Kiera Ladner, “Governing Within an Ecological Context: Creating an AlterNative Understanding of Blackfoot Governance,” Studies in Political Economy70, Spring 2003, 125–152. ←
Respected spiritual leader of the Nishnaabeg people, Peter O’Chiese, explains Nishnaabeg style consensus as the Seven Clans coming to an eighth understanding: “Seven perspectives blended, seven perspectives working in harmony together to truly define the problem, truly define the action that is needed makes for an eighth understanding. It’s a tough lesson that we don’t know all the answers, we don’t know all the problems. We really own only one-seventh of the understanding of it and we only know one-seventh of what to do about it. We need each other in harmony to know how to do things … This process that we had was 100 per cent ownership of the problem,” Mark Douglas recalling the teaching of Peter O’Chiese as quoted in the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 3, Chapter 2, available online at www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sh14_e.htm. ←
See Edward Benton-Banai, The Mishomis Book, Indian Country Commun-ications, Hayward, WI, 1988, 75–80. ←
Doug Williams, Peterborough, ON, October 27, 2010. ←
Aakde’ewin is the art of being brave, Aakde’yin is when you are brave or strong. Shirley Williams, Peterborough, ON, December 18, 2010. ←
Shirley Williams, Peterborough, ON, October 27, 2010. ←
Doug Williams was unfamiliar with this word, and would use Gikendaasawin for knowledge. Peterborough ON, October 27, 2010. ←
Shirley Williams, Peterborough, ON, September 19, 2010. ←
Vanessa Watts, Towards Anishinaabe Governance and Accountability: Reawaken-ing our Relationships and Sacred Bimaadiziwin, unpublished ma thesis, Indigen-ous Governance Program, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, 2004, 89, web.uvic.ca/igov/research/pdfs/Vanessa%20Watts%20-%20Thesis.pdf, accessed September 20, 2010. Vanessa indicated to me she learned the Seven Sacred Gift Teach-ings from Shirley Williams, personal communication, November 15, 2010. Doug Williams explained Nishnaabeg conceptualizations of humility to me, Peterborough, ON, October 27, 2010. ←
It is also somewhat difficult to reconstruct pre-colonial Indigenous parenting techniques. The anthropological record and the record of early explorers and settlers are all wrought with Euro-centrism, but viewed if through an Indigenous lens can reveal core concepts. Several Nishnaabeg Elders have also informed my views, including Edna Manitowabi and Robin Greene-ba. ←
Clare Brant and P.G.R Patterson, “Native Child Rearing Practices and Their Role in Mental Health,” A Collection of Chapters, Lectures, Workshops and Thoughts, published by Ann Brant, 1997, 99–118. ←
Sylvia Maracle, The Seven Stages of Life, Elders’ Conference, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, February 15, 2004. ←
Bandolier Bags. ←
Mark Thompson-ba was from Sagkeeng First Nation on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. ←
Teaching was not didactic, but accomplished through storytelling, ceremony, experiential learning, reflection, and modeling. ←
I explained the concept of attachment parenting in English to Shirley Williams and she said that this was encompassed in Nengaajgchigewin. Peterborough, ON, September 20, 2010. ←
See attachment theory and contemporary attachment parenting books such as William and Martha Sears’ Attachment Parenting: A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby, Little, Brown and Company Publishing, New York, 2001; Katie Allison Granju with Betsy Kennedy, Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for your Baby and Young Child, Pocket Books, NY, 1999. ←
Cradleboard. ←
Similarly, Zhiinoomaagewin is the art of showing, to show something, to point at something. Shirley Williams, Peterborough ON, September 20, 2010. ←
Clare Brant and P.G.R Patterson, “Native Child Rearing Practices and Their Role in Mental Health,” A Collection of Chapters, Lectures, Workshops and Thoughts, published by Ann Brant, 1997, 99–118. ←
Rupert Ross, Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice, Penguin Books, Toronto, ON, 1996, 5. ←
Because of the ethics of non-interference discussed later in this paper, children experienced the natural consequences of their actions. It is my current understanding that traditional stories had punitive elements in them as a means of externalizing punishment from the community and family while also encouraging children to behave in a responsible manner. ←
