Chapter 2
We didn’t know for a long time that we were equal. Now, we know, and there’s no stopping us anymore. We had forgotten our Story. Now, we’re starting to understand.
Traditional Native Axiom[1]
There was a period of time when many Aboriginal ceremonies were hidden throughout North America. This was due to a concerted attempt by the dominant Canadian and American governments to stop all Aboriginal ceremonies and to integrate the people into mainstream society. Ceremonies were banned, from the Midewiwin in the East, the Sun Dance in the Prairies and the Potlatch in the West, to name a few.[2] Vine Deloria, Jr. (Sioux), reminds us that in the United States:
By the time of the Allotment Act of 1887 (Dawes Act), almost every form of Indian religion was banned on the reservations. In the schools the children were punished for speaking their own language. Anglo-Saxon customs were made the norm for Indian people; their efforts to maintain their own practices were frowned on, and stern measures were taken to discourage them from continuing tribal customs. Even Indian funeral ceremonies were declared to be illegal, and drumming and any form of dancing had to be held for the most artificial of reasons.[3]
With the passing of the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), Aboriginal people who happened to live within the boundaries of the United States were allowed religious freedom. “Traditional Indians could no longer be placed in prison for practising old tribal ways.”[4] But the price for this so-called freedom was the destruction of traditional tribal governments and their replacement with Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) organized governments, as well as the re-allocation of tribal lands, which saw most reservations cut in half or more.[5] This ‘reorganization’ created “… corporate forms of government for political and economic ends, [which] created the same problems of religious confusion in the Indian tribes that existed in America at large.”[6] Further, was the ever-increasing encroachment of non-Native populations onto isolated lands. Deloria, Jr. explains that:
One of the primary aspects of traditional tribal religions has been the secret ceremonies, particularly the vision quests, the Fasting in the wilderness, and the isolation of the individual for religious purposes. This type of religious practice is nearly impossible today. The places currently available to people for vision quests are hardly isolated. Jet planes pass overhead. Some traditional holy places are the scene of strip-mining, others are adjacent to superhighways, others are parts of ranches, farms, shopping centres, and national parks and forests.[7]
In Canada there was also a concerted attempt to put an end to Aboriginal ceremonies and cultural societies. Katherine Pettipas (Cree) reminds us that:
In 1885, the Canadian Government outlawed the ceremonial distribution of property through potlatches and other forms of religious expression practiced by many Northwest Coast Aboriginal cultures in British Columbia by amending the Indian Act of Canada. Subsequent modifications to this legislation (1895) allowed the federal government, under the auspices of the Department of Indian Affairs, to undermine certain religious practices among other Aboriginal Cultures. In particular, certain rituals associated with the Sun (or Thirst) Dances were prohibited, as were giveaway ceremonies involving the massive distribution of goods. Over the years, other legislated regulations were introduced in support of a more general level of religious repression as well as locally imposed government restrictions on cultural behaviour that went “beyond the law.”[8]
She also points out that:
Giveaways at ceremonies held by the Midewiwin, or the Grand Medicine Society, were also subjected to surveillance. In 1925, a number of Saulteaux from Craig Lake, Saskatchewan, were dispersed while attempting to conduct a Midewiwin Ceremony. Since the offering consisted of material goods, the Ceremony was considered to be a breach of Section 149 [Amendment 1914: Indian Act 1876]. During the same year, two other men were arrested on similar charges; both were found guilty but were released with a warning.[9]
One of the ways the federal governments tried to destroy Aboriginal cultures was through the imposition of a dominant form of education. Pettipas (Cree) explains that:
In 1879, residential “manual labour” school system as it had been developed in the United States by American educators such as Richard Pratt, the Director of Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania was adopted [in Canada]. It was hoped that, by removing young children from the influence of their parents and relatives, they would become effective emissaries of Christian civilization among their own people. The ramifications of this educational system for Indians was that assimilation would not be a matter of choice, but would be imposed on them by the dominant society.[10]
These governmental policies against Aboriginal traditional ceremonies and cultural ways were legislated due to the fact that:
Government officials and missionaries contended that certain indigenous religious practices were immoral and seriously undermined the assimilative objectives of Canadian Indian policy. However the rationale for adopting coercive measures against indigenous religions had much deeper roots, … [it was] based on a belief on the part of the Department officials — and it was correct — that there existed a direct connection between indigenous worldview, ceremonial life, and the social, economic, and political structures of the community.[11]
It is important to remember that the oppression of Aboriginal ceremonies and cultural ways was imposed on the Aboriginal Nations without discussion or negotiation with those people. Pettipas (Cree) notes that:
While arrangements for land cessions and economic assistance were made through a treaty-making process, federal regulations regarding the administration of Indian concerns were unilaterally imposed. The authority and sweeping powers of this Indian administration were defined in regulations contained in the Indian Act of 1876 and its amendments. These regulations were developed to transform “Indians” into “Canadians” through a colonial relationship characterized by wardship and tutelage.[12]
All these laws and resolutions only succeeded in confusing and disturbing traditional governments and ceremonies. And yet there was a prophecy that had circulated around Indian Country, the traditional homelands of the Aboriginal peoples of North America, for many decades. It was said that the people would begin to search out their Elders and traditional Teachers again when the Eagle flew to the highest place. On July 20, 1969, everybody watched on television as Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and heard those men send the message “The Eagle has landed.”[13]
The Aboriginal Spiritual Renaissance that began in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s was characterized by young Aboriginal people leaving their homes and venturing throughout North America to seek Elders and traditional Teachers. Couture (Cree/Métis) recalls that, “Amazingly and concurrently, and virtually everywhere in North America, signs of revitalization appeared.”[14] Some Anishinaabeg travelled from the East to the Smallboy and Mackinaw camps in Alberta, the Rolling Thunder camp in Nevada as well as Wyoming and other western states and provinces. In many cases people experienced their first Fasting and Sweat Lodge Ceremonies. They were beginning their Spiritual quest for their traditions.
