Note: all original writing (presented here) is copyrighted by the Library of Congress to Mary Magoulick. It may be used only according to copyright law and by permission of the author.
Traditional
Teaching Narratives
in
the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan
„
The
anishinaabe heard stories in their dream songs. Tribal visions were
natural sources of intuition and identities, and some tribal visions were
spiritual transmigrations that inspired the lost and lonesome souls of the
woodland to be healed
~ Gerald Vizenor, 1993
The
circle is one of the strongest shapes in nature. When we see the world from a
Native American perspective, that circle shapes our vision. We find circles and
the idea of the circle everywhere, from the shapes of most Native dwellings to
the view of the world as a series of continual, repeating cycles. Human life,
itself, is seen as a circle, as we come from our mother, the Earth, when we are
born and return to that same earth when we die. . . . Lesson stories keep the
Native people of each generation from repeating errors which their ancestors
made. And today, because (as Sitting Bull is reputed to have said) “there are
no longer just Indians here,” that circle of stories is desperately needed by
all Americans.
~ Joseph Bruchac, III, 1993
Novelties
occur, changes happen. The threads of continuity in human expression are also
threads of change. American folklorists have been unashamedly interested in
European tales among the North American Indians, but a French conte told to an Ojibwa by a seventeenth-century voyageur
was no less natural or unnatural than a Cree tale performed to an American
folklorist today. Indeed, we can learn a great deal about the creative process
by which a performer adapts his performance to situational circumstances from a
close contextual description.
~ Richard Bauman, 1983
„ „ „
In Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula, economic power (resulting largely from tribally run casinos) engenders recognition, respect, and some political power, allowing people to overcome centuries of oppression and attempted assimilation to reclaim their Native American identity and heritage. Similar processes are occurring throughout the Native American world, even where there are no casinos. This suggests that American culture at large is shifting its perception and treatment of Native Americans.[1] In any case, current cultural conditions in the United States allow for a process of cultural change or renewal among Native Americans that inspires and is inspired by narratives.
The Ojibwe or Nishnaabe culture, among the earliest cultures encountered by Europeans, survives centuries of oppression and attempted assimilation. Nishnaabe people have lived in the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan since at least the early seventeenth century. For most of this century participation in traditional culture has been outlawed or made difficult by oppressive, racist, or hegemonic forces.[2] Only recently have people felt comfortable recognizing their Native American identity, openly participating in cultural events, and sharing cultural ideas and values. During this dynamic period of cultural resurgence, people have regained a strong sense of their Native American ethnicity, a process expressed and affirmed in narratives.
Louise Erdrich, John Cappa (one of the consultants with whom I worked), and others use narratives to make sense of the world and to serve as guideposts on the path of cultural renewal. Erdrich imagines the origin and implications of a split between cultures, which must be mediated or accepted to survive in today’s world. Her successful literary discussion of this process finds its counterpart in typical oral narratives circulating throughout the greater Ojibwe community. For instance, in my fieldwork community, Cappa told narratives which seek to affirm and stimulate Nishnaabeg to refashion identity and understand and appreciate these processes of cultural renewal.
PART
I
Genre,
Tradition, and Authenticity
During my fieldwork experience in the Eastern Upper Peninsula (1994-1996), I conducted interviews with various Native American residents of the area who are in various stages of changing, identifying, or strengthening cultural allegiance. Their expressions of the process of discovering and enacting, i.e. realizing (making real), a new identity are complex, and tend to flow freely in certain situations, like sharing circles, classes, or conversations. In this community, narratives are told as the situations or people involved decide they are appropriate.
Since the time of the Grimm brothers, folklorists have found classification a useful tool for organizing and analyzing narratives. My second chapter in this dissertation draws upon fragments of personal experience narratives in order to construct a comprehensive, coherent, and relatively succinct view of the tools, institutions, and processes of realizing and enacting Native American identity. Categorizing and comparing the narratives is helpful in analyzing them. So I follow in the footsteps of my scholarly predecessors and offer you my genres, which I believe emerge from the body of narratives.[3] But I also try to give a sense of the string tying stories together and to offer as much commentary and explanation from the people who tell the stories as possible.
