Kitchi-Gami



In the Ojibway language, Kitchi-Gami means Lake Superior.  Johann Georg Kohl (1808-1878) was a German travel writer, geographer, and ethnologist.  In 1855, he spent six months visiting trading posts and missions in Ojibway country near Kitchi-Gami, mostly at the Apostle Islands off the north coast of Wisconsin, and at the settlements at the base of Keweenaw Bay, in northern Michigan.

Kohl’s book, Kitchi-Gami, was published in 1860.  It presents a different perspective from John Tanner’s 1830 book, The Falcon.  Tanner was a white man, kidnapped as a boy, who spent 30 years among the Ojibway, had a hard life, and described his many struggles.  Kohl was a visitor from outer space who was fascinated by the Ojibway.  He interviewed many, learned a lot about their culture, and discussed numerous subjects not mentioned by Tanner.

Kohl was eager to record as much as possible about the Ojibway, because it looked like Native Americans were rapidly dying off, and would soon be gone.  At the same time, the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were working to preserve remnants of the traditional culture of Germany, because the rustic folks who still remembered bits of it were also dying off.

Both the Ojibway and wild Germans were cultures that inhabited vast ancient forests, sacred places of magic, mystery, hungry wolves, and mystical little people (fairies).  Kohl noted that the folktales of both had similar themes and lessons.  Ojibway birch bark wigwams were of comparable quality to the huts of poor peasants in Lithuania, Ireland, or Polish Jews.  Like Scandinavians, the Ojibway fished at night using torches.  Germany had witches or sorcerers who could cause others harm by curses, charms, or spells.  The Ojibway had Windigos, men or women possessed by evil spirits who were terribly common.

Kohl’s gift to us is a remembrance of the closing days of the wild frontier, when Ojibway country was relatively unmolested, except for its furbearing animals.  The St. Mary’s River was the eastern outlet for Kitchi-Gami.  Bears crossed it during seasonal migrations.  In 1811, the migration lasted all summer, and 6,000 bears were killed, as many as 100 per night.  Before Kohl arrived, the greedy fur mining industry in the region had peaked, sharply declined, and moved westward.

Near the St. Mary’s River was a settlement named Rivière au Désert, because it was a ghastly, hideous eyesore in the wilderness — scruffy patches of oats or barley planted amidst stumps.  “Nature is here, at the outset, a pleasing wild forest garden; but when civilized man breaks into it, his axe and his fire produce a desert of half-carbonized tree stumps and skeletons.”  French Canadians call these patches of cultivation “un désert.”

Kohl was fascinated by the spiritual life of the Ojibway.  In Germany, the black robes commonly taught that the world is a hellish nightmare of demons, wickedness, and abominations.  The Ojibway, on the other hand, loved their sacred land, and cared for it.  Their culture was not fixated on the soul’s path in the afterlife.  They had a vibrant spiritual connection to life in the here and now.

Unfortunately, the here and now was sharply different from the good old days.  Kohl chatted with an old woman whose name meant “dawn.”  He called her Aurora.  The blitzkrieg of civilization had pushed the Sioux out of their forest homeland, and westward onto the prairie.  Tribal warfare intensified.  People no longer felt safe.  Aurora had lost three brothers, and ten other close relatives.  She said that the Ojibway were far weaker since the Long-knives arrived.  They used to be healthier and stronger, able to go ten days without food and not complain.  Their traditional culture was withering.

He was amazed to learn about the Ojibway vision quests, which were part of their rites of passage into adulthood.  Nowhere in Europe did young boys or girls courageously “fast for days on behalf of a higher motive, retire to the most remote forests, defy all the claims of nature, and fix their minds so exclusively on celestial matters, that they fell into convulsions, and attained an increased power of perception, which they did not possess in ordinary life.”  Sometimes it took ten days of fasting to have important dreams.

In Germany, Christian preachers taught their flocks to give away their wealth, and live a life of unconditional love.  Native Americans were perplexed to observe that the teachings of the black robes often had no association with their behaviors.  The aliens seemed to be possessed with a frantic desire to seize and hoard as much wealth as possible.  They were arrogant, domineering, and impressively dishonest — the opposite of loving.

The Ojibway actually practiced what the Christians preached.  “As a universal rule, next to the liar, no one is so despised by the Indians as the narrow-hearted egotist and greedy miser.”  Voyageurs and traders regularly travelled through Indian country with valuable goods and full purses.  There were no police or soldiers in the wilderness, but it was very rare for a trader to be attacked for the sole purpose of robbery.  But the two big fur trading companies “often plundered each other’s posts, and employed the Indians for that purpose.”

