Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [21]
[10] This too, this water where the fish live, for them too one thinks of them respectfully first of all. He offered the spirit tobacco first when he wanted to eat those fish.
[11] In this way the Indian was put [here] long ago. This [is] what I heard the old men that gave the lectures say. Now that is what I tell my fellow Indian when I help someone getting a name or something.
[12] And for starters, that is all I want to say. At a later time I will talk again. That is it.
That’s It
[1] Once there was a shitepoke* looking for frogs there in the swamp. As that shitepoke was eating, a great blue heron showed up, having a big appetite himself. He tried to chase off that shitepoke.
[2] The great blue heron is larger than the size of a shitepoke. But that shitepoke wasn’t scared. The shitepoke wasn’t going to leave. And he didn’t want to share that food. He was ready to fight.
[3] He attacked that great blue heron ferociously. They were really hitting each other, using their wings, shaking their wings, and biting one another. Their fight was heard from a long way off.
[4] Later on after a while that shitepoke defeated that great blue heron. That great blue heron was almost beaten to death. Then that shitepoke says like this, “That’s it. That’s it.”
* A small relative of the great blue heron, the shitepoke is also known as the swamp pump or American bittern.
Misi-zaaga’igan
Mille Lacs
JIM CLARK
JIM CLARK (b. 1918), whose Anishinaabe name is Naawi-giizis (Center of the Sun), answered one of my most perplexing questions about the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation. I often wondered how the communities there could be so successful in maintaining their language and culture. They’ve fared far better than most of their neighbors in this regard, despite the fact that they are located a little over one hundred miles from Minneapolis and have a small population surrounded by a sea of white resorts, hotels, and summer homes. In particular, they’ve managed to preserve Big Drum culture in the face of consistent efforts to remove them from their homeland, including the burning of their homes in 1901 and the withholding of allotments until 1926 for all who did not relocate to White Earth.
As I became more and more familiar with Big Drum culture, the answers to that question became manifest. The power of the Drums themselves did much to protect the people of Neyaashiing and its cousins to the east in Sandy Lake and Lake Lena. The unbending faith of the Drum Keepers did much to protect the Drums and everything associated with them as well. It was the strength of traditional Ojibwe religion and the tenacity of traditional Ojibwe people that enabled the communities of Mille Lacs to retain so much in spite of the enormous pressures to relinquish all they had.
As I got to know some of the elders from Mille Lacs and heard them tell the history of their physical and cultural survival, I came to appreciate more and more the importance of strong leadership. And I realized that strong leadership is an acquired skill much more than a natural gift. The people of Mille Lacs have maintained regional Big Drum culture for all Ojibwe people through the strength of their teaching and the strength of their learning. Good students make good teachers, and the legacy of strong leadership at Mille Lacs is one that has been handed down for generations in the families of that community. The process of keeping cultural knowledge depends upon a large web of knowledgeable family and community members with an unshaken faith in the power of the Drum.
Jim Clark has certainly exemplified that development. His parents and grandparents taught by example rather than by command, and Jim grew up immersed