This chapter focuses upon those narratives which most overtly seek to stimulate cultural renewal, what I've labeled “traditional teaching narratives.” Such narratives are considered traditional and sometimes sacred, regardless of academic support for their authenticity as historically (previously) told narratives. Among the various narratives of coming to life, traditional teaching narratives serve most explicitly to spur people to participate in cultural renewal.
Culture members ascribe authenticity to these narratives regardless of scholarly or archival evidence that they may have been told previously. People I knew did not generally trust academic scholarship and histories of their cultures. As far as they were concerned, little to nothing in books could be trusted (though this is author- and reader-dependent). These intuitions about narratives and the concept of traditionality reveal a deep understanding about the nature of culture in general as a fluid and dynamic force. Gerald Vizenor explains that the creativity of particular storytellers and variability of versions of myths and other tales generates the beauty and richness of such forms:
In the oral tradition, the mythic origins of tribal people are creative expressions, original eruptions in time, not a mere recitation or a recorded narrative in grammatical time. The teller of stories is an artist, a person of wit and imagination, who relumes the diverse memories of the visual past into the experiences and metaphors of the present. . . . The tribal creation takes place at the time of the telling in the oral tradition; the variations in mythic stories are the imaginative desires of tribal artists. (1984, 7)
Vizenor explains that the “traditional” emerges creatively in each performance, so that no one version is bound by previous versions of a story. Many folklore scholars note such fluidity in oral traditions as well, yet we often still feel bound to prove or judge whether something is traditional.
Tribal people feel this commitment differently. They try to do things “in a good way,” or according to their best understanding of how it was done in the past or according to what the “elders” say about it, and if they do it in a good spirit of trying to connect to the past, or correct ways, then it is traditional and authentic. Another Ojibwe artist explains this take on tradition: “A lot of people use the word ‘traditional.’ I don’t like that word. It’s one of the most abused words in Indian-English today. In Ojibwe culture, we say that something has to be ‘proper,’ which means according to custom and whatever is necessary to make it correct” (Nyholm 1994, 54). Nyholm’s emphasis is on doing “whatever is necessary” to make it “correct,” meaning beautiful and useful.[4] Obviously it is up to each artist to determine “whatever is necessary” each time he makes a bag. Similarly, ideas of telling a story in a “good way” to teach particular ideas was all that was necessary for it to be considered “correct” or traditional. In the communities where I worked, if someone is believed to be a member of the community (the greater community of Nishnaabe and / or of Native Americans throughout the region and country) and tells a tale he/she claims is traditional, then its authenticity as traditional is accepted.
For several of the specific tales I heard I searched in collections of folktales and many historical and archival texts, and found no exact matches or even close approximations of these specific narratives. But I did find themes, values, even structures and motifs similar to the narratives told today. These tales are generated by contemporary culture members, but in what is considered to be a traditional style and spirit, which Nishnaabe people recognize today.[5] Since specific details, events, plots, characters, and themes have always been fluid in oral narrative processes (reflecting the fluid nature of culture itself), scholarly measures of authenticity are sometimes futile impositions. As many folklore scholars have demonstrated (Hymes, Bauman, Tolkein, Kroeber, etc.), any recording of a particular narrative event is not a definitive text, but one instance of a fluid and dynamic phenomenon.