Kohl was impressed by the charity of the Ojibway.  “There are no rich men among them.”  An Indian will not hesitate to share his last meal with a hungry stranger.  The principle is “that a man must first share with others and then think of himself.”  He was also impressed by their egalitarian society.  No man, not even a cripple, considered another Indian to be his superior.

Kohl was not a hunter-gatherer in Germany, and he was not raised in an egalitarian society.  He did not understand that hunting abilities varied greatly.  In The Art of Tracking, Louis Liebenberg noted that among the San hunters aged 15 to 38, “70 percent of all the kudu kills were made by only 17 percent of the hunters, while almost half the hunters made no kudu kills at all.”

The “communist” Ojibway annoyed him with their absolute commitment to generosity.  The poor hunter “is forced to give all his spoil away, industry is never rewarded, and the hard-working man toils for the lazy.  A man often has to support others, without complaining.  So, all are fed, and none ever get prosperous.”  The heathens were more Christian than the Christians.

Liebenberg wrote a lot about persistence hunting — running after game until they collapsed from exhaustion (a practice that led to our ancestors becoming bipedal).  Kohl noted that the Ojibway also did this.  Horses were not ideal for hunting in a forest.  Running down elk was easiest in the deep snows of winter, when the hunter travelled on snowshoes.  Sometimes bears were chased down.

One day, when Kohl was in the Apostle Islands, “A warlike maiden suddenly appeared, who boasted of having taken a Sioux scalp, and she was led in triumph from lodge to lodge.  I was told that a supernatural female had appeared to this girl, who was now nineteen, during the period of her great fasts and dreams of life, who prophesied to her that she would become the greatest runner of her tribe, and thus gain the mightiest warrior for husband.”

Women were healers, prophets, and enchanters.  “It may be easily supposed that these squaws, owing to their performing all the work of joiners, carpenters, and masons, have corned and blistered hands. In fact, their hands are much harder to the touch than those of the men; and, indeed, their entire muscular system is far more developed, and they are proportionately stronger in the arm, for the men do not do much to bring out the muscle.”

Raised in rigidly strict Germany, Kohl was amazed by how loving Ojibway parents were.  “Indians have an ape-like affection for their children.  Even fathers are very kind to their sons, and never treat them with severity.”  Europeans often exposed (abandoned) unwanted children, but the Ojibway never did.  But when the elderly could no longer keep up with the band, they were left behind.

In Kitchi-Gami country, there were numerous locations named Lac du Flambeau (Torch Lake).  In summer, when vast clouds of mosquitoes made life miserable, the deer waded into lakes and ponds, just keeping their heads above water.  Hunters in canoes quietly moved toward them from downwind, with birch bark torches burning.  The deer calmly stared at the light, and were easily killed.

So, dearest reader, there’s a sampler.  Kohl also described their wigwams, canoes, diet, food preservation, sugar making, fishing, clothing, revenge killing, warfare, spells and magic, medicine, vision quests, dreams, ceremonies, stories, reverence for copper, symbolic drawings on birch bark paper, and on and on.

Kohl, Johann Georg, Kitchi-Gami: Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway, 1860, Reprint, Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, 1985.

NOTE: Early editions of this book refer to the Ojibway as Ojibbeway.  These people are also known as the Chippewa and Anishinabe, in a variety of spellings.

Kith (republished as A Country Called Childhood)

Jay Griffiths soared away on a seven-year pilgrimage to forage for the knowledge that illuminated her book Wild.  She spent a lot of time with wild tribes, and with conquered people who still had beautiful memories of wildness and freedom.  As she bounced from place to place, both modern and indigenous, she became aware of a glaring difference between wild people and the dominant culture — their children.

This presented her with a perplexing riddle.  “Why are so many children in Euro-American cultures unhappy?  Why is it that children in many traditional cultures seem happier, fluent in their child-nature?”  Her dance with this riddle gave birth to her book, Kith.

Griffiths is English, and the book’s title refers to the old phrase, “kith and kin.”  Kin means close family.  Kith originally meant knowledge or native land, the home outside the house.  When peasants lived on the land, their knowledge was rooted in the living place around them, not in mysterious juju like mathematics, economics, or engineering.  In recent centuries, most peasants have been driven out of their home, and their traditional knowledge has been forgotten.  Today, the meaning of kith has been reduced to extended family and neighbors.

Like “sustainable,” kith was once a beautiful word of great importance, now reduced to a toothless ghost.  Both words are lifesavers, if we could just remember them.  They are not forever lost.  Griffiths reminds us that “the past is not behind us, but within us.”

