Dancing on Our Turtle's Back

by Leanne Simpson

  My point in writing this is that the word “Otonabee” is heard or read differently by Canadians and Nishnaabeg peoples. When I hear or read the word “Otonabee,” I think “Odenabe,” and I am immediately connected to a physical place within my territory and a space where my culture communicates a multi-layered and nuanced meaning that is largely unseen and unrecognized by non-Indigenous peoples. I am pulled into a Nishnaabeg presence, a decolonized and decolonizing space where my cultural understandings flourish. I am connected to Nishnaabeg philosophy and our vast body of oral storytelling. I am pulled into my Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg lands, and the beating heart river that runs through it. My consciousness as a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg woman, a storyteller and a writer comes from the land because I am the land. Nishnaabemowin seamlessly joins my body to the body of my first mother; it links my beating heart to the beating river that flows through my city. Just as the word odenabe pulls me inward, I want my writing and my creative work to do this same thing for others—to pull people into my consciousness as a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabekwe. I want to pull people into a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg-constructed world, if even just for a few seconds.

  Creating Decolonized Time and Space

  Price Chopper is a downtown store that I would bet every Nishnaabeg person in Peterborough and the surrounding reserve communities has been inside to shop for groceries. In 2010, as part of the Ode’min Giizis festival in Peterborough, it became a transformative site.

  Nishnaabe curator Wanda Nanibush brought together international Indigenous performance artists and local storytellers as part of an exhibition entitled Mapping Resistances. The purpose of the exhibition was to re-map Peterborough from an Indigenous perspective as a way of marking the twentieth anniversary of the “Oka Crisis.” Mapping Resistancesdrew attention to how Indigenous Peoples interact with space in cultural and political ways and attempted to address the continual colonial mapping and erasing of Indigenous presence within this space.[22] Wanda writes that performance art, because it is based on process, contradiction, action and connection, is closer to Indigenous ideas of art and resistance. The meaning of both performance art and Indigenous thought is obtained through collective truths that are derived from the experience of individuals, relationships and connections (to the non-human world, the land and each other) through action or “presencing,” and through creative process. In line with the Creation Story presented earlier, Wanda writes that this knowledge is created and communicated through the movement of body and sound, testimony and witnessing, remembering, protest and insurrection, by creating a space of storied presencing, alternative imaginings, transformation, reclamation—resurgence.[23]

  Rebecca Belmore is a well-known Nishnaabe performance artist who participated in Mapping Resistances. Belmore’s piece engaged her full body of knowledge as she performed the intervention in a central location in downtown Peterborough.[24] I was an audience member in her performance, which followed my participation in Mapping Resistances as an Oral Storyteller.

  Belmore’s presence was a political, intellectual, spiritual and emotional innovation strategically designed to infuse a colonial space with non-authoritarian power, presence and connection. The entrance to Price Chopper faces a large parking lot, and along the sidewalk is a long, large, brown concrete wall. The audience gathered across the street facing the wall. After a short while, Belmore and two other people—a Nishnaabeg woman and a white man with a trumpet dressed in historic military uniform—drove a black pick-up truck blaring classic rock music up onto the side walk. Belmore got out of the truck and methodically placed four purple pillows on the sidewalk with four rocks on each pillow. She then proceeded to unload dozens of single litre plastic bags of milk and lined them between the pillows. When the milk was lined up, she aggressively and violently ripped open each bag with her teeth, and filled up a large bucket. When all the bags were open, she took a long paint roller and began to paint three large Xs on the brown concrete wall. The other Nishnaabeg woman methodically washed each X off with a garden hose, while the military man played sad music on his trumpet. This went on for several minutes. Presencing and erasing. Eventually, the three packed up their belongings, hosed off the sidewalk and left in the black truck.