The consultants and performers with whom I worked demonstrate their awareness of the dynamic nature of culture and performance by favoring oral methods of sharing culture, or by co-opting approved-of written texts and re-telling them orally. By choosing such methods of expression, they affirm the authenticity of their continually evolving verbal art and culture. Traditionality is thus considered a matter of spirit, purpose, themes, and messages here, and not a matter of authentically verified versions of a tale told previously. Tradition is a process of cultural transmission which includes innovation. Dell Hymes notes a similar phenomenon among the Northwest tribes he studies:
The myths and the features of myths validating the aboriginal life along the river, . . . all this has indeed gone except in memory. What has survived for the telling now has largely been material that this continued to be relevant to the ethos of the community, to its moral and psychological concerns: certain characters, notably Coyote, for example, as foci of tall stories, . . . of distinctively Indian identities and powers; stories of recent days, showing the unprepossessing Indian to have the advantage of apparently superior white man, often in the white man’s own terms (money). . . . Some of the performance style has persisted and can be met today in the telling of personal experiences and even new jokes. (1981, 134)
We have already seen performances of personal experience narratives in Chapter 2. When discussing issues of particular concern to the survival and persistence of Native people today, consultants sometimes offer artful performances of their knowledge (as in Ogimakwe’s speech about not needing to find a feather because she is the feather). Form and content shift and emerge refashioned (like identity), but are still valid and meaningful expressions.
Like many folklorists and anthropologists, Hymes refuses to accept a static view of history or tradition. His analyses:
entail a thoroughgoing break with any standpoint which divorces the study of tradition from the incursion of time and the consequences of modern history. Such standpoints condemn the study of tradition to parochial irrelevance and deny those who would help to shape history necessary insights into their situation. By bracketing the traditional, and stopping there, such standpoints conceal the need to breakthrough into performance in our own time. (1981, 134)
Instead of accepting an idea of tradition as static and unchanging, Hymes allows for the continuation of tradition into the present day, in new and emergent forms of performance and new examples of narratives.
The narrators with whom I worked are innovators who believe they are maintaining the spirit and worldview of their ancestors. The point here is that these narratives are used in order to maintain and bring to life values considered “traditional,” and efficacious in inspiring and maintaining a worldview and consciousness considered Native (as developed in Chapter 2). The narratives in this chapter are modeled after “traditional” narratives. Hence we will call them “traditional teaching narratives.” Particular narrators use a variety of rhetorical techniques to give authority to the stories they tell. One popular technique to authenticate cultural knowledge more generally is to affirm that the words come from elders: “the elders say.” Other techniques involve establishing one’s own connection to the culture, but virtue of having lived in a particular community, having experienced particular events such as ceremonies, healing techniques, relatives who spoke the language, etc. Another popular rhetorical confirmation of authenticity is to mention that one has heard something repeatedly. John demonstrates this during his narrations. For instance, he explains having learned one story in a book, but nonetheless authorizes his telling of it by confirming how often he has heard it:
Mary: Where’d you first hear that story?
John: Where’d I first hear that story?
[pause while he thinks]
Ohhh, probably the author who wrote that book,
Mishomis Book, Eddie Benton-Banai,
many years ago,
and
periodically I would hear it from ah,
different, different people, as they um, as they tell the story, um
and it's not, [clears throat]
and it and it seems fitting, how I did that . . . [emphases mine]
Although it is written down, the story retains its sheen of orality by virtue of the many different (note that “different” is repeated) storytellers who “tell the story.” And they all tell it their own way, a fact to which John is alluding in his last line. He also stresses that he first heard it “many years ago,” thus validating his familiarity with the story and its ideas. His explanation continues by mentioning that the changes and distinctions (talking about only two of the seven values) in his performance are appropriate for an oral rendering of the story. The highlighted sections of the above passage show the specific affirmations of John’s ability to tell the story. At another point he states similarly, “and that's exactly how I had heard it from other areas.” He also affirms at another point in our interviewing process: “it’s a lifetime, yeah, and then I've heard 'em time and time again.” Here he refers to learning the culture and the stories as a continuing process. In another storytelling session he offers similar comments: “Yeah, so all those teachings, eventually come back to you.” He clearly feels his “teachings” connect him to the past and the good way of doing things, making these stories authentic.
John offers similar phrases to authenticate his knowledge of ceremonies as well as stories:
Mary: When you do feasts here, we always have a plate for the spirits. Is that something that you always did growing up?
John: Yeah, I heard, I heard that many times.
