mini-k’iwh’e:n (For That Purpose—I Consider Things)

Introduction

There are many cultural truisms associated with Indigenous peoples and their menstrual customs but none are more prevalent or widespread than that of the “menstrual hut.” In 2012, Jezebel, a popular feminist blog posted a story on Beverly Strassman’s work with the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa. The headline on the blog read “Menstrual Huts: A Tricky Way for Men to Ensure Ladies Don’t Cheat on Them?” and it summarized Strassman’s research as finding that these huts are so visible because

. . . it makes it easy for husbands to track their wives menstrual cycle and fertile periods. It may not mean they could make their wife any less likely to cheat on them while they’re fertile, but at least they would know when to impregnate her so that someone else couldn’t get in there first, I suppose? (Murdoch, 2012)

The comments on the blog illuminate how theories of menstruation and menstrual practices among Indigenous cultures are treated as fact, or basic “cultural knowledge.” For instance, several of the blog comments assume that “menstrual huts” are uncomfortable, small, hot, and unsanitary. One commenter wrote, “I feel terrible for those women who have terrible cramps. Can you imagine being stuck in one of those hot huts with awful cramps” (Murdoch, 2012). Another commenter lamented the lack of information on these “menstrual huts” writing, “ . . . I’ve never heard of the huts being an empowering thing from women. For most cultures, it seems to me that it ranges from mild hygienic issues to full blown shaming (the whole ‘unclean’ bit, whatever that means).”

How and why these cultural truisms about Indigenous menstrual practices remain prevalent are rarely explored in contemporary cultural studies of menstruation. It is my argument that the continued dismissal of Indigenous menstrual customs as primitive and/or oppressive of women is built from a settler colonial desire to make Indigenous knowledges obsolete and Indigenous ceremonies and cultures primitive remnants of the past. Settler colonialism, as defined by Patrick Wolfe (1999), is a continuous set of structures that are ongoing and ever present and are designed to claim land by doing whatever is necessary to erase Indigenous claims to land, culture, and even history. Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill (2013) note that settler colonialism is deeply intertwined and also depends on heteropatriarchal social systems “in which heterosexuality and patriarchy are perceived as normal and natural and in which other configurations are perceived as abnormal, aberrant, and abhorrent” (p. 13). A significant aspect of settler colonialism is the attempts at, in the words of Scott Morgensen (2010), “erasure of gendered and sexual possibility” (p. 116).

The high regard for menstruation as demonstrated through Indigenous women’s coming of age ceremonies and the continuing rituals of menstruation among Indigenous peoples has not been critically engaged with and is often relegated to dismissive and oversimplified statements about Indigenous menstrual practices. Menstruation is conceived as a “curse” in Western culture and Indigenous menstrual customs aggrieved settlers who saw these practices of celebration and meditation as particularly detrimental to the settler colonial project because they demonstrated the power to resist settler ideals of domesticity and assimilation. It was from this mind-set that a scholarly record of menstrual studies and menstrual discourse was built with a rhetoric and analysis that rendered Native people, their cultures, and their philosophies as oppressive to women and based in a theorized universal menstrual taboo.

This article provides an Indigenous feminist critique of contemporary menstrual discourse that relies on ill-informed assumptions of Indigenous menstrual practices. I begin with a short history of settler colonialism and Western menstrual discourse. I then provide an Indigenous feminist critique of modern cultural histories of menstruation by specifically focusing on two texts, written a decade apart, that each attempted to provide a thorough and well-researched history of contemporary menstrual taboos. The first text, The Curse Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation, was written by Karen Houppert and published in 1999. It quickly became a popular go-to text for information on modern menstrual discourse. Ten years later, Elissa Stein and Susan Kim published Flow: The Cultural History of Menstruation (2009), which attempted to provide an accessible and updated history of menstrual discourse. Both of these texts include brief mentions of Indigenous menstrual customs as being about taboos based on pollution and isolation. The cultural truisms associated with Indigenous cultures—that women were isolated in “menstrual huts,” that menstruating women were considered polluting or unlucky, and that menstruation was tied to “magic” and “voodoo”—are rooted in a settler colonial historical record that erased the power of women from Native cultures and societies. In the final part of this article, I provide an intervention on the assumed Indigenous menstrual taboo by looking at the traditional menstrual practices of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, located in Northern California. It is through this in-depth analysis of Hupa menstrual practices that we see how Native nations are able to continuously challenge settler colonialism through Indigenous feminisms and provide a decolonizing lens to contemporary scholarship that not only imagines alternative analyses but also acknowledges that these alternatives did, have always, and will always exist.

