Editing Matrilineality (section)

===Americas ===
==== Bororo ====
{{Main|Bororo}}
The Bororo people of Brazil and Bolivia live in matrilineal clans, with husbands moving to live with their wives' extended families.

==== Bribri ====
{{Main|Bribri people}}
The clan system of the Bribri people of Costa Rica and Panama is matrilineal; that is, a child's clan is determined by the clan his or her mother belongs to. Only women can inherit land.

==== Cabécar ====
{{Main|Cabécar people}}
The social organization of the Cabécar people of Costa Rica is predicated on matrilineal clans in which the mother is the head of household. Each matrilineal clan controls marriage possibilities, regulates land tenure, and determines property inheritance for its members.

==== Guna ====
{{Main|Guna people}}
In the traditional culture of the [[Guna people]] of Panama and Colombia, families are matrilinear and matrilocal, with the groom moving to become part of the bride's family. The groom also takes the last name of the bride.

==== Hopi ====
{{Main|Hopi people}}
The [[Hopi people|Hopi]] (in what is now the [[Hopi Reservation]] in northeastern [[Arizona]]), according to [[Alice Schlegel]], had as its "gender ideology&nbsp;... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality."<ref>[[Alice Schlegel|Schlegel, Alice]], ''Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority'', in ''Quarterly Journal of Ideology: "A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom"'', vol. VIII, no. 4, 1984, p. 44 and see pp. 44–52 (essay based partly on "seventeen years of fieldwork among the Hopi", per p. 44 n. 1) (author of Dep't of Anthropology, Univ. of Ariz., Tucson).</ref> According to LeBow (based on Schlegel's work), in the Hopi, "gender roles&nbsp;... are egalitarian&nbsp;.... [and] [n]either sex is inferior."<ref>LeBow, Diana, ''Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi'', ''op. cit.'', p. [8].</ref> LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in&nbsp;... political decision-making."<ref>LeBow, Diana, ''Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi'', ''op. cit.'', p. 18.</ref> According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer live as they are described here"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p44n1">Schlegel, Alice, ''Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority'', ''op. cit.'', p. 44 n. 1.</ref> and "the attitude of female superiority is fading".<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p44n1" /> Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilinial"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p45">Schlegel, Alice, ''Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority'', ''op. cit.'', p. 45.</ref> and "the household&nbsp;... was matrilocal".<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p45" />

Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that the Hopi believed in "life as the highest good&nbsp;... [with] the female principle&nbsp;... activated in women and in Mother Earth&nbsp;... as its source"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p50" /> and that the Hopi "were not in a state of continual war with equally matched neighbors"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p49">Schlegel, Alice, ''Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority'', ''op. cit.'', p. 49.</ref> and "had no standing army"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p49" /> so that "the Hopi lacked the spur to masculine superiority"<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p49" /> and, within that, as that women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems (in contrast to male predominance within the political and ceremonial systems)",<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p49" /> the [[Haudenosaunee Clan Mother|Clan Mother]], for example, being empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair,<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p50">Schlegel, Alice, ''Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority'', ''op. cit.'', p. 50.</ref> since there was no "countervailing&nbsp;... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure".<ref name="Schlegel-HopiGenderIdeoFemaleSuper-p50" />

==== Iroquois ====
{{Main|Iroquois}}
The [[Iroquois|Iroquois Confederacy or League]], combining five to six Native American [[Iroquois|Haudenosaunee]] nations or tribes before the [[United States|U.S.]] became a nation, operated by [[Great Law of Peace|The Great Binding Law of Peace]], a constitution by which women retained matrilineal-rights and participated in the League's political decision-making, including deciding whether to proceed to war,<ref>Jacobs, Renée E., ''Iroquois Great Law of Peace and the United States Constitution: How the Founding Fathers Ignored the Clan Mothers'', in ''American Indian Law Review'', vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 497–531, esp. pp. 498–509 (© author 1991).</ref> through what may have been a matriarchy<ref>Jacobs, Renée, ''Iroquois Great Law of Peace and the United States Constitution'', in ''American Indian Law Review'', ''op. cit.'', pp. 506–507.</ref> or "gyneocracy".<ref>Jacobs, Renée, ''Iroquois Great Law of Peace and the United States Constitution'', in ''American Indian Law Review'', ''op. cit.'', p. 505 & p. 506 n. 38, quoting Carr, L., ''The Social and Political Position of Women Among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes, Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology'', p. 223 (1884).</ref> The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown: the League was formed in approximately 1000–1450, but the constitution was oral until written in about 1880.<ref name="IroquoisGreatLawUSConst-p498">Jacobs, Renée, ''Iroquois Great Law of Peace and the United States Constitution'', in ''American Indian Law Review'', ''op. cit.'', p. 498 & n. 6.</ref> The League still exists.