Many times, ah, my dad would put food in the
wood stove that we had,
and he would chant a little song,
and we were always told to be quiet at that time,
but not as elaborate as some of the ceremonies that we see here, and when I do it today, I think about that, think about how, how my Dad was doing that and what they mean by it when they, when they offer food to the spirits as part of our responsibilities as human beings to also take care of those people who haven't reached that side, that spirit world from here. [emphases mine]
John’s deep immersion in the culture from childhood helps him to understand and teach the culture today. While his childhood participation was “not as elaborate as some of the ceremonies that we see here,” it was nonetheless part of this life. He offers many such affirmations that these “traditions” are authentic. All such statements throughout our conversations help underscore his connection and immersion in the culture, signaling to the audience the authentic nature of his retellings. Authenticity and tradition, he confirms, are matters of shaping the future, while remembering connections to the past.
PART
II
Traditional
Teaching Narratives Today
Seven Grandfathers
The stories signified as special and representative of “that good way of life” are told in my interviews primarily by one narrator, the same man who offered information about their status, John Cappa. Before our first interview began John was singing softly to himself (which can be heard in the background on the tape). His nervousness about the interview most likely prompted his singing, which I often heard Nishnaabe people do under their breaths in situations where they were nervous. Certain kinds of singing make an event or place more sacred or at least acceptable. In another interview John also wanted some tobacco, and when I found some, in a little cloth pouch (the kind typically given away at powwows), he held it throughout the interview, and would look at it and move it between his fingers as he thought about what to say.
John had expressed his reservations about fieldworkers on many occasions. In fact I was surprised when he agreed to do interviews. Just before the interview he was concerned about having to talk about all this on tape, though I had told him it would be taped. In spite of his concerns preceding the interviews, he was thoughtful, articulate, honest, and thorough in his answers and narrations. He seemed to have thought carefully about what he wanted to tell the non-Native community he assumed would be his audience, and offered a clear message about being and becoming Native American today.[6]
In spite of his traditional background, most of his narratives are very contemporary in details of plot, style, characters and events. Even those narratives which I deem "traditional" in terms of plot, characters and setting are of relatively recent origin and circulation. The messages of most of John's narratives are directed at and reflective of modern Nishnaabe culture.
Perhaps the narrative which John himself recognized as the most traditional among those he told is the story of the “Seven Grandfathers,” which is the same story for which he required tobacco and a good state of mind before beginning his narration. He explains that he first read this story in The Mishomis Book by Edward Benton-Banai, an Ojibway from a Western band in Wisconsin (1988).[7] The book is widely used as a teaching tool and cultural resource by schools, tribes, programs, and individuals throughout the Ojibwe world. In order to appreciate John’s personalized version it will be helpful to examine the written version first, as John also encountered it first.
Benton-Banai calls the story “The Seven Grandfathers and the Little Boy.” The following passages include key excerpts and summary:
The second people of the Earth grew in number and their villages began to spread across the land. But, in their early years, the second people had a very hard time. At first, they were a weak people. Diseases took many lives each year. There were many times when people would be killed by just stumbling and falling down. . . .