After years of travelling and seeking Elders, many were told that the answers that they sought could only be found back where they came from. In his examination of the return to the Traditions by Aboriginal peoples, Couture (Cree/Métis) remarks that:
By the late 60’s Aboriginal peoples around the world began to discover inspiration and means to obviate and move away from oppressive, devastating influences. To their unabated astonishment these discoveries were made in their respective backyards.[15]
For the first time many realized that the Teachings relevant to their lives could only come from within their own cultural traditions. Many people from the East did find the beginnings of their spiritual path with the Arapaho, Plains Cree and other Western Nations for example, but they were shown that their original Teachings were to be found at home. Gradually people began to question the ‘pan-Indian’ idea, the idea that all Aboriginal people are the same, that there is only one Aboriginal worldview.
An Odawa woman from Ontario remembers her search experience in the early 1970’s when she discovered her traditions in her own Nation’s territory.
When we went out for those first ceremonies in 1974 they were in Michigan. We came on to them quite by … well … I don’t want to say by accident, because I don’t think it was by accident. We were supposed to be going to Native Awareness Days in Marquette, Michigan at the University there. The students were putting on a weekend gathering and by the time we got there things were pretty well over. There was one lonely Tipi sitting out on campus and that was it. Everybody else was gone. So we were kind of wondering what to do and I saw a little flyer, a small card, and there was a picture of a Waterdrum and it was on a huge bulletin board in the Native Studies Lounge and right at the bottom, right at the bottom of this bulletin board with all these papers was a little card. What caught my eye was a picture of a Waterdrum and with the stones and the way it was tied because I had never seen one like that before. And it talked about Ojibwe ceremonies and it was south of there and it was that weekend. So this was Saturday morning, Saturday noon, around there, and rather than come all the way back home I … there was just a strong pulling sensation with that drum, that picture of the drum. I said to J. “I think we’re supposed to go here. These Ojibwe Ceremonies, let’s go check them out. They’re just over here.” It was about a two-hour drive actually. So we drove down there. …
For me it was … whenever I come on to things like that I look for other signs too. I noticed a lot of hawks that time. Incredible. The other thing was that sense that there was something special that was about to unfold. There was a very strong sense about that. When we got there we kept following these signs, and most of them where ribbons or cloth eh? [laughs] And we got to this camp and I guess for me it was hearing somebody speak Ojibwe. Somebody speaking the language, that was one, that was for me very special. We set up camp. There was a gathering that evening. And so I saw that Waterdrum there. That was when we first met E. (an Anishinaabe Elder). For me, I don’t really remember too much about what went on in terms of their Ceremony because there was just this incredible sense of coming home, I had come home to something that I had been yearning for, for a long time and so I just sobbed. Every time that Waterdrum sounded and they were singing songs, I sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed. It was like an old, old Spirit finding something that was, that had been … I had been waiting for a long time. So there was that sense. So every time that they sang a song, that’s the way it was, like there was a waterfall. So it was quite cleansing for me, quite an emotional experience for me. I didn’t really understand what had happened that time.
