Dancing on Our Turtle's Back

by Leanne Simpson

  Transmotion, Emergence and Mobilization

  In Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory we have lost two important relatives during the past century, as a result of the construction of the Trent Severn waterway, a system of locks spanning from Lake Ontario, through the interior of our lands, and eventually into Georgian Bay. Before the waterway was built, colonizing the lifeblood of our system of rivers and lakes, many migratory species of fish traveled in and out of our territory in the spring and fall. Chi’Nbiish (Lake Ontario) had a resident population of salmon closely related to Atlantic salmon that traveled through our territories as far north as Stoney Lake.[5] The salmon were a respected and honoured nation within the culture of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg. There is a convergence between the complex ways Nishnaabeg and salmon organize themselves, govern themselves and mobilize; and that convergence is based on an intimate and inherent relationship within a localized ecological context. I have always found it interesting that many nations on the east and west coast that still have the salmon still have their traditional form of governance.

  Eels represented a similar convergence.[6] Travelling through Lake Ontario from the Atlantic Ocean, eels again travelled as far north as Atlantic salmon into Stoney Lake. They were a tremendous source of protein; and in that sense were the base of the economy and the base of the nation. Their sheer numbers and ability to travel, adapt and celebrate the flux of the ecological context, the diversity of life and power of mass mobilization, impressed and informed Nishnaabeg thinkers. So much so that when one of our people had a vision for a mass migration from the Atlantic region to the Great Lakes, it resonated with the people because they had already witnessed their relatives completing a similar journey.

  This mobilization is the reason we survived the most dangerous and oppressive parts of the colonial regime, because it stretched us to a greater degree to learn how to flourish in a greater diversity of environments. As well, it spread our citizens over a larger land mass. This in itself afforded us some protection from colonialism because it placed groups of our people in more protected areas, enabling them to carry forward the language, culture, intellectual and political traditions to a greater degree than in the south and eastern doorways of our nation. This was part of the political strategy of our ancestors. The Seven Fires Prophecy told them of the coming genocide. They knew, they strategized and they prepared. And we exist as Nishnaabeg and Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg today because of that vision, strategy and action.

  This is a movement, a mobilization, and a migration towards continuous rebirth. Nishnaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor writes:

  The connotations of transmotion are creation stories, totemic visions, reincarnation, and sovenance; transmotion, that sense of native motion and an active presence, is sui generissovereignty. Native transmotion is survivance, a reciprocal use of nature, not a monotheistic, territorial sovereignty. Native stories of survivance are the creases of transmotion and sovereignty.[7]

  This movement in Nishnaabeg thought is expressed through the structure of the language, which utilizes verbs to a far greater extent than nouns. In the pre-colonial daily life of Nishnaabeg people, movement, change and fluidity were a reality. Family groups and clans travelled cyclically throughout their territories based on the thirteen moons of the year, the seasons and their knowledge of cyclical change in the natural world. At certain times of the year, clans would gather for governance, ceremonies and social activities. Leaders emerged as issues did. Society and clan structure expanded and contracted like a beating heart, or working lungs. Centralized government and political structures are barriers to transmotion; this static state is never experienced in nature. Aligned with the natural word, Nishnaabeg people created political, intellectual, spiritual and social lifeways that enabled them to align themselves individually and collectively with the life forces of their territories.

  While Nishnaabeg sovereignty was sui generis, it was also territorial. Nishnaabeg people were not wandering around vast expanses of land. While the boundaries around that land were much more fluid than that of modern states, there was a territory that was defined by Nishnaabeg language, philosophy, way of life, and political culture. Nishnaabeg concepts of “nation” and “sovereignty” are much different than modern constructs, but they exist and were expressed.

  Roronhiakewen Dan Longboat, a Haudenosaunee scholar, discussed this with me in the context of the Gdoo-Nagaanina, a pre-colonial treaty between our two nations.[8] We talked about how the treaty governed the areas of our two overlapping territories. Dan talked about how pre-colonial treaties facilitated the international Indigenous economy. What I took away from our conversation is that “boundaries,” in an Indigenous sense, are about relationships. As someone moves away from the centre of their territory—the place they have the strongest and most familiar bonds and relationships—their knowledge and relationship to the land weakens. This is a boundary, a zone of decreasing Nishnaabeg presence as you move out from the centre of the territory. This is a place where one needs to practice good relations with neighbouring nations. Presence is required to maintain those good relationships. Communication is required to jointly care-take this region, which is much wider than a line.