Ojibway tradition tells us that there were Seven Grandfathers who were given the responsibility by the Creator to watch over the Earth’s people. [The powerful Grandfathers decide to help the people]. . . . They sent their Osh-ka-bay’-wis (helper) to the Earth to walk among the people and bring back to them a person who could be taught how to live in harmony with the Creation (60-61)
“On his seventh journey” in search of the right one for the job, the helper decides upon an innocent baby and takes him before the grandfathers. They think the baby is too weak and so must be taught first, as one Grandfathers instructs the helper: “Take this boy and show him all of the Creation, show him the Four Quarters of the Universe,” which the helper does. The lessons take a long time, which prompts Benton-Banai to offer an aside:
Herein lies a lesson for us today. We must begin very early with our children in instructing them in these teachings [because they are aware very young]. (61)
After seven years of lessons, the boy returns and is impressed by the beauty and wisdom of the Grandfathers, who seem to communicate telepathically and tell him his history and destiny. They show him a vessel covered with cloths of four colors standing for the “Four Directions”: red = South, black = West, white = North, and yellow = East (there is a diagram in the book). The boy’s “quick glimpse” inside the cloth-covered vessel reveals great, incomprehensible beauty, knowledge, and peace. One by one the grandfathers reach into the vessel and bring out “gifts” they give to the boy. Benton-Banai’s writes:
The vessel was passed to each of the Grandfathers just as the Waterdrum is passed from one person to another in our ceremonies today. (63, emphasis mine)
The Grandfathers then tell the uncle / helper to “find someone to return with the boy to his people.” After much searching, the helper (on his seventh try) selects the otter to do this. The otter gets instructions from the Grandfathers and the otter and boy, “set off on their long journey.” The boy carries, “a huge bundle to take to his people from the Seven Grandfathers” (there is a picture of him carrying the bundle):
Along the way, they stopped seven times. At each stop a spirit came and told the boy the meaning of one of the seven gifts that were given to him out of the vessel of the Grandfathers [these are listed below]. (64)
The story teaches that every gift has potential for good or evil, so the gifts must be carefully considered. The boy also finds intriguing shells at each stop and collects them. Time is different in the spirit world, so their four-day journey actually takes longer and the boy becomes a man along the way. They come to a village, but the otter realizes these people are poor, hungry, and lost without the Four Directions. Once he prepares the people, he brings the boy, who is now an old man, to them. He shares his bundle with them and the otter leaves after giving him a “strange shell” from each of their stopping places. The otter calls them “Megis Shells” and says they will “later” play an important role. Then he remembers his playful past and leaves as an otter. Benton-Banai affirms the role of the otter by stating: “The otter is the one today who accompanies the newcomers into the Midewiwin Lodge” (65, emphasis mine). After the otter leaves the (now old) man returns to his village, where he finds his very old parents who expected his return.
The old man pulled a gift out of his bundle and said to his parents, “I give you this. It represents the power, love, and mercy of the Creator.” He continued on the visit and talk with the rest of this people. To the middle of the village he went with his bundle and all the people followed. At the village’s center he stopped and put down his bundle. (66)
He tells them of his journey and gives them the gifts and “the dangers that came with each gift.” He shared all the Grandfathers’ lessons, to be physically strong and spiritually strong.
He gave them the Ba-wa-ji-gay’-win (Vision Quest). He gave others the capability to seek out the knowledge of the Spirit World through fasting, dreaming, and meditation. (66, emphasis mine)
So the people become healthier and stronger because of the gifts, including the Four Directions and the herbal medicines from the otter. As Benton-Banai writes,
the people approached that delicate balance that lies in living in harmony with all of the Creation.
It only remained now the for people [sic.] to follow the me-ka-naynz’ (path) laid out before them by the old man for the development of the spiritual side of life. (66; all emphases mine)
Benton-Banai renders the story “authentic” by virtue of all the phrases I have rendered in bold-type, like “Ojibwa tradition tells us,” and emphases regarding the connection between this story and Ojibwa ceremonies: “The otter is the one today who accompanies the newcomers into the Midewiwin Lodge,” and “He gave them the Ba-wa-ji-gay’-win (Vision Quest). He gave others the capability to seek out the knowledge of the Spirit World through fasting, dreaming, and meditation.” In addition to authorizing this version and the information it contains, such passages further validate the type of vision quests upon which Ogimakwe relies (as seen in Chapter 2). Learning and renewing the culture via visions seems completely in keeping with traditional ways of learning and spreading culture, as confirmed here.