Settler Colonialism and Western Menstrual Discourse

According to cultural historian Harold Driver (1941), rituals for menstruation and coming of age “characterized by seclusion and private rituals of cleansing, are nearly universal among North American [Indian] peoples” (p. 21). Women’s menstruation and menstrual practices were not only regarded as a rite of passage marking adulthood but also as a “rite of passage to the spiritual” and important to the balance and well-being of the community and the earth itself (Markstrom, 2008, p. 79).

Indigenous menstrual customs conceptualize menstruation not as taboo or pollution but instead as being about power and responsibility. In their cross-cultural study of menstrual practices, Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb (1988) determine that

Many menstrual taboos, rather than protecting society from a universally ascribed feminine evil, explicitly protect the perceived creative spirituality of menstruous women from the influence of others in a more neural state, as well as protecting the latter in turn from the potent, positive spiritual force ascribed to such women. In other cultures menstrual customs, rather than subordinating women to men fearful of them, provide women with means of ensuring their own autonomy, influence and social control. (p. 7)

There has been significant research done by Indigenous feminist scholars that explores many traditional Native societies as “egalitarian” groups, where the roles of women and men were balanced and where women had “religious, political and economic—not more power than men, but at least equal to what men had” (Mihesuah, 2003, p. 2). Native American women exercised control over their own lives, participated in governmental affairs, exercised sexual autonomy, owned property, and served as spiritual leaders and doctors. These types of epistemological beliefs were physical and social demonstrations of gender equality that are central to Indigenous societies.

The post-invasion history of Native lands contains brutal, disquieting truths about the settlement of what would become North America (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Norton, 1979; Stannard, 1993). The violence enacted against Native peoples throughout the history of Western settlement was also gendered (Smith, 2005). Settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and heteropaternalism became foundational to the establishment of nation-states throughout the Americas and, most important, a “persistent social and political formation” meant to “disappear the Indigenous peoples” who were deemed in the way of progress and societal development (Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013, p. 9).

Violence was integral to the success of these endeavors. This violence is perpetuated most clearly as a gendered violence because, as Dian Million (2013) argues, “Gendered violence is perpetuated by individuals and polities in times when heteronormative order is threatened, and likewise when there is a threat to the power still invested in a racialized white male universal subject” (p. 177). The movement by Indigenous cultures and societies to no longer practice their menstrual customs was not, as is often implied, something benign or happenstance, but instead was accomplished through depraved gendered violence enacted by a heteronormative settler colonial society.

Following this genocide of Native people, federal, state, and local governments passed policies and laws aimed at assimilating Native people primarily through molding them into an ideal of Western, Christian, heteropatriarchal norms. Assimilation programs such as the boarding schools and the allotment process both focused on a heteronormative, patriarchal restructuring of Native cultures and societies (Cahill, 2011). These efforts were particularly obsessed with the regulation of the Native female body as a means to forward the so-called “progress” of Native people toward a more Westernized society. Million (2013) refers to this as “regulatory violence” explaining that “it is a regulatory violence that coalesces in the evisceration of Indigenous women’s constitutive power to inform their own Indigenous nations” (p. 7). Native lives became regulated and bureaucratized and the systemic and institutional violence inherent to the settler colonial society became part of a “normal” everyday existence.

Boarding schools, along with attempting to assimilate Native children and create a working underclass of Native people, were also a mechanism by which to control Indian women and to normalize violence and surveillance of their bodies. Young Native girls and boys had to conform to rigorous standards of Western gender identity (Child, 1998). The Western femininity and masculinity enforced as part of these assimilation programs was not peaceful or passive but more often involved in repeated violence against Native children through inappropriate surveillance of their bodies and also physical violations of their bodies (Million, 2013). There was, among boarding school agents, an obsession with menstruation and attempts at reconfiguring menstrual practices among Indian peoples as well. The belief was that young Indian children were prone to sexual activity and this was one of the reasons why they were separated and also why the matrons kept extensive records of girls’ menstrual cycles (Child, 1998). Whereas menstruation used to be a time of celebration, it was now treated as a disease and disorder and also confirmation of the lowly status of Native women.