  The performance itself was dense, with references to other work (including the other festival performances) and Nishnaabeg metaphor: colonizers have taken our land and our sustenance, and through the processes of capitalism, industry and manufacturing, they have used our own sustenance, represented as milk, to erase. However, my focus here is the transformative nature of the performance in terms of space. Witnessing Belmore’s performance was an extraordinarily meaningful experience in my life, one that I have thought of almost everyday since it happened. During the performance I felt powerful, free, and inspired. I felt proud of who I am. Belmore drew me into a decolonizing space where my presence and attention became completely focused in a similar fashion to what happens during natural childbirth, or ceremony. I lost sense of time and space. I was transported into a world that Belmore as the artist/storyteller had envisioned—a world where Nishnaabeg flourished and where justice prevailed, a world where my voice and my meanings mattered. Downtown Peterborough, like any other occupied space in the Americas, is a bastion of colonialism as experienced by Nishnaabeg people. But for twenty minutes in June, that bastion was transformed into an alternative space that provided a fertile bubble for envisioning and realizing Nishnaabeg visions of justice, voice, presence and resurgence.

  It reminded us that we as Nishnaabeg people are living in political and cultural exile. Yet, it disrupted the narrative of normalized dispossession and intervened as Nishnaabeg presence—not as a victim, put as a strong non-authoritarian Nishnaabekwe power. Belmore’s performance was liberation from within; and I am reminded of her/my presence, her/my power because she has altered the landscape in my memory and in the memory of everyone who witnessed her performance. Nishnaabeg and Indigenous artists like Belmore interrogate the space of empire, envisioning and performing ways out of it. Even if the performance only lasts twenty minutes, it is one more stone thrown in the water. It is a glimpse of a decolonized contemporary reality; it is a mirroring of what we can become. That day, Rebecca Belmore was my modern day Gezhizhwazh.

  * * *

  Autumn.←

  Wild rice.←

  Summer.←

  Thanks to Christine Sy for pointing this out to me in a previous draft.←

  Doug Williams, guest lecture, indg 3630, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, November 9, 2009.←

  I first asked Doug Williams if he knew the word for Eel. He couldn’t remember, so he called his Auntie and Uncle at Curve Lake, October 26, 2010. They remembered the word as mgizi—very close in pronunciation to migizi, the word for eagle. Shirley Williams, after consultation with other fluent speakers, came up with naag-bwe for lamprey eels, November 25, 2010.←

  According to Gerald Vizenor, “[n]ative sovenance is that sense of presence in remembrance, that trace of creation and natural reason in native stories; once an obscure noun, the connotation of sovenance is a native presence in these essays, not the romance of an aesthetic absence or victimry.” Gerald Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NB, 1998, 15.←

  Roronhiakewen Dan Longboat, Peterborough, ON, March 8, 2010.←

  For a discussion of how individual families exercised this in the context of adoption and family law by extending relationships of caring to outsiders, see Donald Auger, The Northern Ojibwe and Their Family Law, unpublished dissertation, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, ON, 2001, 179. Anishnaabek scholar Darlene Johnson also notes that this process adapted to colonial disruptions in the territoriality of our clan system by requiring those marrying and moving to live in another clan’s region to ask permission before moving. Oral presentation, Inclusion and Representation in Anishinabek Self-Government Conference, Nipissing First Nation, January 21–2
2, 2011.←

  E-Dbendaagzijig, “those who belong,” a term used by the Anishinabek nation as a citizenship code.←

  Sákéj Youngblood Henderson, First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights: Defining the Just Society, Native Law Centre, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, 2006, 153.←

  Scott Lyons, X Marks: Native Signatures of Assent, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2010, 4.←

  This is now known as the Trent River. The traditional name means that the river is shallow. Doug Williams, Waawshkigaamagki (Curve Lake First Nation), July 15, 2010.←

  This is now commonly known as Rice Lake. Pimaadashkodeyong means the “place where fire moves across,” referring to the practice of burning to maintain the prairie, Doug Williams, Waawshkigaamagki (Curve Lake First Nation), July 15, 2012, or spelled Pamashkodeyong in Rick Beaver, Alderville First Nation, October 14, 2008; and Ruth Clarke, To Know This Place: The Black Oak Savana/Tallgrass Prairie of Alderville First Nation, Sweet Grass Studios, Alderville First Nation, ON, 2005.←