Throughout his book, Benton-Banai uses similar rhetorical techniques to give authority to his words. In fact, the “Grandfathers” (capital G) emerge in this story as the clear and ultimate authority of Ojibwa culture. So this book, The Mishomis Book, written in the voice of the “Grandfather” (= Mishomis) is in a more general sense given authority. By virtue of being in the Grandfather’s voice, it is the voice of authority loud and clear, of which we are repeatedly reminded in phrases and images throughout the book. A few such examples of the types of authenticating, rhetorical techniques employed by Benton-Banai follow (all emphases are mine):
~I am preparing this place to be a place of rebirth for traditional Indian ways . . . . This teaching was handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation by my ancestors. Sometimes the details of teachings like this were recorded on scrolls made from Wee’-gwas (birchbark). I am fortunate to be the keeper of several of these scrolls. They will help me remember some of the details of what I give to you. (1-2)
~There are a few people in each of the tribes today that have survived to this day who have kept alive their teachings, language, and religious ceremonies. Although traditions may differ from tribe to tribe, there is a common thread that runs throughout them all. This common thread represents a string of lives that goes back all the way to Original Man. (4)
~ I will draw upon the words given to us by the prophets of the Seven Fires. I have also looked at old maps of North America that might give hints to places referred to by the seven prophets and by my grandfathers. Finally, I have listened to what the scholars have had to say about early written accounts of this country. (94)
~It is amazing that the Sacred Fire could be kept alive for so long. The dream of the original seven prophets was carried for many generations. It was carried along a string of fires with many campfires left behind. That the people were able to accomplish such a thing is truly a miracle of the Creator. (102)
Such statements (of which these are but a few representative examples) rhetorically authenticate the stories and their resultant messages. Such phrases help confirm this way of life as traditional and very much, authentically part of today’s community. Benton-Banai confirms a connection to the past while simultaneously helping to the shape the present. The fact that he succeeds in shaping the future is evidenced by the prevalence of this story in the Ojibwe world today.
In Benton-Banai’s written version of the story of “The Seven Grandfathers,” there are several key plot elements to which we shall attend. The “second people of the Earth” were having difficulties and had not found a balanced, healthy way of life. The Seven Grandfathers, whose duty it is to help people, send a helper to fetch someone who could mediate for the Grandfathers. Eventually the helper brings an innocent baby, who must be educated throughout creation before he can understand the Grandfathers. Once the helper educates him, the boy is found worthy by the Grandfathers, whose world is overwhelmingly beautiful and powerful. They introduce him to the Four Directions and their significance, and they each give him gifts which he doesn't understand.
With an otter for companion the boy seeks to return to his people. Along the way they stop seven times, and each time the meaning of one of the seven gifts is revealed. They are
(1) To cherish knowledge is to know WISDOM
(2) To know LOVE is to know peace
(3) To honor all of the Creation is to have RESPECT
(4) BRAVERY is to face the foe with integrity
(5) HONESTY in facing a situation is to be brave
(6) HUMILITY is to know yourself as a sacred part of the Creation
(7) TRUTH is to know all of these things (1988, 64) [8]
Along the way the boy ages to be an old man and he and the otter collect a shell at each stop which also turn out to be sacred.[9] They finally come upon culturally and spiritually lost people whom they inspire and save with their teachings. The otter goes back to being just an otter (and no longer a spirit helper) after teaching about the Four Directions. The man continues to his village along with his bundle of teachings.[10] The Seven Grandfathers teach the people how to live in balance, harmonizing the physical and spiritual worlds. Thus the people learn what John calls “that good way of life.”
John explains that he has heard and told this story many times since first reading it. Indeed I also heard it on several occasions when spiritual or cultural teachers visited the community to share their knowledge at public events. I have also heard about the Seven Grandfathers during language classes and conferences designed to teach students and prospective teachers about the culture or about how to share the culture with others. Specifically, the narrative, or elements of it, are used to teach about the medicine wheel which allows for personal teachings and reflections based on the values surrounding the four directions. And the seven grandfathers or values are obviously used as model virtues to which all Nishnaabeg should aspire. Seven, as a significant number of values within Ojibwe culture, is widely accepted as a traditionally significant number for Native people.[11]
John’s
Versions of The Seven Grandfathers
Here is John’s explanation and performance of the story that particular day:
I don’t even know if there would, if in this language, in this English language what – the word story itself gives a fictitious meaning at times, you know, when people heard that word, that word story, they automatically assume “well, it’s just a story, that’s not true.”
