Rejection of Patriarchal Values

The Naomi dress

This dress is for my daughter. She has always taken an interest in knowing how continue the “making” and traditional ecological knowledge that is incorporated into each element of a dress. The materials for this dress were collected in the village of tsɨtpxatu (place of the whales). This is our material place and the village that our matrilineal line has had strong ties to for countless generations.

For us, this dress, like others created in this way, is a tribute to our matrilineal lines, traditionally-practiced matrifocal leadership, as well as a resistance to the patriarchal values that interrupted gender equity in many tribal communities. When we wear or display my dresses, I choose to not incorporate a “top.” Before settler-colonialism, we did not cover our chests with an article of clothing.

Beginning with Spanish occupation, their missions and their belief systems forcefully imposed a sexualized and shameful narrative upon on our bodies. Prior to European contact, we didn’t view breasts or our bodies negatively. By intentionally displaying, or wearing, these garments in the ways we would have before patriarchal indoctrination, we reassert our own value systems in relationship to our bodies.