  Peterborough, the place at the foot of the rapids.←

  Accessed September 11, 2010, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otonabee_River.←

  Doug Williams, Waawshkigaamagki (Curve Lake First Nation), July 15, 2010.←

  Language expert Anton Treuer writes, “The word doodem comes from the morpheme de, meaning ‘heart or center.’ The relationship between the words ode’ (his heart), oodena (village), doodem (clan), and dewe’igan (drum) has caused considerable confusion among some scholars, who have occasionally claimed that one of these words was derived from another when in fact they simply share the same root morpheme de. Ode’ (the heart) is the centre of the body, Oodena (the village) is the center of the community, and doodem (the clan) is the center of spiritual identity. Dewe’igan (the drum) is the centre of the nation, or its heartbeat,” The Assassination of Hole in the Day, Borealis Books, St. Paul MN, 2011, 15. Doug Williams understands oodena as being derived from the verb daawe—to buy or sell. Peterborough, ON, November 30, 2010. Norbert Hardisty (Hollow Water First Nation), however, remembers an Elder from Minnesota (Porky White, Leech Lake) explaining to him “oodena as being derived from the verb to buy and sell or commerce,” but he also remembers his Grandmother, a fluent speaker and Elder from Hollow Water First Nation in Manitoba, explaining to him that oodena was derived from g’debwe. She understood oodena to mean “the place where the hearts gather.” Hardisty knew and felt comfortable with both interpretations of the origin and meaning of the word. Hollow Water First Nation, Manitoba, December 6, 2010. Edna Manitowabi also shared this understanding and origin of the word oodena, January 20, 2011, North Bay, ON. Basil Johnston also groups the words Odae-meen (strawberry), n’d’odaem (my family—the heart of my being, or where my heart belongs my clan; my clan symbol), ningo-d’odaewiziwin (a single family; the distended family), odaenuh (a town) and odaenauh (a nation) under Odae (heart), indicating the words are related. Basil H. Johnston, Anishinaubae Thesaurus, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI, 2007, viii-ix , 178.←

  Basil H. Johnston, Anishinaubae Thesaurus, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI, 2007, 178.←

  Jim Dumont, Elders’ Conference, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, February 20, 2010.←

  To hear Lillian Pitawanakwat tell this story, click on “Ojibwe” and then “west” at www.fourdirectionsteachings.com, accessed September 12, 2010.←

  Wanda Nanibush, Mapping Resistances, curatorial essay, Peterborough, ON, 2010, 2.←

  Wanda Nanibush, Mapping Resistances, curatorial essay, Peterborough, ON, 2010, 2.←

  Belmore’s performance took place on June 19, 2010, in Peterborough, ON.←

  Resurgence in our Political Relationships

  Echoes from the Past

  Within the Dibaajimowinan of individuals and families, there is a wealth of oral stories and memories where all kinds of acts of hidden and not-so-hidden resistance have occurred throughout time. These acts or stories involve parents teaching their kids the language or a song, Mothers and Aunties working so hard to keep their children fed and cared for in the face of poverty, oppression and often violence, as well as individuals standing up for themselves or their loved ones in stores, government agencies, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, jails, courts, banks and doctors’ offices. Although these acts may not have catalyzed large-scale mobilizations, or perhaps even brought about discernable immediate change, nevertheless they have influenced Indigenous presence enough that the stories were passed along. These are acts of individuals throwing their stone in the water and they exist in every family. They are often humorous and always engaging. They are stories of survivance, as Vizenor would say.

  Writing broadly about Indigenous resistance in Canada, Kiera Ladner and myself wrote the following in an attempt to broaden conceptualizations of resistance to include all the mechanisms, processes and actions that prevent Zhaaganashiiyaadizi and to emphasize that as long as their has been colonialism on our lands, there has been resistance.