In Ojibwe, there is no such thing. When you tell, quote unquote “a
happening” and in your understanding, story, it is exactly what happened. That
is that word aadsookaan; aadsookaan
means I’m going to interpret, interpret or tell you what has happened. Mii
go we aadsookaan ejaagaadig. Um, so it’s real difficult sometimes for
those elders, when they ask them, “Would you tell us a story?” You’ll hear
them, they’ll kind of chuckle at times, and they’ll laugh, “I'll tell you
a story,” because that, what they
were taught, that’s what they were taught in that school.
Remember when
you and I were going to school, “it’s story time” [laughs]
Mary:
mm hmm
John: They’ll tell you a story, it may not be true, but they’ll you a story
Time began for
Nishnaabeg.
They were, they were cold.
They – Creator had um
had many –
[I believe that these hesitations indicate
that here he is thinking about how to tell the story]
They had done many things in order for
life to be right
on this on this Earth, on this uh ki,
and many things didn’t happen as they would find. 10
The one day that got to be so hectic
on this earth, they say that,
that all people were just not getting along.
Things were up in, turmoil.
They said it was so bad that they um,
that Nishnaabeg would, people would fall down
and if they fell, they would –
their bones were so brittle that they would break.
And, maybe because there's very little
nourishment and food or whatever 20
But it [sighs] ‘bout that time that they were told that they had to –
that something had to be done.
So the um, so the wise ones,
the Nishnaabeg, elders
they’re up there, and decided that
something needed to be done.
So they got, so they asked this young man,
this what is known as a shikaabewis,
shikaabewis, a helper,
they had told him to, 30
“Go down to the earth and find somebody we can mold and teach,
so he can be beezhaam,
the representative to be the individual to carry the message,
the teachings.”
So they, so shikaabewis went down.
He went down to the earth, and he walked,
all over, all around the place,
and he went back,
he had told the council of the elders that were sitting there,
the council elders had asked him, “well, 40
Aabiish, Aabiish n. [Ojibwe text skipped] . . .
where is this – who did you find?”
He says, “I didn’t find anybody.”
So he was sent down again.
“Bskaabiin, . . . .”
“We have to find somebody.”
So he searched all over, all around the place.
Second time he returned – no avail.
Sent down again –
And until on the fourth time he, 50
the third time he went down,
he was going around the earth,
went through all the mountains and valleys,
couldn’t find anybody,
and he came across one day,
on this nice day, in July – Miniigeezis
and he saw Nishnaabeg, here and there,
but they were picking,
they were picking miinin, they were picking blueberries.
So as they were picking blueberries, he had watched for a while, 60
then he noticed something on,
on one of the trees.
On that tree was a tiknaagan, tiknaagan, a cradle board
and inside that cradle board was a little tiny Binoojiins
a little, a little baby.
So he had thought,
“Hmmm,”
you know, he had searched all around this climate and he still didn't find anybody to be teacher, and he thought,
“Well, maybe the grandfathers will like this one [sighs]. My choice.”
So he had taken the ticknaagan and the binoojiins, 71
but before he left he also whipped out ribbon, some cloth he had put on the tree where the cradle was,
and this was to insure that
when the people who were picking berries,
who were the caretaker of this child
would know that
it wasn’t the animals who had taken the child,
but it was a spirit, a spirit who had taken that child.
So they would ease their minds 80
So, this is what happened, the Shikaabe was taking binoojiins up to the grandfathers, and they, grandfathers, were sitting around, and they had asked him, “Well, who did you, what did you bring?”
And he says, “Mishomisuk, meegwet u maagut. . . .”
“This is the only one I found, he’s a child only small.”
