a totem) and
- "multiple" (people from all groups share a totem).
The functions identified were:
- social (totems regulate marriage and often a person cannot eat the flesh of his totem),
- cult (totems associated with a secret organization),
- conception (multiple meanings),
- dream (the person appears as this totem in the dreams of others),
- classification (totem classifies people) and
- assistant (totem helps a healer or intelligent person).
The terms in the Elkin typologies have some use today, but Aboriginal customs are considered more diverse than their typologies suggest.
As the main representative of modern structuralism, the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and his Le Totémisme aujourd'hui ("Totemism Today" [1958]) are often cited in the field.
In the 21st century, Australian anthropologists question the extent to which "totemism" it can be generalized even across different Australian Aboriginal peoples, let alone other cultures such as the Ojibwe, from which the term was originally derived. Rose, James and Watson write that:
The term "totem" has proved to be a blunt instrument. Much more subtlety is required and, again, there are regional variations on this subject.
Literature
Poets, and to a lesser extent fiction writers, often use anthropological concepts, including the anthropological understanding of totemism. For this reason, literary criticism often resorts to psychoanalytic and anthropological analyses.