I've brought this up on the Discord before but since I've been procrastinating from writing thinking about this instead I feel like I'll have to throw this on here as well so that at least I can point at it when I ask myself why there were no words added to the doc in the past hour or so. Talking about Ikrie, Mailen and their quest as one does on the regular has spawned a new brain worm regarding the White Teeth's initiation. Something about it always struck me as odd, but I could never put my finger on it. There's this trial to determine which young hunters are accepted into the werak. It has draconic rules, hunters regularly die to them, and what's more, the people in charge don't seem to care too much, at least not in front of an outsider (which will certainly be a contributing factor). In the end, the person who joins the werak is not the one that is portrayed as having finished the trial successfully. The quest name, The Survivor, clearly refers to Ikrie, and as survival is the end goal of the trial, Ikrie's the one who has prevailed, but she broke the rules. It makes no sense. Unless that's the point of it. Now hear me out (gonna put this under a cut because it got long.)
No one's watching the hunters. They send them away and wait at Keener's Rock, which is even with Horizon's warped maps, not exactly next to the glacier. They can do whatever they want. But they've been sent into a situation where it's more likely to survive if you can depend on each other, which is a quality you would want in a werak that's out for big fights and glory. The White Teeth test the limits of young hunters, and either they overcome them or die. But surely a werak that places survival over everything else would accept survival at any cost? So, what if the White Teeth's initiation was never about surviving on their own, but to see if they were willing and able to bend the rules and depend on each other in life-threatening situations? The ancestors weren't separated on that glacier, they endured together. Why would you ask the opposite of your hunters under the cover of tradition, especially when weraks generally are about community, and being stronger together? You wouldn't want someone to watch your back who refuses to adapt to the circumstances. So technically Mailen failed it the moment she insisted on sticking to the rules.
She argues her weakness would've put Ikrie in danger, so abandoning her would've been the right thing to do, but the Banuk don't strike me as a tribe that would just throw lives away willingly, not ones--like in this case--they could easily save. And yes, they're a proud people, but taking pride in abandoning people which will definitely lead to their deaths? What do they have the weraks for, then, if not to help each other, especially those that are in need of assistance?
You could argue the White Teeth only accept the strongest hunters, but they're also described as "one of the greatest weraks" of which "not so many are left". "Great" implies they have a reputation, a reputation is built over time, and to last, people have to help each other. Even the--by their definition--strongest hunter can have an accident, and if no one's there for them, the werak will inevitably grow weaker, and finally vanish. So they must look out for each other if they want to survive. Which brings me back to the initial point: a test to see who lives and who dies according to the rules is not to weed out the "weak" but those who don't cooperate, who are not willing to adapt.
It just doesn't make sense to found and lead a werak on the principal of the survival of the fittest because inevitably there will be no one left. They seem strict towards their initiates, but we never get to see how they interact with each other once you've been accepted. Mailen is injured, and badly enough that she would've likely died without Ikrie's and Aloy's help being in no shape to return, and will be a hindrance for a while. They seem to have no issue with that. I outright refuse to believe they just leave more seriously injured or sick people to die, like Mailen believes is the right way to go about it as in her mind, taking care of them would endanger others that are still healthy. Which is incredibly tortured logic I just can't see working in a group that has existed, in one form or another, for enough time to make a name for themselves. So tl;dr: I don't think the White Teeth and their rules are the problem, as they likely don't even care as much as they pretend to. Mailen's mindset is.