He showed 'em the ticknaagan and the child,
and every single one of those grandfathers looked at the little child and they wondered, and one of them, one of the grandfathers began to speak,
And he said, “Sooun, gaawin maabidon miishisii. . . .”
“This child is not going to do.” 90
Another, another grandfather spoke,
He says, “geegit, aapji maa bigaajii gaajii binoojiins, . . .”
He said, “This child is awfully small, he would, something would happen to the child for the things that we are going to tell him.”
Other grandfather says, “Oh, I”– he just simply refused,
said
“no comment,” he just shook his head.
The other grandfather had little reservation, “oh, ginin maagoo. . . .” Thought, “Oh maybe, maybe, maybe this child will be good.”
he says, “Geegit, geegit go maaba, binoojiins gaatjiinge, kii wii da . . .”
He
said, “For sure, for sure that this child is very, very small, and that you
didn’t find anybody else so you were told, so that you were told that you can
go down and look for somebody and this is all you came up with.”
He
said, “The child is so small, he has not been tainted with the evils of the
earth yet. He has not had the taste of what is happening, and we will now then
use this child to bring new knowledge into his shtigwaanans, into his head.”
So the rest of the grandfathers agreed, said
“Naahaaw,
minwa bignoojiins
110
“This is the one that will be strong enough to take the message to the people.”
And so all the grandfathers, even those of them who had refused,
concurred, and said, “Naahaaw, minwa bigenojiins geenish”
He says, “This is the child that will, it will be good. Alright”
So the main grandfather, the leader of those guys, six grandfath– seven grandfathers, had said “Aahaw, mii maanda gezhitzhigeyin”
He says, “This is what you will do.”
“Kaadaapnaa maabaa binoojiins
neeop kipscaabe,”
“Take this child and you gonna go back down there,”
“Keeno gishgeegow kaa baakiinoomwa.” 120
“Teach
him all the things that is down there”
“Keenongwa jikaa baazhaa.”
“Go all over, all over the place.”
“Keenit gaagii tine, . . .”
“Go all around the earth in the four directions,”
He says, “You will teach him about the,
about the rivers
and the lakes
and the mountains
They
will teach him about those stars,”
130
“agiiyaa nungoosuk"
So he had commenced to do that,
and he had brought the child back down,
Shikaabe had traveled all around,
and he had walked,
and showed, taught him everything that he was,
that he was taught,
and what the child should know,
and, like all the plants and all the trees and all their names.
This child was absorbing all these things, 140
and he had returned,
he’d come back up to seven grandfathers,
and the grandfathers looked at him
and he says, “mmm pechoogo, gawiin. . .”
“You'’re not done yet.”
He was sent back down
This time he was to look at all, all the people, meet those people, different types of people on earth, and see how they live
And upon his return, sometime later
This boy had already been, for many years 150
He was seven years old now,
and the, one of the grandfathers says this,
“Oh niishke, bopji maaba, aapji maaba wii wisiins nabo. . .”
“This child is very smart, a lot of wisdom in him.”
He said, “you know he hears what we are saying, before we even say,
and hears and sees things that we say, so he has very, very special gifts
that he was able to understand those, understand those words and those sayings. So he was, he had much broader understanding any child every has. Then he grew up really fast in learning these things.”
So they’d asked, so they had told him, 160
“Aahaaw, gimii nanum aapi binojiin gegoo,”
He says, “I want you to give this child something.”
So each and every one of those grandfathers had pulled out,
out of this little container, this little gukohns,
was a cloth, different colors,
The first grandfather,
first of all he was asked, [clears throat] they had asked the boy
[John pauses to drink coffee. I believe he is trying to remember all the gifts]
“Wenesh wayaman?” “What do you want?”
The boy, I suppose, could have
could have wanted, could have asked for any 170
money, food, whatever,
but he didn't say that.
He didn't ask for any of those, of those things that a normal child would ask for.
Instead, he would, he had said he would take whatever was being offered to him.
The grandfathers agreed.
So the grandfather picked out, picked out those gifts.
Each and every one of those grandfathers.