Successful Life
Perhaps the most important life time of a Tiwi male has to be during his 30s. As a young male he must learn how to become a male with many wives in order to be successful, but during his 30s to 40s he must really apply all his techniques to actually have a wife. In Tiwi communities, having a wife at least is a must or else a male’s life could be quite complicated. In Tiwi culture, women are the currency of their community, thus having plenty wives and generating female children is a must for a successful life. Although men use women as the currency of their community, ironically women are the foundation of the Tiwi culture. There could be an argument that females are the true leaders of the Tiwi tribes, because everything from family to prestige and influence revolves around women. Therefore, the marriage system of the Tiwi is just as important. This type of marriage is what defines their culture, which is basically a culture of prestige and influence based on how many wives one can achieve. The most respected person in the Tiwi culture is the old man with many wives. Compared that to the American culture where we pretty much have the survival of the fittest culture, the old man will not dominate in our culture. As I explained in the preface, we cannot judge people or compare each other because we just have different culture. In the case of prop 8, a Tiwi person would just not believe in our marriage system at all; because it’s just different from theirs. They could care less if males what to marry each other, but they would be mad to see women marrying each other since in their culture they decide with whom women marry but we know that it has to be with a male. To the Tiwi marriage is a necessity of life, they cannot live without it therefore telling them that they need to change their culture would parish the Tiwi culture forever. And for the same reason, we will never come to a solution for prop 8 because we all have different cultures, where some believe prop 8 is good, while others believe that it’s humane. That will always happen unless all human societies in the world support the same culture, which is impossible
