The Tribe

Before there was a self, there was the tribe.

True, “tribe” is a troublesome word, bearing the weight of decades of anthropological study that privileged Western civilization over all other traditions. But let us rescue it here, pare it down to its simplest meaning, as a name for the first human communities that formed beyond the primal bonds of kinship — the beginnings of the great experiment we call society, which taught us to be human.

Before there was a self, there was the tribe.

Our earliest ancestors did not stand alone; they banded together to survive. For vast stretches of history, our consciousness was shaped by our connections to the people in closest proximity to us. Identity was like a complicated address, at the intersection of birthplace and blood, the things we chose to worship and the ways we kept ourselves alive, in a finite landscape we knew as both home and world. We were defined not by our hidden interior life but by our outward gestures, the rituals and markings we shared, the tributes we paid to common ideals of goodness and beauty — not by what made us different but by what made us the same.

True tribes shuck off labels, resist easy slotting within an index. They’re instinctual, constantly shape-shifting, drafters of their own fates. Whether rabble-rousers or quiet meditators, crusaders on a mission or proclaimers of unexpected beauty, they are family: individuals who choose to become one, and make of that communion the beginnings of a new world.

-NY TIMES

Cheers, to the Maikai Tribe.

Inspired by the sacred geometry of nature and the energy of conscious communities, this collection made for the wild woman in you.