Kinship in the Btisi Culture

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Kinship in the Btsisi’ Culture The Btsisi’ culture are a close knit society of horticultures; they harvest and hunt for food to survive. Through rough times, kinship is what Btsisi’ live by to help them stay alive. We will see in further reading how Btsisi’ cultures live by these ways of kinship. In this paper, we will briefly describe the Btsisi’ culture, then we will look into three different ways kinship impacts the way their culture lives, behaves, thinks and acts. Last we look into how kinship is in America and how it impacts my life. Btsisi’ are southern Aslian speaking and reside in the islands of Selangor, Malaysia as well as along the mangrove coast. The Btsisi’ economy is based on hunting and gathering in the mangrove forests, lowlands and swiddening. They also fish at sea for food (Nowak, 2008). Btsisi’ are a semi-sedentary society, they reside temporarily near swiddens. Btsisi’ cultures spend more time in boats fishing and in the forest hunting and collecting food then they do at their homes. Btsisi’ have small scattered settlements like foragers and live in low populations densities. Hunting, gathering, fishing and harvesting are an important everyday tasks in these low populations, but being close with their family is also important to the Btsisi’ culture (Laird & Nowak, 2010). When a Btsisi’ couple marries, they believe that their spouse is their best friend and would prefer to work together, then go out and work alone. A Btsisi’ couple also believes that if their partner is not their best friend, they must divorce their spouse and find a new best friend to share their life with. In the Btsisi’ culture, kinship between husband and wife is important that they value each other and their roles. When Btsisi’ marry, the male elders inform the newlyweds that they are now a team and no longer individuals and they must work together.

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