2. Ceremony

Click here to listen to the podcast, “Ceremonies”

Download a copy of the podcast transcript and analysis text, here.

Photo by Aja Sy

Analysis: Relationship and Ceremony: Knowledges for Resurgence

Our resistance to colonialism is fortified by knowing who we are as Anishinabek.  Continuously deepening this self-knowledge allows us to root our lives and our resistances in the teachings that sustain our identities as Anishinabek peoples in Anishinabewaki (e.g. Deloria 1994, 277).  Relationships and ceremonies are key to this resurgence of knowing who we are because it is through relationship that knowledge is revealed, while ceremony helps to orient and ground that knowledge and is itself a way through which knowledge is given to us (Frank D. qtd. in Garroutte 2003, 128).  Within a colonial context, relationship and ceremony provide the unstoppable gift of knowledge that ties us to the ecologies from which we come: they are channels through which that knowledge flows.  This resurgence of knowing thus supports our resistance by helping us reclaim and maintain Anishinabek identities because, simply, this knowledge helps us to know who we are.  This analysis thus explores the re-emergence Anishinabe-gikendaasowin – the knowledge and knowledge traditions of Anishinabek (Geniusz 2009, 9) – through relationship and ceremony as part of the decolonizing biskaabiiyang framework.

Knowing who we are while still in a colonial context represents an act of resistance unto its own.  Colonialism attempts to erase Anishinabek as part of the settler state’s project of asserting sovereignty over our territories.  This erasure, manifesting in residential schools, the creation of the “Aboriginal” category of a “multicultural” Canada, and in a multitude of other arenas, functions to make it easier for settler society to access Anishinabe lands and “resources;” indeed, the thinking goes, if there are no Anishinabek, then what once was Anishinabek land must obviously be available for settlement or development.  Knowing one’s self as an Anishinabe person thus constitutes a type of resistance.  Deepening that knowledge represents a resurgence of Anishinabe identity where it otherwise continues to be a target for erasure.

Knowledge of who we are comes from our relationships.  We engage in a relationship with the land that results in knowing how to live in balance with the ecologies we belong to (Henderson 2006, 144-53).  Whereas a main focus of the Anishinabe teaching of mino-bimaadiziwin is to promote balance within our relationships and within the land, maintaining balance results in knowledge because the ecology of the world is in constant flux, and knowing how to live within the flux generates the knowledge to do so (153).  Knowing how to live well within a specific place, then, results in an identity, because each place has its own identity manifesting in the constant flux.  The way I understand it, our identities as Anishinabek are the expressions of our lands, the knowledges that arise from our lands, and our relationships to other people and to our territories.

While the knowledge needed to live well within our territories comes from the relationships we hold with them, the relationships we hold with knowledge holders also provide a way for us to access the knowledge we need to live as Anishinabek in a colonial context.  This is not to say that our Elder have been completely untouched by colonialism, as all of us have been affected in one way or another by over 400 years of colonial occupation and domination.  However, part of a biskaabiiyang decolonization process of picking up pieces of Anishinabe-gikendaasowin requires that we seek those pieces of knowledge within our Elders as well as through other means.[1]

Photo by Phil Abbott

During this project, one of the ways knowledge resurged was through my relationship with Gitigaa-Migize.  As mentioned in the introductory portion of this blog site (i.e. see Coming Home through Active Presence – Project Introduction), I worked with Gitigaa-Migize as his shkaabewis, or helper.  This meant I was given responsibilities to help with a variety of things, including helping him to open/close talking circles of various types, supporting him during ceremonies at Kinoomaagewaapkong,[2] and learning about the medicines he uses during such events, among other responsibilities.  New knowledge about these things was shared with me each time we did a ceremony, opened the medicine bundles, etc.

What is key here is that the resurgence of knowledge is a personal process as well as a communal one: I must take the knowledge given to me through my relationship with Gitigaa-Migize and others, and apply it within my own life (Henderson 2006, 131).  This embodiment of knowledge results in a confidence regarding what it means to live as Anishinabe, as was noted by Waaseya’sin about the children who help with the maple syrup harvest at Gitigaa-Migize’s house:

Those kids, they walk around like they know everything, but its a humble ‘I know everything’, and ‘I’m confident’, and ‘I can do this next year’.  I see [child’s name] talk about, he was talking to us about different plants yesterday, and he did it with such authority, right. But he’s confident in himself; he knows what he knows. And the same with [the other children]. That’s what’s happening here; those kids said ‘next year, we’re going to be able to do this sugar bush’.[3]

While many peoples harvest maple syrup, key here is the notion that knowledge fills people up, giving them confidence in their identity as Anishinabek.  They see themselves in the the work and in the knowledge, instead of being told that both the knowledge, work and their very identity has little value.

Seeing one’s self in Anishinabe knowledge is a form of resurgence and renewal, and is oriented and grounded within ceremony.  Indeed, ceremony helps to orient ourselves within our knowledge systems because it roots us in our “continuing relationships with high spiritual powers so that each bit of information is specific to the time, place, and circumstances of the people” (Deloria 1994, 277).  Like the children in Waaseya’sin’s example above see themselves in the work of harvesting maple syrup, thereby increasing their confidence in doing that work, ceremony allows us to see ourselves and the knowledge we hold within the teachings that originate from our relationship with the land.  This knowledge helps to shape our identity (Battiste and Henderson 2000, 41-2), and helps to shape our resistance to colonialism because it roots us in our intellectual traditions and relationships to land.  When we see ourselves in the teachings and the land, we become stronger when fighting neocolonialism because we are not as easily undermined by forces of co-optation designed to topple Anishinabe resistance.

Basing our resistance in the teachings and knowledge that we understand through ceremony and through trying to embody it in our lives provides an unstoppable flow of knowledge.  This knowledge can be brought into our resistances to colonialism through their resurgence, meaning that the deeper we immerse ourselves within them, the more our knowledges will inform our behaviour.  It is through ceremony that I am able to see myself within our resistance and resurgence, as ceremony is itself an act of renewing, rebalancing and maintaining relationships within the web of life that supports us and which I support in turn; speaking in the sweat lodge or listening to the teachings at a sunrise ceremony, for example, helps me to see myself fitting into a (re)balanced world, or a world without colonialism.  We must vision the world we want to live in, and then work towards manifesting that it.

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Footnotes

[1] Such as dreams, being on the lands, etc.

[2] Also known as “The Petroglyphs” at which is currently known as Petroglyphs Provincial Park.

[3] Waaseya’sin. Waawshkigaamagki. 17 June 2011.

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Contact Damien Lee: DAMIENL@UVIC.CA

The final version of this page was published on 30 August 2011.  Please use this date when citing.