Book Reflection: Ojibway Heritage

Now, when I said my "books with bears" thing was going to be "semi-regular", I did, of course, mean "actually quite random".

Nevertheless, I have one for you today:

Sharon read Ojibway Heritage, by Basil Johnston.

Should you ask me to recite the first chapter of The Song of Hiawatha, I probably could. Not as well as I used to be able to, back when I was rehearsing it regularly for a Speech exam (yes, I’m one of those kids), but I’d probably get most of it out. I occasionally burst into sections of it for no apparent reason anyway (although most people just think I’m insane, not reciting a particular poem). And I have to admit that the trochaic tetrameter comes to me a little too naturally.

In a way I guess you could say

That this rhythm almost haunts me

But it is a happy haunting -

Happy for it keeps me busy.

Any time I need to churn out

Verses for a rhyme or reason

This will rise up, deep within me

And produce a likely poem.

I love the way the lines don’t have to rhyme to produce a properly poem-y poem – although sometimes I feel like being a smart-arse and trying to get a rhyme scheme in there, too.

So, why am I waffling on about The Song of Hiawatha? Because I recently read Basil Johnston’s Ojibway Heritage – I managed to shoe-horn it into my library’s Reading Challenge as being set in a country I’ve never been to. It fits into that category three times over. I’ve never been to the Ojibway Countries, and I’ve never been to Canada or the USA, which are currently sharing the Ojibway Countries. It also has bears in it, although I didn’t mention that for the review I wrote for my work blog.

As Johnston points out, the Ojibway believe that bears symbolise strength and courage (which is actually one of the reasons why I have a bear tattoo), they offer wisdom and guidance during quests and ceremonies, and they make good eating if you can kill one before it kills you. The Ojibway have an interesting relationship with animals, as they both revere them and revere the hunting of them. The idea is to do it respectfully, and thank the animal for its (somewhat involuntary) sacrifice. Actually, their attitude towards omnivorism is pretty good – live a good and noble life, and do as much good as you can in your life, to justify the lives lost to feed you.

Johnston’s book (a mixture of explanatory text, poetry and stories) elucidates the Ojibway spiritual take on the world – their faith and some of the structure of their religion. It’s a lovely way to see the world, I must say. I loved the idea that each plant has it’s own spirit, but the plants (and rocks) in a particular area also combine together to create a spirit of place that you can feel while you are there. I felt exactly that recently when I visited a nature reserve in Sydney – there was one area in particular that had a really strong vibe to it, and I found I had to slow down and just be in it for a while.

The hierarchy of the orders of things was also pretty marvellous. Like the Judeo-Christian faiths, the Ojibway believe that a Great Spirit created the physical world first (rocks, earth, sun, moon), then the plant life, then the animals, and then humans after everything else was in place. Unlike the Judeo-Christian faiths, they don’t believe everything was created for mankind, but rather that mankind was at the tail end of the process because we can’t survive without all the other parts – we are the weakest and feeblest of all creation. Animals will survive without us. Plants will survive without animals (well, some will at any rate – the birds and insects do help out a lot of plants), and the soil and rocks will survive without any of it. We are not more important than what comes before us and sustains us, and we should treat our “parents” and our “elder brothers and sisters” with respect.

I really, really like a lot of the Ojibway world view Johnston outlines in this book. I kept thinking, “well, I guess I’m going to have to convert” as I read… but there’s something that’s got me thinking. I’m not sure, as someone who doesn’t have a drop of Native American blood in me (as far as I know – I haven’t done one of those DNA tests), if I’m allowed to convert to their religion. Or, as is more likely to happen, as I’m not part of the culture, take on aspects of their religion as my own. That’s probably cultural appropriation, which is a bit of a no-no at present. You can convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Baha’i or any number of other faiths, but can you convert to a “native” faith when you’re not a “native”?

Speaking of “native” – that’s a word that’s fraught with baggage. It tends to be something that was used by White Men of Longfellow’s vintage to imply a kind of cultural inferiority. An example of how a useful word can be given an unfortunate connotation that makes it something you can’t use any more. And speaking of White Men of Longfellow’s vintage, it really pains me to note that my beloved Song of Hiawatha has its own share of casual racism. That sucks. One of my favourite lines in the poem is one of the worst: “the feeble hands and helpless, groping blindly in the darkness, touch God’s right had in that darkness and are lifted up and strengthened” – which, in my teens, I always took to apply to all of us (and I still think it does apply to all of us), but in hindsight it was almost definitely written as a “poor heathens don’t know the True Faith of Christianity” reference. Humph.

I have never been to Obijway territory, and I have never met an Ojibway person, but there’s just something about that culture and that landscape (seen only in film and photographs) that makes me feel a strange wistfulness, like the song Gonzo sang in the first Muppet Movie – I’ve never been there, but I’m going to go back there some day.