  Nishnaabeg citizenship practices were also aligned with this transmotion. People wishing to immigrate into our nation were granted full citizenship responsibilities, as long as they were willing to live as Nishnaabeg. While our ways did not require them to give up their identity, the expression of that identity was modulated within the web of mino bimaadiziwin. This is also where our customary adoption practices come from—children were and are readily adopted into our communities and raised as Nishnaabeg citizens when individual families choosing to extend nurturing relationships to them. They are able to carry this citizenship and the responsibilities embedded within that citizenship through their adult lives if they so chose. This approach is strikingly different from both imposed band membership codes based on arbitrary colonial rules for “status,” or blood quantum approaches and self-identification. In a sense, it is based on the self-determination of individual families to decide who their family members are; it is an individual choice in terms of maintaining those responsibilities andlocal community acceptance.[9] Community acceptance was dependent then upon the individual’s commitment to and expression of the values and philosophies of mino bimaadiziwin. One couldn’t just “marry in;” the way you conducted yourself and lived your life would dictate the level of acceptance you gained from the community, as well as the level of responsibilities you were given with regards to citizenship. Immigration was a lengthy and emergent process, and the self-determination of our families tells us a lot about how this functioned on a larger-scale. Adoption and marriage traditions as processes by which our families brought new members into clans, communities and our nation, were the microcosm for citizenship traditions. Because those caring relationships were so often the responsibility of Aunties, Grandmothers, Sisters, Daughters and Mothers, when we have questions about E-Dbendaagzijig,[10] we should be placing women at the centre of these decisions.

  While Nishnaabeg thought embodies transmotion and fluidity, it also has emergence in its foundations. Recall in Chapter Three, my discussion of Biskaabiiyang, and Elder Gdigaa Migizi defining it as a “new emergence.” In western science, emergence theory is based on the idea that events are not created on a single structure or rule, but that each component and its surroundings (or relationships) creates a complex chain of processes leading to some order. In Nishnaabeg thought these processes are also mediated through the implicate order or the spirit world, and that “complex” chain of reactions is necessarily non-linear. Nishnaabeg thought comes from the land and therefore, it embodies emergence. Nishnaabeg were adept at viewing and aligning themselves with emergent properties of the natural world—be it mass migration in the animal world, behaviour of schooling fish, herds of buffalo, or the patterns of freezing and melting of bodies of water.

  This recognition of the inheren
t emergence of nature developed thought systems that were process- and context-oriented rather than content-driven. In this way of thinking, the way in which something is done becomes very important because it carries with it all of the meaning. The meaning is derived from context, including the depth of relationships with the spiritual world, elders, family, clans, and the natural world.

  Sákéj Youngblood Henderson writes about these ideas as aligning oneself with the transformation and flux of the implicate order (creation):

  First Nation jurisprudence is preoccupied with changes. Because of the embodied spirits, life forms are always capable of overcoming all the conditions or determinations of their existence. The spirits are never restricted to any particular embodiment, but generate transformations, the rearrangement of the mystery, the restructuring of the realms of the spirit and embodied spirits. The implicate order informing First Nations jurisprudence is based on inclusion rather than on exclusive divisions or dualities. The aim is to be with the flux, to experience its changing forms, to develop a relationship with the forces, thus creating harmony. In First Nations thought, this flux is often translated as the law of circular inaction and represented through teachings, ceremonies, rituals, prayers, stories, songs, song duels, dances, arts symbols and everyday activities.[11]

  The goal of life then becomes the maintenance and promotion of good relations within the emergence or flux of the natural world to maintain and promote balance. Looking into Indigenous communities today, urban or rural, privileged or not, it is evident that colonialism has resulted in a perpetuation of unhealthy relationships and imbalance. Biskaabiiyang is an opportunity to engage in a process that begins to rebalance and establish the conditions for good relationships.

  Scott Lyons, a Nishnaabe/Dakota scholar from Minnesota, also writes that movement and migration is a primary cultural value of Nishnaabeg peoples:

  The Ojibwe were a people on the move. The Ojibwe envisioned life as a path and death as a journey; even Ojibwemowin, the Ojibwe language is constituted by verbs on the move. What does migration produce? As we can see in the story of the Great Migration, it produces difference; new communities, new peoples, new ways of living; new sacred foods, new stories, and new ceremonies. The old never dies; it gets supplemented by the new, and the result is diversity.[12]

  That difference was embraced within the web of Nishnaabeg consciousness and used to propel and promote life and rebirth. Diversity afforded us some protection against the forces of colonialism because different pockets of our nation were able to continue aspects of their culture and lifeways that others were not.

  Nishnaabeg Society: A Society of Presence

  When I think back to the pre-colonial lives of my ancestors, the most striking thing about the way they lived is that they were constantly engaged in the act of creating: making clothes, food, shelter, stories, games, modes of transportation, instruments, songs and dances. They created circumstances to commune with the implicate order, and also created the new generation of Nishnaabeg, based on bringing out their personal gifts and creativity. Creating was the base of our culture. Creating was regenerative and ensured more diversity, more innovation and more life. In essence, Indigenous societies were societies of doing; they were societies of presence. Our processes—be they political, spiritual, education or healing—required a higher degree of presence than modern colonial existence.