In this book, kith is used in its ancient form, a sacred word of power.  Why are kids so unhappy?  They have no kith.  They are dreadfully impoverished.  In our society, kids (and adults) are unwell because they have largely been exiled from nature.  They live indoors in manmade environments.  Nature is an essential nutrient for health and sanity.  Kith is life.

Griffiths and her brothers spent much of their youth playing outdoors, wandering across the land, getting wet and dirty, without adult supervision.  They rarely watched television.  She fears that her generation may be the last to experience the remaining vestiges of a normal childhood.  But I think that the game will change radically after the lights go out.  Mass insanity may not be our closing act.  After the plague comes healing.

Evolution prepared our species for a life of hunting and foraging.  All infants born today are wild animals fine-tuned for thriving outdoors in a tropical climate, surrounded by wild flora and fauna.  Being surrounded by nature is what all animals require for a normal and healthy life.  Like all other animals, young humans need to explore, play, learn.  Children need nature like fish need water.  They need a place where they belong, a home, a land that will be “mentor, teacher, and parent.”

They need to grow up in lands that still have their original parts — deer, birds, snakes, frogs, coyotes — our relatives who have not forgotten how to live.  They have so much to teach us.  Pets are unacceptable replacements for our wild and free relatives.  Cities are unacceptable substitutes for healthy places to live.  Zoo animals have miserable lives.  Confinement in industrial civilization is devastating for tropical primates of all ages.

Several centuries back, Griffiths’ ancestors lived in villages near commons.  The commons were open lands where the people could hunt, fish, pick berries, gather wood, and graze livestock.  Today, the commons are nearly extinct.  They have been eliminated by a process called enclosure, whereby wealthy lords fenced off the commons, replaced forests with sheep pastures, evicted most peasants, and burned down their humble cottages.

Enclosure is the diabolical anti-kith.  Modern kids no longer have abundant open spaces in which they can mature in a healthy manner.  Space has been enclosed and denatured.  So has freedom, the essence of childhood.  They are no longer free to spend their days wandering where whimsy leads them.  Modern childhood is now rigidly scheduled.

Community has also been enclosed.  Kids used to be raised in villages where there were no strangers.  Kids were mentored and parented by neighbors and extended family.  Modern kids grow up in a world of automobiles, strangers, and nuclear families.  Outdoors, behind every bush, are tweakers, psychopaths, perverts, and predators.  Kids spend much of their lives under house arrest.

Kids have immense interest in learning, but we give them “a school system that is half factory, half prison, and too easily ignores the very education which children crave.”  They major in obedience, punctuality, self-centeredness, and the myths of civilization.  They spend their childhood years indoors, in classrooms, and graduate knowing nearly nothing about the ecosystem they inhabit, their kith.

This is quite different from how children in traditional societies are raised.  Wild children are in constant human contact until they learn to walk, some sleep with their parents for the first five years or so.  They are never left alone to cry themselves to sleep.  They are never scolded, beaten, or given commands.  They are socialized, respected, treated like adults.  Socialization teaches them to be respectful of others, and nurture good relationships.  They develop confidence and self-reliance.

Importantly, wild cultures do an excellent job of guiding youths through a healthy transition into adults.  Every person is born with a unique personality.  We all have different gifts, interests, and destinies — trackers, herbalists, counselors, scouts, singers, dancers, drummers, shamans, storytellers, healers, slackers, morons, lunatics. 

Elders carefully help youths find their paths in life.  “Every child needs their time in the woods, to find their vision or their dream.  Yet most children today have no such rite, no way of negotiating that difficult transition into adulthood.”

The first generation of enclosure victims were painfully aware of all they had lost.  Their city born descendants have little or no awareness of the lost treasure of kith, and the harsh poverty of their consumer prosperity.  They are “denied their role as part of the wildlife.”  Many may go to their graves without ever experiencing the beauty that is the sacred birthright of tropical primates, and every other living thing.

Griffiths learned to talk and read at a very early age.  She has a great passion for words and learning.  You get the impression that she has read 10 or 20 books a week since she was crawling around in nappies.  She writes with flourish and flamboyance.  Kith is not an instruction manual for childrearing, but it provides a wealth of important insights for tropical primates who live in modern society.  It’s an excellent companion to Jean Liedloff’s masterpiece, The Continuum Concept. 

Here is a 20 minute video of Griffiths talking about her book.

Griffiths, Jay, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2013.

NOTE: The U.K. edition of Kith is now in print.  Australians can get the Kindle version only.  The U.S. edition will be published by Counterpoint Press, and released by the end of 2014, they say.  Non-Europeans can buy the British edition from Amazon via third party vendors.  Amazon U.K. is forbidden to sell the Kindle version to Yanks (they’re still sore about the Revolutionary War).

