Ata Tana 'Ai - Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The social world of the Ata Tana 'Ai is constructed of smaller groups subsumed within larger groups. An individual's primary group of reference is the lepo, a word that denotes both a physical edifice and a social unit of a particular kind. The principle governing lepo membership is that each Ata Tana 'Ai belongs to the lepo of his or her mother. The membership of the lepo is thus a matrilineal descent group that consists of consanguineally related women and their brothers. The core of the lepo is a group of consanguineally related women in whom is vested commonly shared rights to garden land and ceremonial wealth, and whose decisions regarding the distribution of these resources within the lepo cannot be gainsaid.

Kinship Terminology. The Ata Tana 'Ai say that among a person's kin are those with whom he or she is mein ha (one blood), and others who are méin pé-péhan (different blood). All the members of a lepo (a person's mother, mother's sisters, mother's sisters' children, mother's brother, brothers, sisters, sisters' children, and, for a woman, her children) are of the same maternal blood, which defines house membership. Kinship traced through men entails relationships of different blood. Thus a person's father, father's siblings, father's siblings' children and, for a man, his children, are conceived to be of different blood.

The classification of cousins is ambiguous in one respect. Mother's sister's son and father's brother's son, and mother's sister's daughter and father's brother's daughter, are classed as brother and sister, respectively. Father's sister's son and mother's brother's daughter are voue wari, the term used without reference to birth order and otherwise used to denote elder and younger siblings and parallel cousins of the same sex. Wué wari cousins can marry. However, a man's father's sister's daughter and a woman's mother's brother's son are both winé and nara, respectively, and wué wari too. While there is no proscription of the marriage of father's sister's daughter and mother's brother's son, such marriages do not occur.