  In the space of the modern empire, society is a culture of absence because consumer culture requires both absence and wanting things in order to perpetuate itself. Without wanting, consumer culture simple cannot exist. In terms of representation, modern society primarily looks for meaning (in books, computers, art), whereas Indigenous cultures engage in processes or acts to create meaning. Indigenous cultures understand and generate meaning through engagement, presence and process—storytelling, ceremony, singing, dancing, doing. The re-creation story of dancing on our turtle’s back means that creation requires presence, innovation and emergence. It also requires the support of the spiritual world: the process of doing or making is one way that the spiritual world intervenes (through dreams). Making aligns us with our Creation and Re-creation Stories because we begin to act. We use the creative, innovative intelligence imparted to us by Gzhwe Mnidoo to create and voice our truths, to strategize our response, and ultimately to act in creating new and better realities. Creating aligns us with our Ancestors because when we engage in artistic or creative processes, we disconnect ever so slightly from the dominant economic system and connect to a way of being based on doing, rather than blind consumption.

  Bubbling Like a Beating Heart

  The river that runs through the city I live in is called the Otonabee. The Otonabee runs through Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory from the river we call Zaagaatay Igiwan[13] into Pimaadashkodeyong.[14] In and around Nogojiwanong,[15] the name Otonabee is spoken every day by those of us living in the city—”Best Western Otonabee Inn,” “Otonabee Meat Packers,” “Otonabee Animal Hospital,” and so on. Thousands of times a day, the word “Otonabee” is spoken by people who have no idea what the word means, and who are ignorant of both the history of this Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg land they live on, as well as our contemporary Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg presence. This process is repeated all over Canada every day, and represents a kind of disappearance of Indigenous presence.

  If you look up the “Otonabee River” in Wikipedia, the site will tell you that the river is called Odoonabii-Ziibi or the Tulibee River.[16] However, there is no reference to where that translation comes from. I asked my Elder Gdigaa Migizi what the word Otonabee means in Nishnaabemowin. He began by telling me that the first part means “heart,” coming from the word ode; and the word odemgat means boiling water, because when water boils, it looks like the bubbling or beating of a heart. He then explained that Otonabee is an anglicized version of Odenabe—the river that beats like a heart in reference to the bubbling and boiling waters of the rapids along the river.[17]

  After I left Gdigaa Migizi’s house, I began to think about what the word ode means to me as a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabekwe. I thought of how oodenameans city in our language, and one interpretation of the conceptual meaning of that word is “the place where the hearts gather.”[18] I thought about how Odemin Giizis is June, or the moon when the heart berries (strawberries) are ready. I pictured those odeminan, or heart berries, and their runners connecting the plants in a web of inter-relationships, much like cities. I then remembered that, according to Nishnaabeg Elder Basil Johnston, Odaenauhrefers to nation, which lead me to think of our nation as an inter-connected web of hearts.[19] On a deeper philosophical level, that heart knowledge represents our emotional intelligence, an intelligence that traditionally was balanced with physical, intellectual and spiritual intelligence to create a fully embodied way of being in the world. Emotional intelligence or presence on its own, however, is a vital force in Nishnaabeg consciousness. As Nishnaabeg Elder Jim Dumont often explains, our word for truth, (o)debwewin, literally means “the sound of the heart.”[20] For Nishnaabeg people then, truth is a personal concept based in love and the raw resonance of emotion. This is just the beginning of the cultural meaning around ode; there are songs, teachings, stories and ceremonial meanings that deepen these basic understandings.

  For instance, Nishnaabe Elder Lillian Pitawanakwat from Birch Island (Whitefish River First Nation) tells the story of the origins of heart berries when she explains the e-bngishmog (western direction). She tells of a time when there was a lot of conflict in a community, to the point that one family decided to move deep into the bush to raise their two young boys. The boys grew up play fighting, and after their mother asked them to stop, they secretly continued fighting in the bush. That is, until one day, the younger of the two fell to the ground, banging his head on a rock and dying. The older brother concealed his death and carried the pain of this trauma for many years. Eventually, tiny odeminan began to grow at the grave and the older brother was able to finally let go of his sham
e, blame, anger and grief over the events that transpired so many years ago.[21] The heart berries serve as a reminder of the importance of working together in a good way, the importance of working through conflict in a manner that doesn’t hurt one another, and the importance of letting go. Odeminan remind us of the destructive nature of conflict and of the value of peace. They remind us that the heart is the compass of life and the things that really matter in life are relationships, knowledge and experiences of the heart. So in using oodena as our word for city, the word reminds us of the importance of keeping peace when we gather in large numbers. Our nation is about the promotion of peace.