Welcome to Minangkabau Matrilineal Homeland.

Bukittinggi is center of the Minang culture. We can find lots of Minang's traditional 'long houses' or rumah gadang in the countryside around Bukittinggi. Rumah Gadang has distinctive roofs with a point at each end, which looks like buffalo horns. These horns are said to represent the legend of how the Minang defended their lands by winning a buffalo fight.

According to legend, once there was a disagreement between the Minangkabau people and the Javanese. Rather than involve themselves in a war, however, which would cause much needless bloodshed, the two peoples agreed upon having a fight between their buffalos. The Javanese had a huge, strong buffalo, fierce, and powerful. On the other hand, the Minangkabau people had a small calf. The Javanese were confident that their huge, powerful buffalo would easily defeat this tiny calf. How could a tiny calf beat a huge, ferocious buffalo? What the Minangkabau did was they took the calf away from its mother, and did not feed it any milk for a several days before the big fight. Just before the fight, they attached sharp, iron knives to the tip of their calf's horns. As the buffalo and the tiny calf were let into the ring, the calf, starving of milk, saw the buffalo, and thought it was its mother. Hurriedly, the calf went to the underside of the buffalo, looking for milk. As it did so, the sharp knives on the calf's horns pierced the under-belly of the huge buffalo. The huge buffalo was killed, and the Minangkabau won the war. This is how the Minangkabau got their name, according to legend, for "minang" means "victory," and "kabau" means "caribou" or "water buffalo" in the Minangkabau language. This is also the source of those buffalo's horn-shaped rooves and hats of the Minangkabau people.

• Perhaps the best known fact about the Minangkabau is their matrilineal cultural tradition. The Minangkabau are, In fact, the world's largest matrilineal group. In this tradition, the family name is not passed down from the father to his children, as it is in most cultures. Instead, the family name is inherited from the mother. Furthermore, inheritance continues through the generations from mother to daughter. This is especially true of the ancestral home, which remains the property of the Minangkabau women.
  
• Due to their matrilineal culture, Minangkabau women play an important role in the leadership and decision-making process of the traditional village government. In this system, some items (such as the ancestral home) are passed down from mother to her daughters, while other items follow the traditional Islamic method of inheritance. The family name continues to be passed from the mother to both her daughters and sons.
  
• Sons, as early as 8 years old, should sleep in the 'surau' or religious community center. They have been taught to be independent from the beginning. Probably it explains the diaspora of the male Minangs to all over Indonesia. Most of them are natural-born traders who succeed and become rich merchants or intellectuals in Java. Many open Padang cuisine restaurants all over Indonesia and in South East Asian countries. Even in Los Angeles, there are some Padang restaurants belonging to the Minangs. Though there are 3 million Minang outside West Sumatera, only about 800,000 are still in Padang, its capital city.

Matrilineal Info

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