Today, as we gather in this time that honors women, I want to share something simple, but very important.

In our way, women are not something that must be made whole later in life.
They are not waiting to become something, but rather, arriving quite complete.

From the very beginning, Creator placed within women a completeness – a balance of spirit, body, and purpose – that does not depend on anything outside of themselves.

This is something our traditions have always understood.

In the Longhouse, men must have an Atù·weh song prepared when they receive their Tuscarora name.
This is a song he carries throughout his life – something he must be ready to sing, but the women do not.
That is not an absence.
It is a recognition.

It is the understanding that women do not need to be brought into balance in the same way men do – because they already carry that balance within them from birth.

Even in ceremony, this truth is honored.

During a woman’s moon cycle, they are present, but do not participate in ceremony – not because they are lesser, but because their power is so great that it can shift the balance of what is taking place.
That is not exclusion.
That is respect for the strength they carry.

Our people have always seen this.

Women were the planters.

They placed the seeds into the earth – just as they carry life within themselves.
And like Mother Earth, who brings life from what is planted, women have always been understood as life-givers, sustainers, and protectors of continuity.

If we think of corn… it does not grow all at once.

It rises in stages – root, shoot, leaf, tassel and finally the ears of corn – each part coming forward in its proper time.
Nothing is missing.
Nothing is out of place.
It is already whole, even as it grows.

So it is with women.

Growth is not becoming complete.
Growth is the unfolding of what was already placed inside.

And in our way, this is why the Clan Mothers hold the final word – over chiefs, over councils – Clan Mothers have the final word.  Clan Mothers install chiefs and are the only ones who have the power to de-horn a chief – remove a chief or as we say traditionally, “put blood in his eyes.” 

Because they do not speak from something that was given to them later-
they speak from something they have carried since the beginning.

And even today, there are ways of understanding this that continue to affirm what our people have always known.

Science now tells us that when a woman is still in her mother’s womb, the seeds of the next generation are already forming within her.
This means that a grandmother carries, within her daughter, the beginnings of her grandchildren.

Three generations… already connected, already in relationship, before birth.

And beyond that, what a woman experiences – her environment, her nourishment, her stress, her peace – can leave marks that are carried forward into the generations that follow.

So, when we speak of women as life-givers, we are not only speaking in a spiritual way.

We are speaking of something real, something physical, something continuous-

A living connection that reaches backward and forward at the same time.

So, when we speak of blood memory, we understand this-
that life is carried forward through women,
that generations are already connected within them,
that their strength is both spiritual and physical-

Then it only makes sense…that we are a matrilineal people.

Not by accident.
Not by custom alone.

But by design.

So today, I simply want to say this to the women:

You do not need the world to complete you.
You do not need permission to be whole.

You already are.

And everything you become in this life…
is not something added to you-

It is something that was always there,
rising, in its proper time.

By Runęhkwáʔčhęʔ Duane Brayboy, Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, Bear Clan