Other Iroquoian-speaking peoples such as the [[Wyandot people|Wyandot]] and the [[Meherrin]], that were never part of the Iroquois League, nevertheless have traditionally possessed a matrilineal family structure.

==== Kogi ====
{{Main|Kogi people}}
The Kogi people of northern Colombia practice bilateral inheritance, with certain rights, names or associations descending matrilineally.

==== Lenape ====
{{Main|Lenape}}
Occupied for 10,000 years by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]], the land that is present-day [[New Jersey]] was overseen by [[clan]]s of the [[Lenape]], who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. The pattern of their culture was that of a matrilineal agricultural and mobile hunting society that was sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their ''matrilineal clan'' territories.  Leadership by men was inherited through the maternal line, and the women elders held the power to remove leaders of whom they disapproved.

Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and when they moved among their fishing and hunting grounds by seasons. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch [[New Netherland]] province dating from 1614, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City.

"Early Europeans who first wrote about these Indians found matrilineal social organization to be unfamiliar and perplexing. As a result, the early records are full of 'clues' about early Lenape society, but were usually written by observers who did not fully understand what they were seeing."<ref>This quote is from [[Lenape]]'s [[Lenni-Lenape#Society|Society]] section.</ref>

==== Mandan ====
{{Main|Mandan}}
The Mandan people of the northern Great Plains of the United States historically lived in matrilineal extended family lodges.

==== Naso ====
{{Main|Naso people}}
The Naso (Teribe or Térraba) people of Panama and Costa Rica describe themselves as a matriarchal community, although their monarchy has traditionally been inherited in the male line.

==== Navajo ====
{{Main|Navajo}}
The Navajo people of the American southwest are a matrilineal society in which kinship, children, livestock and family histories are passed down through the female. In marriage the groom moved to live with the brides family. Children also came from their mother's clan living in hogans of the females family. 

==== Tanana Athabaskan ====
{{Main|Tanana Athabaskans}}
The Tanana Athabaskan people, the original inhabitants of the Tanana River basin in Alaska and Canada, traditionally lived in matrilineal semi-nomadic bands.

==== Tsenacommacah (Powhatan Confederacy) ====
{{Main|Tsenacommacah}}
The [[Powhatan]] and other tribes of the [[Tsenacommacah]], also known as the Powhatan Confederacy, practiced a version of male-preference matrilineal [[Order of succession#Seniority|seniority]], favoring brothers over sisters in the current generation (but allowing sisters to inherit if no brothers remained), but passing to the next generation through the eldest female line. In ''A Map of Virginia'' [[John Smith of Jamestown]] explains:<blockquote>His <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Chief Powhatan]]'s] kingdome descendeth not to his sonnes nor children: but first to his brethren, whereof he hath 3 namely Opitchapan, [[Opechancanough]], and Catataugh; and after their decease to his sisters. First to the eldest sister, then to the rest: and after them to the heires male and female of the eldest sister; but never to the heires of the males.<ref>Smith, John. ''A Map of Virginia.'' Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1008 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050404050733/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1008 |date=4 April 2005 }}, also Repr. in ''The Complete Works of John Smith (1580–1631)''. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University Press of Virginia, 1983. Vol. 1, pp. 305–63.</ref></blockquote>

==== Upper Kuskokwim ====
{{Main|Upper Kuskokwim people}}
The Upper Kuskokwim people are the original inhabitants of the Upper Kuskokwim River basin. They speak an Athabaskan language more closely related to Tanana than to the language of the Lower Kuskokkwim River basin. They were traditionally hunter-gatherers who lived in matrilineal semi-nomadic bands.

==== Wayuu ====
{{Main|Wayuu people}}
The Wayuu people of Colombia and Venezuela live in matrilineal clans, with paternal relationships in the background.