This is most definitely a result of our colonial upbringings. Nishnaabeg people have always been stereotyped as docile, lazy, and permissive by colonizers who hated the gentleness of our ways. ←
It is my understanding that emotional restraint in this context does not mean one is to suppress one’s emotions, but deal with them in a responsible way that does not endanger the peace of others. Thus, people were encouraged to retreat from the social situation until their emotions were under control, followed by sharing and talking. ←
Clare Brant and P.G.R Patterson, “Native Child Rearing Practices and Their Role in Mental Health,” A Collection of Chapters, Lectures, Workshops and Thoughts, published by Ann Brant, 1997, 99–118. ←
This is not the same as a plurality of truths in a post-modern context. While everyone was entitled to their own perspective and truths, perspectives that violated the fundamental principles and values of Nishnaabeg society were not respected. Murray Sinclair, “Aboriginal Peoples and Euro-Canadians: Two World Views,” in John H. Hylton, ed., Aboriginal Self-Government in Canada: Current Trends and Issues, Purich Publishing, Saskatoon, SK, 1994, 19. ←
Rupert Ross, Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice, Penguin Books, Toronto, ON, 1996, 19. ←
Rupert Ross, Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice, Penguin Books, Toronto, ON, 1996,19. ←
For example, see Edward Benton-Banai, The Mishomis Book, Indian Country Communications, Hayward, WI, 1988. ←
These values were reinforced at puberty with girls completing the Berry Fast for girls and boys, a Vision Quest. ←
Clare Brant and P.G.R Patterson, “Native Child Rearing Practices and Their Role in Mental Health,” A Collection of Chapters, Lectures, Workshops and Thoughts, published by Ann Brant, 1997, 99–118. ←
Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005, 18–23. ←
The idea that children are the glue that holds our families and communities together was a teaching Edna Manitowabi shared with me. Stoney Lake, ON, December 14, 2010. ←
Shi-kiin: New Worlds
Over a decade ago I was teaching a class with Nishnaabeg Elder Robin Green-ba and a scientist at the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources in Winnipeg. Our class was discussing what is meant by the term “sustainable development.” The scientist was explaining that it means meeting the needs (and wants) of humans without compromising the needs (and wants) of future generations. In other words, developing only to the point where that development starts to impinge on future generations. I asked Robin if there was a similar concept in Nishnaabeg thought. He thought for a moment and then answered, “No there isn’t.” He told the class that sustainable development thinking is backwards, that we should be doing the opposite. He explained that what makes sense from a Nishnaabeg perspective is that humans should be taking as little as possible, giving up as much as possible to promote sustainability and promote mino bimaadiziwin in the coming generations. He felt that we should be as gentle as possible with our Mother, and that we should be taking the bare minimum to ensure our survival. He talked about how we need to manage ourselves so that life can promote more life.
In the middle of his book X Marks: Native Signatures of Assent, Scott Lyons, a Nishnaabe/Dakota scholar from Minnesota, embarked on a project to see if he could find a word for “culture” in Nishnaabemowin. When I came across this section is his book, my immediate reaction was, of course not. Of course we don’t have a word for culture because our “culture” was and is a series o
f interrelated processes that engage our full beings and require our full presence. After some searching and some consultation with Elders, Lyons came up with a roster of words and expressions including izhitwaa, nitaa, inaadizi, gaaminigoowisieng, and gaaenakowinid, that he interprets to respond to a single “overarching concern: the desire to produce more life.”[1] This is consistent with Winona LaDuke’s interpretation of mino bimaadiziwin as “continuous rebirth.”[2] It resonated with everything I had been taught by Elders—that the goal is to promote life and to live it rather than just talk about. Lyons starts by discussing izhitwaa, which he signifies as “having a certain custom or practicing a certain ceremony,” breaking the word down to its component parts: “twaa” denotes the sound of deep respect, reverence; and “izhi” means doing something meaningful in a certain way to produce a certain outcome. Words derived from izhitwaa include descriptors of actions of both people, animals and other components of nature. Izhiwebezimeans to behave in a certain and expected manner, while izhitigweyaa means to flow river-like to a specific place.[3]