It was not only eradicating Indigenous menstrual practices and ceremonies that was desired by agents of settler colonialism, but it was also the eradication of these practices from the historical record and/or the primitivization of these practices to justify their eradication. The study of menstruation had gained momentum throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries and focused inordinately on pollution and taboo (Buckley & Gottlieb, 1988). Some scholars have traced the view of menstruation as taboo to biblical times (Van De Walle & Renne, 2001). Professor of demography, Etienne Van De Walle (2001), argues that “ . . . there do not seem to have been menstrual taboos” in classical Greece and notes that, “In Greek medicine, the idea of menstruation as cleansing dominates the Hippocratic tradition” (Van De Walle & Renne, p. xix). Van de Walle argues that the conceptualization of menstruation as negative, polluting, and taboo is a development from the 19th century along with, what she calls, “an enormous expansion of contraceptive and abortive practices” (p. xxiii).

As a biological or medical phenomenon, early menstrual research often focused on the toxicity of menstrual blood. Early biological theories of menstruation included debates about what a healthy menstrual cycle looked like and the possible dangers of irregular or regulated menstruation (Brodie, 2001; Vollman, 1977). Bela Schick (1920) labeled the potential toxic component of menstrual blood as “menotoxins” and he maintained that he had witnessed plants wilting because of menstruating girls touching them. The theories of “pollution” and “toxicity” immediately led to these culturally constructed scientific theories to be treated as fact. Thus, menstrual blood becomes toxic, and not curative, its power lying in its ability to pollute or harm, not its healthy properties or functions. The Western menstrual taboo would not only influence theories and ideas about Indigenous menstrual customs, but would also rely on this settler colonial rhetoric to help support a continuing politics of taboo.

The politics of taboo created by Western scholars was heavily invested in justifying and normalizing Western heteropatriarchy by making women and their bodies “taboo.” This was meant to also justify Western menstrual taboos as part of a “normal” progression of cultures from primitive to civilized. In 1954, Bruno Bettelheim theorized that primitive men were jealous of women’s menstruation, which is why they instilled menstrual taboos. It was also why, in his opinion, men developed male-focused initiation rites that specifically involved the cutting and bleeding of the initiates. In 1959, William Stephens developed a psychoanalytic theory of menstrual taboos as being tied to male “castration anxiety.” Other anthropological theories also attempted to trace the history of taboos as being tied to women and some anthropologists believed that it was women who originated menstrual taboos and menstrual practices. In this case, anthropologists argued that the present-day treatment of women is because “men hate women because they were formerly subjugated by them” (Laws, 1990, p. 23). In 1975, Elizabeth Gould Davis wrote that matriarchies were how cultures first organized politically and that menstrual taboos were how the women leaders kept order in their societies.

It wasn’t until 1998 that Thomas Buckley and Anna Gottlieb provided one of the most comprehensive and cross-cultural approaches to menstruation in their edited text Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation. Buckley and Gottlieb argue that, “While menstruation itself has at least a degree of biological regularity, its symbolic voicing and valences are strikingly variable, both cross-culturally and within single cultures” (p. 3). Buckley and Gottlieb are able to successfully intervene on an anthropological discourse of menstruation that, in their view, “has been limited by a paucity of detail regarding such variations, by imbalances in ethnographic reporting, and by overly reductionist theoretical frameworks” (p. 3). They are interested in challenging the theories of “menstrual symbolism” and “the traditional male-focused structure of ethnological inquiry” (p. 5). Buckley and Gottlieb demonstrate for their readers that although many of these anthropological and ethnographic findings have “entered into popular culture and truisms” they very clearly state that “‘The menstrual taboo’ as such does not exist” (p. 7).

Feminism, Indigenous Feminisms, and Contemporary Cultural Studies of Menstruation

In 1976, Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth wrote The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation a now oft-cited text credited with ushering in a new era of menstrual studies. The text was subsequently revised and expanded in 1988. In the text, they provide a history of menstruation and ultimately conclude that

We believe, from the available evidence that the taboos as taboos were probably enforced by men, who connected this mysterious phenomenon with the cycles of the moon, the rhythm of the tides, the disappearance of the sun in nightly darkness and who feared such cosmic power in the apparent control of a member of their own species. (p. 8)

Part One of Delaney et al.’s (1998) text is called “The Tabooed Woman” and it begins as follows:

Greater than his fear of death, dishonor, or dismemberment has been primitive man’s respect for menstrual blood. The measures he has taken to avoid this mysterious substance have affected his mealtimes, his bedtimes, and his hunting season; and primitive woman, unable to separate herself from her blood, knew that upon her tabooed state depended the safety of the entire society. (p. 7)

The first few pages of this opening chapter explore examples of Indigenous societies such as the New Guinea Mae Enga, the Maori of New Zealand, and shortly thereafter a generalized “primitive society” where “the menstruating woman was excluded from the most ordinary life of her tribe for four or five days every month” (Delaney et al. 1988, p. 9). Delaney et al. rely in this section on anthropological sources and they mention specifically work done by anthropologist Margaret Mead with the Arapesh of New Guinea. They end with “Today’s hunting lodge, that no-woman’s land of whiskey and Winchesters, echoes these primitive taboos” (Delaney et al. 1988, p. 11).