Searching For Identity and Purpose

Once upon a time, Carl Jung said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.”  He understood his calling, the special role that was unique to his existence.  He consciously pursued it, and he spent his life on a path of powerful healing.

James Hillman was one of Jung’s apprentices.  Hillman did not believe that newborns came into this world as blank slates.  He saw infants as unique acorns, ready to spend their lives growing into unique oaks.  Every oak tree had a different form.  No two were identical.  The form of the tree was influenced by the information stored in the acorn from which it sprouted.

Hillman believed that every human acorn had unique characteristics, and a unique calling, purpose, or destiny.  Every person had a sacred obligation to understand that calling and live it.  This was why nature-based societies encouraged people to discover their calling via vision quest ceremonies.  When they found their vision, they knew their path and purpose.  This helped them avoid wasting their lives in aimless wandering.

Basil Johnston described how vision quests worked in Ojibway culture.  Once a person discovered his or her vision, they tried hard to live in accordance with it.  It was not uncommon for folks to periodically stray from their vision, or betray it, and “such a state was tantamount to non-living in which acts and conduct had no quality.”  Every year, men and women would go on a retreat, to verify that they were still living in synch with their vision, and make any needed adjustments.

Hillman believed that modern society was a train wreck because most people were clueless about their calling, and were wandering aimlessly.  Society fed the sacred acorns into a machine that crushed them, shredded them, and converted them into standard issue industrial robots and recreational shoppers — lost souls.

On a larger scale, it’s not hard to imagine that entire communities were once guided by a collective tribal vision, before agriculture arrived.  Each wild community inhabited a unique ecosystem, and its custom-tailored vision enabled it to live in balance with the land.  This vision was passed from generation to generation, across vast spans of time, and helped to keep the life of the tribe stable and secure.  The vision guiding the human community was in harmony with the vision of the community of life — they were the same.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with sincere regret that I must inform you that industrial civilization has no sacred vision to guide it; it has a terminal illness.  In ages past, as civilization obliterated countless wild tribes, the visions of those tribes were forgotten.  Because of this, our society has descended into “a non-living state, and our acts have no quality.”  We are no longer like happy tadpoles or maggots, the beautiful offspring of a healthy wild ecosystem.  We have been reduced to lonely stressed-out cogs in a global economy.

What can we do?  Is it possible to remember what was lost?  Native Americans have told me yes, it is.  If you forget your instructions, just look back toward the Creator’s fire, and you’ll remember them.  But each tribe was given different instructions by the Creator.

White folks are not like tribal Indians.  We’re mongrels, having ancestors from numerous tribes, all now disintegrated or extinct.  If I have ancestors from 476 tribes, who am I?  What are my instructions?  Where is my home?  Who are my people?

If my wild ancestors were buried in 476 different lands, and all of those ecosystems have been obliterated by centuries of civilization, what good are the ancient instructions?  The aurochs are gone, the lions are gone, the forests are gone, and the salmon have been herded into concentration camps. 

The stories, songs, and ceremonies of my wild ancestors have all been lost.  Indians disagree.  They insist that all ancient wisdom is always “accessible,” and just wink when I ask how.  This is most perplexing!  I’m hoping that contemplating a sustainable future will open new doors of perception, or old ones.

I’ve lived in nine states, and my extended family is scattered everywhere.  We have become wandering homeless people.  This year, I’m living in the Willamette Valley, on land violently stolen from the Kalapuya.  As a people, the Kalapuya had never forgotten their vision.  They celebrated their lives in a paradise of abundant life, and they knew how to live in balance with it.  It was easy.  All they had to do was to carefully follow the path of the ancestors, the ancient time-proven vision of the community.

The Kalapuya were forced out of their home by the white invaders, who had strayed far from their ancestral home, and had no vision for living in harmony.  The invaders built the city that I live in, which is insane, and is in the process of committing suicide.  It has no spiritual connection to the land, or to life.  Indeed, the entire nation is lost and insane.  This is not encouraging.

Today, the invaders’ culture is a childlike fantasy world of gadget worshippers — robot-driven electric cars, smart highways, smart grids, high-speed trains, Internet everything, windmills and solar panels, and on and on — nothing sustainable, and nothing that is necessary for a healthy and enjoyable life.

The purpose of existence is to make lots of money, by any means necessary, and spend it in a manner that continuously increases your display of personal status, as defined by the ever-changing fads of consumer society.  Stan Rowe perceived that consumers were raging narcissists, spellbound by their own image, imprisoned in an introspective cage — too much time spent before the mirror, and far too little outdoors with the family of life.