The second word Lyons explores is nitaa, which addresses the “nurturing sense of culture” and means tending to grow, to be good or skilled at something, knowing how to do it, and doing it frequently. This word is used when speaking about all aspects of creation, including humans, animals and physical components and processes of the land. Nitaawigi means raising a child; nitaawigitoon means growing a crop; nitaawe means speaking or seeing well; nitaagemeans to mourn or kill game. According to Lyons, nitaa brings about a sense of doing things to bring about more life.[4]
The third word Lyons breaks down is inaadizi, which means living with a particular character.[5]Inaadiziwin means “way of life,” and its root inaadizi can signify both a utility (inaabadizimeans to be useful or employed), while also signifying a practical reality that includes the spiritual world (inaabam suggests seeing someone in a dream). Lyons sees this as “utility linked to vision,” as if one can see a proper course of action and become useful through living this way of life.[6] He continues “…there is also a judicial connotation here, as inaakonan refers to deciding something formally and inaakonige means making a judgment. Our word for law is inaakonigwein. Seeing, using, being useful, judging, deciding all of these acts inform inaadiziwin, suggesting that our ‘way of life’ is defined by certain values, namely things like utility, and clear sighted judgment, and visionary decision making.”[7]
When consulting with Elder George Goggleye of Leech Lake, Lyons was given two more words to consider: gaaminigoowisieng, “that which was given to use;” and gaaenakowinid, “that which was given to the Anishinaabeg to live by.”[8] Putting these concepts together, Lyon’s explains:
As rivers flow and birds fly, practicing religious ceremonies and other customs (izhitwaa) produces an intended result: more life. Behaving skillfully (nitaa) leads to more life as well, as evidenced by the proliferation of happy children and healthy crops. Living in a certain way (inaadizi) allows a community to see, use, decide and make clear judgments, all values guiding the making of more life. These ways of living were given to us [in a loving way] (gaaminigoowisieng, gaaenakowinid) by Someone or maybe Something, who wanted us to survive, thrive, and thereby produce more life. But perhaps the clearer indication of this general goal is another phrase commonly used to describe Ojibwe culture, anishinaabe bimaadizi, “living as Indian.” Bimaadizi is used to describe the general state of someone being alive, and it possesses connotations of movement that can be understood in a physical sense. Consider the congnates: bimaashi means to be blown along, bimaadagaa to swim effortlessly as if to be carried by the current, bimaada’e to skate, and bimaawadaaso, to move along in a group like a school of fish. The flowing sense of living in rhythm with others, of going along with the ebb and flow of nature…[9]
Biiskaabiyaang, Naakgonige, Aanjigone and Debwewin produced and continue to produce more life. Colonialism has only created a loss of life in terms of extinct and endangered species of animals and plants, and a drastic and traumatic decline in the quality of life for the fraction of Nishnaabeg that survived the original conquest. Zhaaganashiiyaadizi destroys Nishnaabeg presence, and this is counter to mino bimaadiziwin. Resurgence movements then, must be movements to create more life, propel life, nurture life, motion, presence and emergence.
Stone’s Throw
If the over-reaching goal of resurgence is to produce more life and to re-create the conditions for living as Nishnaabeg peoples following our own inherent processes and expressions of life, then our interventions into colonialism must be consistent with these core values of continuous rebirth, motion, presence and emergence. Emergence becomes of vital importance here, because within Nishnaabeg thinking around mobilization, small things are important and can have major influences over the course of time. Whether we are speaking about muskrat’s paw of dirt from which this world was created, or the young person’s dream that set our nation on our collective migration, desired outcomes are heavily influenced by the processes we engage in, our relationships, and how we live in this world.
