This was sent to me by my last doula via email...

post-capitalistic peaceful societies -- materno-centric perspectives

Kaarina Kailo, Ph. D. (Finland)

"To create fertile conditions for post-capitalistic peaceful societies, we need to expose the horrendous honor/shame system, which is the psychological anchor of asymmetrical and violent gender relations. By attributing honor to the violent control of women’s life and sexuality, these systems support war and oppression. We need to adopt matristic notions of honor based on ecological, social, cultural and biological sustainability, gift circulation, and the life-enhancing, egalitarian principles of matriarchal cultures, adapted to diverse cultural contexts. We need to respond to the needs of Mother Earth."

Barbara Alice Mann, Ph.D., Bear Clan of the Ohio Seneca, Iroquois (USA)

"It is profoundly demoralizing to indigenous peoples from matrilineal cultures to find their thousands of years of history ignored, dismissed, or downplayed by academic statements that present patriarchal oppression as a ‘given’ since ‘time began’, when, in fact, their own cultures serve as known and knowable templates for societies based on co-operation and mutual respect. Tacitly regarding patriarchy and domination as ‘the norm’ sabotages efforts to present alternative models as legitimate. Therefore, Matriarchal Studies must first explore and best document known models of open, egalitarian, participatory, and shared cultures, with any references to domination, oppression, and patriarchy as purely secondary and non-formative."

Caresse Bennett (USA)

"We declare that it is no longer acceptable to define any human being as superior to another. It is no longer acceptable to define any person as acceptable to exploit – whether that person be disabled, of a different race, an elderly person, a woman, or of any other differentiated group.

We will form networks and alliances between women and men of all nations who love and respect the Divine Feminine and live up to her principles. And who are willing to create life-based, successful, economic models that help to see that there are alternatives.

We declare that we will look to the wisdom of the indigenous peoples worldwide to help us to create the new models."

Lydia Ruyle, artist (USA)

"The ancient mothers are calling each of us to remember and return the soul to the images and stories of the divine feminine, the goddess. –

If you want to change reality: just do it! That is what crones do. They don’t whine, they just do it."

excerpts from Second World Congress on Matriarchal Studies
September 29 – October 2 in San Marcos, Texas/USA