“Many native American cultures have unraveled in the presence of the lethal cocktail of Christianity and capitalism.”

What is a matrilineal way of life? What does it mean to be a matrilineal people? Destiny Kinal, author of a new historical fiction novel about the men and women who strove to preserve matrilineality titled Burning Silk, recently gave a talk in Pennsylvania which noted that history shows, “Many native American cultures have unraveled in the presence of the lethal cocktail of Christianity and capitalism.” She asks the question, “how would we unravel our European histories of conquest, first by Romans then by Christians, to return to a sense of what our own clans might have been like, to puzzle out what it might have been like to be a matrilineal people. And why would we undertake that exercise? Is it too late for that kind of speculation?” Speaking about the urgent situation facing the rivers, the land, the plants, and creatures, Kinal says, “We have to turn this ungainly ship around 180 degrees in a relatively short time, the space of a single lifetime, less than one century.” The full text of her talk is available here.