This idea that living in the right way as individuals sets in motion influences and impacts that are impossible to predict is reflected in much Indigenous thinking around sovereignty. Haudenosaunee legal scholar Patricia Monture has written that self-determination and sovereignty begin at home.[10] It begins with how we treat ourselves and our family members—how we make decisions that honour the voices of all of our family members; how we respect individual autonomy and sovereignty; how we relate to human and non-human entities in a manner that embodies respect, responsibility, reciprocity and renewal. These relations then spiral outward to our communities and our nations. They extend into the network of relations in the implicate order and set up cycles of non-violence for the generations yet to come. This teaching is often visualized as a spiral, starting with the individual and radiating upwards and outwards with the circles gradually becoming larger. But according to our teachings, the spiral radiates in all seven directions—inward, outward in the four cardinal directions, upwards, downwards and through time. Resurgence works the same way. As resurgence is collectivized, it moves from being an individual act, vision or commitment, to one that functions on the level of a family. It then moves to a group of families, then a portion of a community, then a community, and so on. To me, the concept of collectivizing is encompassed in the term Nkweshkgdaadiwin, the art of meeting together.[11]
Métis Elder Maria Campbell explained this teaching to me in terms of resistance and resurgence.[12] She told me that acts of resistance are like throwing a stone into water. The stone makes its initial impact in the water, displacing it and eventually sinking to the bottom. There is the original splash the act of resistance makes, and the stone (or the act) sinks to the bottom, resting in place and time. But there are also more subtle waves of disruption that ripple or echo out from where the stone impacted the water. These concentric circles are more nuanced than the initial splash, but they remain in the water long after the initial splash is gone. Their path of influence covers a much larger area than the initial splash, radiating outward for a much longer period of time.
It is impossible to predict the impact of these concentric circles as they radiate outward across time and space, through different Indigenous territories. This Is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades (edited by Kiera Ladner and myself) mapped the multi-generational and trans-national impact of the resistance at Kahnesatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke, otherwise known as the “Oka Crisis.” This Is an Honour Song demonstrated the positive impact of that act of resistance through time and space. This impact was far reaching and well beyond the intent of the original activists that threw their stone into the lake when they blocked a dirt road leading into the pines that late March morning in 1990. Like the re-creation stories so clearly demonstrate, it is impossible to predict the outcome or influence of a single action or stone’s throw once the implicate order is mobilized, and once the act becomes collectivi
zed.
So resurgence starts with individuals aligning themselves within Biskaabiiyang, Naakgonige, Aanjigone and Debwewin. It starts to become osmotically collectivized through our interactions with our families, especially our children, and our communities. And like all Nishnaabeg systems, the processes that guide individual cycles also guide our collective cycles. Decision making within families is mirrored between clans and at the national level. Parenting demonstrates the qualities of leadership, and so on. The family is the microcosm for the nation.
Shki-kiin: New Worlds
In reading John Borrow’s Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide, and thinking about Maria Campbell’s Stone Throw teaching—in addition to thinking about re-creation stories as resurgence—a pattern emerged. Many resurgence or re-creation mobilizations within Nishnaabeg thought starts with a vision or a dream. John Borrows, using Basil Johnston’s Anishinaubae Thesaurus, terms this “Pauwauwaein,” a revelation, an awakening, a vision that gives understanding to matters that were previously obscure.[13] Within our Andizookanan, many, many stories begin with a welcoming of the spirits through a dream: the Creation of the earth itself, the coming of the drum to the Nishnaabeg, and our migration story, to name just a few. When we put our tobacco down and ask for help to solve a problem, to come up with a strategy or so that the Stone we threw ripples through the world in a positive way, we are asking the implicate order to visit our action.
While some stories or mobilizations begin with the gift of knowledge or help from the spiritual world, other stories begin with a vision—a vision of life or a social reality that is different from the one the individual, clan or community is currently living within. Gezhizhwazh visioned a world without Wiindigo. Our Elder Brother visioned a world where the gdigaa bzhiw clan was not lying on their backs drinking maple syrup all day. The young Nishnaabekwe visioned a world in which her small baby was with her and not crying. The act of visioning for Nishnaabeg people is a powerful act of resurgence, because these visions create Shki-kiin, new worlds. Neal McLeod writes, “We must attempt to dream and have visions. Without dreams and idealism, we will truly be a conquered people.”[14] Presumably, this is because we will not have the ability to imagine our way out of the cognitive box of imperialism. Presumably, this is because imagining aligns us with the emergent and creative forces of the implicate order.
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