All of the travelers found dry places to sleep, and in the morning Anung left his new friends and headed back to the shore where he had left his canoe.
Anung found his canoe and sailed and paddled through many storms to return to Turtle Island.
Once again the Great Sea Turtle came to his rescue.
When he returned to Turtle Island Anung followed a new path through the forests, visiting many new villages along the way. Everywhere he went he told his stories of his great journey and of the baby who was the greatest chief of all the tribes.
He had been gone for many years when he arrived back at his village where he was to live a long and happy life.
Epilogue
When my grandfather finished telling me this story, I found my grandmother had spread our mat out on the floor and covered it with my favorite foods. There was a pot of venison stew, with manoomin. There was a plate of squash. Next to it was a basket of fry bread. And a big bowl of blueberries mixed in the syrup of the sugar bush.
After we finished our meal, my grandfather planned to walk his trap line. He wouldn’t be back until after dark. He had just finished making a new pair of snowshoes for me so I could go with him.
Author’s Note
Dear Steve,
When you told me the story of Anung I was immediately captured by the magic of it. When you asked me to popularize it, I was honored by your request. Where I have added to it, your magic has guided me.
I am one of many who owe you thanks. Though we were both just 15 that first summer we met at Delaney Lake, you took care of me like a big brother. You showed me how to do my jobs as a fishing camp laborer, you showed me the best places to fish and how to manage the portages and prepare shore lunch so that I was ready to be a fishing guide, and you showed me the truths and beauties of your family’s Ojibway culture. After just one summer with you my life would never be the same, and I was fortunate to have spent four.
You have battled bravely and tirelessly for your people, to the point of exhaustion and beyond. When the day comes that the people of Grassy Narrows can say they have received justice for the Mercury Poisoning that created such devastation, your leadership will be celebrated for its great importance. I hope to be with my Brother when that day comes.
I made a promise to you that night you told me the legend of Anung, after we fished the English River together for the first time in nearly 40 years. That promise is recorded here for the first time.
You asked me to do my best to turn this legend into a full story that would delight and inform people of all ages and all cultures, and I promised you I would. I promised to work to get it published. And I promised that if Anung was published and widely read that, along with accomplishing your goals and fulfilling my promise, I would invest a share of the financial success back into the health of Grassy Narrows.
I look forward to that happening and will work just as hard on the promotion of the book as I did on writing it.
Thanks Steve.
Your Brother,
Carl
The Museum
of Ojibwa Culture
Five years ago dear friends of mine, Pres and Bess, took me to the Museum of Ojibwa Culture, in St. Ignace Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula shore of the Straights of Mackinac, and I thank them. The Museum’s indoor and outdoor exhibits are fully expressive of the cultural history of the Ojibwa, with a focus on the time when the first French voyageurs found the Ojibwa and the Wyandot Huron living gracefully in accordance with the natural laws of the place.
I was captivated, and inspired, by the Museum’s portrayal of the many centuries long Ojibwa migration of the Original People moving from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes and north. The Ojibwa were led West well before the first Europeans arrived by their visions of Megis and just the summer before Steve Fobister had shared with me the legend of Anung, tracing the boy’s journey along the same route back East, back to the ancestral home, where he hoped to find the greatest chief.
I introduced myself then to Shirley Sorrell, Director of the Museum and its Cultural Center. I outlined the Anung story for her, and I asked if I could get in touch with her again if the story was ever published. I did, and I was humbled by her offer to host the book’s launch at the Museum.
This place, the Straights of Mackinac, is sacred to the book’s stories; it’s where Mishee Mackinakong, the Great Sea Turtle, rose from the flood waters so Sky Woman could rebuild Turtle Island on the back of his shell. For Anung to be rooted here as it tells the stories it is meant to tell is humbling.
Along with the exhibits and an extensive bookstore, the Cultural Center sponsors a Tribal Youth Entrepreneurship Program, teaching the next generation native and contemporary crafts as well as basic business skills. I was pleased to have the chance to conduct some creativity workshops with the young entrepreneurs.
If you would like to support the Museum and the Cultural Center’s programs, you can contact them at museumofojibwaculture.net.
Anung on Stage
I gratefully acknowledge indebtedness to poet and playwright Robin Metz for his play, Anung’s First American Christmas (copyright 2008), based on my draft narrative and a traditional story of the Annishinable (Ojibway) people, as told to me by Steve Fobister. In his play, Robin Metz transforms Turtle (Mishike) into Anung’s spiritual guide, and creates Trumpeter Swan, One Antler, Cheengwum, Ningobianong, Crooked Stick, Whale, and many others, gives them voice, and dramatizes a fusion of Native American and Christian beliefs in a vision of rebirth and renewal. The play’s central emblem is a towering dream catcher representing space/time, memory, imagination, and the seamless web of life.
I also acknowledge with gratitude Vitalist Theatre’s World Premiere production of Anung’s First American Christmas in a six week run (2008-2009) at Theatre Building Chicago (production and design copyright 2008). The Vitalist Theatre production was directed by Elizabeth Carlin-Metz, who brought her own artistic vision to bear on elements of the play. The production team included set design by Craig Choma; light design by Gina Patterson; costume design by Rachel Sypniewski; sound design by Gregor Mortis; movement, puppetry, and fight direction by Molly Feingold; puppet and mask design by Tracy Otwell; percussion master, W. Carson Hooley; properties master, Kat Powers; projections artists, Brita Nordgren and Tracy Otwell; stage manager, Nicole Smith.
The Magic of Brita Wolf
I know it in many forms.
And as I was working on the final drafts of Anung’s Journey I knew I wanted that illustrative magic of hers to inform your reading of these stories. I wanted her to illustrate this book for you because I had already seen the Turtle Shell you’ll find on the cover of this book; she created it for a stage production based on this legend, Anung’s First American Christmas by the Vitalist Theatre Company in Chicago. The original artwork of the Turtle Shell is 23 inches by 18 inches, and it was framed at the entrance to the theater.
I think the magic found in these images is fully revealed when you learn how they were created—the Turtle Shell and all of the illustrations in the book are reproductions of Brita’s paper cuttings. Look at two of my favorites, Eagle Feather and Turtle, and wonder at how this art so gracefully emerges.
I am proud to say that Brita Wolf is my daughter, and I have seen her magic delight many before. I am so happy that her gift is shared here with you.
The Author
Carl Nordgren was born in Greenville, Mississippi where his great grandmother’s house was across the street from the boyhood home of author Walker Percy. Carl has worked as a fishing guide on the English River in Northwestern Ontario and on the White River in the Arkansas Ozarks, as a bartender, a foundry man, and an entrepreneur. He currently teaches courses in Creativity to undergraduate students at Duke University. Carl graduated from Knox College and lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Marie where they have raised three daughters. His first novel, The 53rd Parallel, spans mid-century Ireland and Canada, weaving a tale about the power of dreams, the
hope of new beginnings, and the dangers of ghosts who haunt our past. It is the first in a triology.
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