I begin with Delaney et al., precisely because their text is so foundational to modern menstrual studies and the continuing discourse on menstruation in cultural studies texts. Delaney et al. engage with Indigenous menstrual customs only to dismiss them as ancient, primitive, and ill-informed. Their oft-cited text has little critical engagement with the overgeneralized assumptions about Indigenous menstrual practices. Following Delaney et al.’s seminal work on menstrual taboos and menstrual discourse, there have been several contemporary studies that have been published in an effort to continue their work. These modern and contemporary approaches to menstrual studies dismiss Indigenous epistemologies of menstruation and in fact celebrate their eventual demise because of how “primitive” they must have been. Again, cultural truisms of Indigenous cultures, made popular by anthropological theories, are treated as fact although Indigenous people are written about as primitive, obsolete cultures.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe, Hupa Feminisms, and Indigenous Menstrual Discourse

The Hoopa Valley ² is a lush, fertile valley located in Northern California that stretches 139 square miles. The Hupa call the valley na:tini-xw, “where the trails return” and they call themselves na:tinixwe, “the people of the valley.” The Hupa people have a long and ancient history that includes not only more recent histories of contact with Western cultures but also stories of a time before humans existed, what they refer to as “the before time.” The ancient histories of Hupa people reflect a culture and society based on an egalitarian structure of gender that values balance and respect for women and men. This epistemological foundation is clearly demonstrated in the oral traditions of the Hupa, and is reflected in the organization of their society and cultural practices where the Hupa live in relationship with their land and where every aspect of this landscape, history, and community is embodied by the K’ixinay, the Hupa “First People.”

Hupa culture, epistemologies, and cultural practices clearly demonstrate how the tribe was socially constructed around gender balance and gender equality prior to invasion by settlers. Hupa women held leadership positions, they were medicine women, they were primary caretakers, they could own property, they could decide to divorce, and they could exercise autonomy in all parts of their lives. This autonomy is clearly demonstrated in the menstrual practices that were a part of Hupa culture and society.

The Hupa have a very elaborate, public ceremony that celebrates a young woman’s first menstruation. The ceremony is called ch’iłwa:l meaning “they beat time with sticks” noting the instruments that are used as part of this ceremony to bless the young woman. These ceremonies demonstrate how women are foundational to their communities, and make women’s experiences central to the balance of community, culture, spirituality, and futurities. This empowerment of young women, and by extension the community, builds a foundation for how the Hupa enact their sovereignty and self-determination by clearly including gender equality, empowerment, and autonomy of women as part of the very foundation of culture and society.

The Hupa also had a woman’s house for use during menstruation, which became commonly referred to by anthropologists as a “menstrual hut.” The term “menstrual hut” is probably one of the greatest misnomers perpetuated by anthropologists studying “other” cultures. Delaney et al. (1988) describe the menstrual hut as “a cramped dwelling of leaves and bark, set at some distance from the village” (p. 9). Stein and Kim (2009) write that being “shut away in a menstrual hut” was “ . . . like the ultimate gender diss” (p. 39). They describe the house as “a dark hut” where women were treated “like some kind of leper for four days” (p. 39). They continue “ . . . even though your typical menstrual hut was apparently a far cry from a day spa, perhaps women actually appreciated the time off, a time when they could routinely escape the rigors of daily life” (p. 39). Laws (1990) describes menstrual huts as being reported in various literatures as

generally clearly uncomfortable and unpleasant to be in. They enact the “special” oppressed status of women—either they are individual huts, isolated on the margins of the settlement, or they are placed centrally in the village so that men can be certain that women are staying in “their place.” (p. 27)

There is no “menstrual hut” in Hupa culture (and if I do one thing through my research, I sincerely hope to eliminate the reference to these women’s houses as “menstrual huts”). “Menstrual hut” is a translation used to refer to the house where women gathered during certain periods of time in their life, which included menstruation, but could also include other significant events. The Hupa call this women’s house the min’ch. ³ And, although the Hupa dictionary currently adopts the popularized definition of “menstrual hut,” this is not reflective of what the word actually means. Min’ch is actually translated as “a small, familiar house.”