  The Ancestors not only fought, blockaded, protested and mobilized against these forces on every Indigenous territory in Turtle Island, they also engaged in countless acts of hidden resistance and kitchen table resistance aimed at ensuring their children and grandchildren could live as Indigenous Peoples. The Grandmothers, Mothers and Aunties were particularly adept at keeping us alive, and passing down whatever traditions they could so we would have warmth in our hearts and warmth in our bellies. We believe it is important to reveal the legacy of resistance in order to not only shatter mainstream Canada’s image of Indigenous Peoples as “passive victims” of colonization, but also to demonstrate to future generations that they exist because of the responsibility, sacrifice, courage and commitment of their Ancestors.[1]

  From my perspective as a Nishnaabekwe, whenever one throws a stone into the lake with intent, commitment and vision, the implicate order or spiritual world mobilizes to provide support and open doors. The emergent nature of Nishnaabeg mobilization, resistance and resurgence means that it is impossible to predict which stones will cascade through time and space, producing impacts, shifts, and transformations. Kiera Ladner, writing about the profound impact of the “Oka Crisis” on her generation emphasizes that Indigenous mobilizations throughout history start with little things:

  There have been and will continue to be countless seemingly “little things from which big things grow” on Turtle Island. Little things like the message of peace, power and righteousness that Hiawatha and the Peacemaker promoted among the Onkwehonwe and which became the foundation of the Great Law of Peace and the creation of a confederacy of nations founded on this message (the Haudenosaunee). Little things like Mistahimaskwa refusing treaty, citing the need for meaningful and trustworthy consultation and negotiation and reminding the representatives of the Crown that the Nehiyaw are a sovereign people, who will not (and have not) ceded their right to self-determination nor their territories, which they agreed to share with the newcomers. Little things like the women (including Sandra Lovelace, Jeannette Corbière Lavell and Irene Bédard) who refused to leave and/or returned to their reserves after they had married non-status men, gotten divorced or been widowed and who brought this gendered inequality to the streets, the Canadian Courts, the constitutional talks, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Little things like all of those parents and grandparents who refused to allow the state/church to take their kids to residential school and fought tirelessly for day schools, access to high school, integration and band-controlled education. Little things like Frank Calder and the Nisga’a Nation taking the Canadian Government to court in the 1970s in defense of their land rights and Aboriginal Title. Little things like all those fishermen (and women) like Dorthy Van der Peet and Donald Marshall Jr. who struggled for years on their rivers, their lakes and their oceans to maintain their fisheries despite being told that they were “fishing illegally” and knowing that they would end up in Canadian jails and
courts. Little things like the Dene Declaration of 1975 and the corresponding mobilization of the nation in defense of their homelands. Little things like:

  The echoes of these past resistances continue to be heard. I am sure that the echoes of past were heard that March at Kanehsatà:ke when a group of people decided to quietly block a dirt road in their community to raise awareness of the local golf course’s intention of developing their community commons (a piece of land that had been claimed as part the Kanien’kehaka community from the outset when the Kanien’kehaka established that community and started to bury their people in those now iconic pines on the commons). Given that this was not the first attempt to have settler governments deal with the very same land issue that defined the 1990 resistance and given that this was not the first flashpoint or episode of mobilization in Kanehsatà:ke, I am quite certain echoes of the past were heard that summer as the Ancestors stood shoulder to shoulder with the generations of today.[2]

  Echoes of past resistance come to the present through dreams, visions and Dibaajimowinan. Storytelling is one mechanism through which Biskaabiiyang operates. Cree scholar, poet and visual artist Neal McLeod explains, “The ‘echo’ metaphor has often been used by Cree storytellers as a way of describing the past coming up to the present through stories.”[3] I often think of Dibaajimowinan as the stones our Ancestors cast in the lake, echoing or reverberating out through time and space into the present. Things my great-great-great-Grandmother did and choices she made contribute to who I am and how I live in the world today. The stories I have of her influence my life. The telling of these stories in Nishnaabeg contexts—meaning oral contexts where contemporary Nishnaabeg cultural practices are the norm—is an act of Nishnaabeg presence and as Vizenor would say, transmotion.