So ever since then, ever since that first experience we went to ceremonies after that. It was the sound of the drum. And there were only a few people there.[16]
Many people who went out in those early years express the same feeling: that of coming home. Paul Bourgeois (Ojibwe) remembers:
When I first heard the Waterdrum, I had a profound experience that would affect my life for years to come. When I went up to St. Charles and heard the Waterdrum, it was like I had come home for the first time. The sound of that drum was like I knew inside that my people, my ancestors, parents had done that forever. I knew that I belonged to that drum and that it belonged to me. So I knew I had found what I was searching for. What I was looking for all those years, was connected with that drum and with those Teachings that I heard and those songs and everything that was being done.[17]
When I reflect on the short history of our Spiritual Renaissance I am astounded by the fact that so many individuals went searching at the same time and that most tell of the profound impact the sound of the drum had on their lives. Paul Bourgeois (Ojibwe) explains that:
This experience with the Odewegan [drum] is widespread for Aboriginal people when they came into contact with Odewegan for the first time.[18]
As people sought their respective Elders and traditional Teachers they began to realize that:
… the “constants” for “living a good life” are carried by a timeless traditional reflection, continuously renewed down through the ages. What-is-carried, in its essence, manifests as process principles such as spiritual awareness and values development, and expresses as constituents underlying a continent-wide variety in language, customs and ways of First Nations, understood as paramount to “loving-life”, as engendering patterns of connecting responses to self, others, family, community, and the Cosmos. The “stuff” of relationships reveals as the “ground” to Aboriginal being and becoming, and provides a sure footing, a step at a time, to the necessary walk into and through contemporary dilemmas.[19]
This is what those people came to find, evidence that the traditions still existed. Many believed that all was lost and forgotten, and they were astonished to find that the old people still carried out their sacred duties. The search was difficult because almost all ceremonies and Teachings had gone underground, due to the oppressive nature of the dominant society in North America. Many Elders were very suspicious of new people who came to them, and many had decided years before to stop holding public ceremonies for reasons of safety for their families and communities.
In the late 1960’s, triggered by a sudden, strong wave of seekers, Elders, although flattered and grateful, were initially flustered and were forced initially to rethink and redefine themselves and their roles. They were faced with dire and unsettling questions about identity and survival, and with the basic paradoxes regarding the nature of the Native world and the fundamental issues about the world in which humans live.[20]
Nevertheless, the small trickle of Aboriginal people who went in search of their cultures quickly became a deluge. By the mid-1970’s hundreds, if not thousands, of Aboriginal people of every Nation were travelling about America looking and waiting for signs to direct them. Spiritual gatherings, Socials and Powwows became the main source of information about traditional Lodges, Teachers, where people had been, and what they had found.
I have heard the stories of people from Ontario meeting other people from their community or Reserve by chance in remote teaching camps in Alberta, or at Fasting camps in Wyoming. I have also seen people, as they tell one another the stories of their search, come to realize that that they had missed each other by only a few days or weeks, 25 or 30 years before, in places like Michigan, Manitoba and North Dakota.
These early years also saw the development of A.I.M. (the American Indian Movement) and a new cry for justice throughout Indian country.[21] The American Congress, in 1978, passed a Joint Resolution entitled the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) to address many issues that came out of the American Indian Movement’s (A.I.M.) activities in the early 1970’s.[22] Nevertheless, “… the federal courts have since ruled that the resolution did not protect or preserve the rights of Indians to practice their religion and conduct ceremonies at sacred sites on public lands.”[23] Even in the past few years there have been reports of Aboriginal peoples being harassed for wearing certain feathers as part of their traditional dancing regalia. While I was in Cherokee territory in Alabama in 1996, I heard a story of a little boy forced to remove his dancing regalia in the middle of a Powwow in Mississippi by Federal Agents because he had wild turkey feathers attached to his bustle.
In Canada, even though the last recorded interference in ceremonies such as the Midewiwin, “resulted in the prosecution of George Gilbert of the Wabigoon Reserve, Ontario, in 1938,”[24] the history of religious and cultural repression and the rights of Aboriginal peoples to religious freedom remains an important issue today. Pettipas (Cree) reminds us that:
Even after the regulations were deleted from the 1951 Indian Act, many elders and ritualists remained fearful of performing their ceremonies openly, and some continued to believe that the laws against their ceremonies were still in effect[25].
In both the United States and Canada the issue of Aboriginal religious freedom, to this day, remains unresolved.
Of particular note are concerns over the access to and use of religious objects held in museum repositories; the protection and use of sacred lands and sites in the face of development; the right to practice indigenous forms of religious expression within the prison system; the transport of sacred materials across state, provincial and international boundaries. In the United States, The American Religious Freedom Act (albeit inadequate) was passed in 1978 to protect Aboriginal religious freedoms, and, in Canada, the protection of Aboriginal cultures is a major issue in the ongoing discussions on self-government occurring between the federal government, the provinces, and the First Nations.[26]
Many of the Anishinaabeg who went out and searched for their Teachings nearly thirty years ago are today the Elders and traditional Teachers of our communities here in the East and elsewhere. They are also the parents of a new generation of Anishinaabeg who are being raised within their respective traditions in sober and healthy homes. It seems impossible that so much could have been accomplished in so little time (not forgetting that a great deal more needs to be done) and many of the people have reawakened from a very long slumber. Nevertheless, it is also true that some are still dozing, but their brothers and sisters are gradually awakening them.
The Spiritual Renaissance of Aboriginal peoples all across Turtle Island[27] has also been an Intellectual Renaissance. The People are gradually recognizing the rigorous intellectual traditions inherent in traditional Knowledge. This intellectual tradition of inquiry and discussion is central to Anishinaabe philosophy and as an expression of one of the main tenets of Mino-Bimaadiziwin (The Way of a Good Life) is the focus of what follows.