These houses were not rude, or hastily built structures. Northwest California Native people lived in permanent well-designed housing structures and only lived in temporary structures during some summer months if they wanted to relocate closer to the river. Buckley (1982) asserts that in Northwest California, a flimsy shelter such as one made of grass, or hastily put together, would not be associated with such an important function. Buckley’s point should not be easily dismissed, especially considering that, for the tribes in Northwest California, these “menstrual huts” served multiple functions for women. Women would also reside in these houses after giving birth or having a miscarriage. In these two instances, the health and well-being of the women and/or newborn children is paramount. Suggesting that Native people would build a temporary, unsanitary, and uncomfortable dwelling for these situations is naive, especially when the proliferation of these dwellings is tied to the continuation of their culture and society.

Hupa women were also able to exercise their own autonomy in regard to their length of stay in the min’ch and there are several documentations of ceremonies that could be performed to shorten the stay in the min’ch and resume activities (Goddard, 1903). This did not necessarily mean that these formulas and herbs could stop menstruation (although there is some suggestion that they could) but, more important, that symbolically a woman could end her participation in menstrual practices by performing this ceremony while preserving the power and luck that was associated with menstruation. A menstrual taboo, as described by Western scholarship, would necessitate an actual distaste for the physical presence of blood or even the presence of a woman who had not fully completed the prescribed number of days in the “menstrual hut.” Here, we see very clearly that this was not true of the Hupa, and instead, women were given the social autonomy to make decisions about how they would like to best practice their menstrual customs.

The Hupa also had many ways to talk about menstruation, although one term in particular demonstrates how Hupa people conceptualized menstruation not as a “taboo” but instead as an important part of their spirituality and culture. Tim-na’me means “at the lucky spot—she bathes.” The tim is “a bathing spot for menstruating women” but also “any place you train for good luck or power.” During the ch’iłwa:l (women’s coming of age ceremony) the kinahłdung (young woman who has menstruated for the first time) will bathe in each of these “lucky spots” as part of her daily run. Men could also use these bathing spots (separately), if needed, to increase their luck and power. Had the Hupa believed that menstruation was polluting, or dirty, or even that menstruating women could harm, they would not have allowed men to also use these bathing spots or associated them with “luck.” This clearly demonstrates how the Hupa people valued menstruation as something powerful.

The power of menstruation can also be seen as intimately tied to the world renewal ceremonies of the Hupa tribe. The women’s coming of age ceremony (ch’iłwa:l) is the third dance that is danced for all time by the K’ixinay (First People) in the ch’idilye:-wint’e:-ding. Ch’idilye:-wint’e:-ding is translated to “religious dance—always—place” or “the place where they are always dancing the world renewal dances.” Being that the term ch’idilye was used to establish the Jump Dance and Deerskin dance as “religious dances” tied to world renewal, it is particularly illuminating that the only other dance specifically tied to this K’ixinay dance place is the ch’iłwa:l or women’s coming of age ceremony. This dance is focused on young women, coming of age, and first menstruation, and its inclusion as part of “place here they are always dancing . . . ” is a significant indicator of not only how Hupa people valued women in culture and spirituality but also the power women had during this time to help communicate and interact with the balancing power of the universe.

Conclusion

I must caution against universalizing the analysis provided here in regard to cultural specifics such as the use of women’s houses in Hupa culture, or the celebration of a first menstruation. Indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their spiritualties are very diverse. However, I offer my analysis of the Hoopa Valley Tribe precisely because it demonstrates how complex Indigenous menstrual practices are. There is an opportunity here to explore further how Indigenous cultures from around the world view and understand menstruation by providing a decolonized, Indigenous feminist analysis of these epistemologies informed by the cultures themselves. Within many of our Indigenous societies, although gender equality is a fundamental building block of our ancient epistemologies, it has been systematically erased from the historical record. The continued primitivizing of Indigenous peoples and their epistemologies helps to support an ongoing settler colonial project to justify the continued dismissal of Indigenous peoples as vibrant, modern Nations with rightful claims to territory and continued ceremonial practices. My hope is that the methodologies I offer in this article as applied to the Hoopa Valley Tribe can be further utilized by other Indigenous communities to (re)write and (re)right how we understand Indigenous menstrual practices.