Countless millions devote their entire lives to acquiring and discarding unnecessary stuff.  Consumers have a deep longing to experience inner peace and happiness in their lives, and they believe that shopping is the sacred path.  They are trying to fill the vacuum created by their loss of wildness and freedom.  But, no matter how skillfully they shop, or how much they spend, it never works, except for fleeting post-purchase consumer orgasms, soon followed by a return to gnawing hollowness.  Trainloads of Prozac numb the pain.

I can’t get off the bus and live like a Kalapuya.  The deer, elk, and salmon are mostly gone now, replaced by endless herds of automobiles and cell phone zombies.  The land has been chopped up into thousands of parcels of private property, where my presence is not welcome.  In this reality, a sustainable way of life is impossible.

John Trudell says that we cannot have a spiritual connection to the future if we have lost the connection to our past.  It’s essential that we remember that everyone has ancestors who were tribal people — admirable folks who were solidly connected to the circle of life, and lived in harmony with it. 

We are, at root, tribal people who have been colonized.  Colonization is a component of the spiritual disease that gave birth to domestication.  It’s a mindset devoted to a mining way of life, eating up tomorrow, for no honorable purpose.  At the core of our healing process is decolonizing our minds, remembering that we are wild tribal people — human beings — not miners.

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Tahca Ushte (Lame Deer) was a Lakota medicine man from a land now known as South Dakota (“Sioux” is a white name that insults the Lakota).  His government-issued name was John Fire.  He was born some time between 1895 and 1903, and died in 1976.  His parents were of the last generation to be born wild and free.  Two of his grandfathers had been at the battle of Little Big Horn, Custer’s last stand, and one of them survived the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Lame Deer’s early years were spent in a remote location, where they had no contact with the outside world.  He never saw a white man until he was five.  At 14, he was taken away to a boarding school, where he was prohibited from speaking his language or singing his songs.  The class work never went beyond the level of third grade, so Lame Deer spent six years in the third grade.  He eventually gained renown for being a rebellious troublemaker.  When he was 16, he went on a vision quest, and discovered that he was to become a medicine man.

Sons destined to become medicine men were often removed from school by their families, because schooling was harmful to the growth of someone walking a spiritual path.  One father drove away truancy officers with a shotgun.  For medicine men, the skills of reading and writing had absolutely no value.

When Lame Deer was 17, his mother died, and the family fell apart.  The white world was closing in, making it hard for his father to survive as a rancher.  He gave his children some livestock and wished them good luck.  By that time, the buffalo were dead, their land was gone, many lived on reservations, and the good old days for the Lakota were behind them. 

Lame Deer straddled two worlds, the sacred path of Lakota tradition, and the pure madness of the “frog-skinners,” — people who were driven by an insatiable hunger for green frog-skins (dollar bills).  The frog-skinners were bred to be consumers, not human beings, so they were not fun to be around.

Lame Deer spent maybe 20 years wandering.  He made money as a rodeo rider, clown, square dance caller, potato picker, shepherd, and so on.  He always avoided work in factories or offices, “because any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people.”  He enjoyed many women, did more than a little drinking, stole a few cars, and shunned the conventional civilized life.

Between jobs he would return to his reservation and spend time with the elders.  During World War II, just before Normandy, he was thrown out of the Army when they discovered that he was 39, too old.  Soon after, he abandoned the frog-skin world and became a full time Indian, walking on the sacred path of a medicine man.

For the Lakota, the Black Hills were the most sacred place in their world.  To retain possession of them, they surrendered much of what became Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.  The treaty declared that the Black Hills would remain Indian territory “for as long as the sun shined.”  Soon after, whites discovered gold in the Black Hills, and flooded into the holy lands with drills, dynamite, whiskey, and prostitutes.  The Lakota were horrified by the behavior of these civilized Christians.

The frog-skinners exterminated the buffalo, and replaced them with livestock.  Buffalo were beings of great power and intelligence.  They even had a sense of humor.  Lame Deer said that if buffalo were used in bullfighting, the cocky matadors would promptly be trampled and gored into extinction.  Cattle were dullards that had the power bred out of them.  Sheep and goats would stand calmly while you cut their throats. 

To provide additional vegetation for the dim-witted livestock, the prairie dogs had to go.  Ranchers launched an intensive poisoning campaign that also killed more than a few children and pets.  With the prairie dogs gone, there was far less prey for the wolves, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, badgers, hawks, and eagles.  A diverse, thriving prairie ecosystem was replaced with monocultures of destructive sub-intelligent exotic species.

Sheep were amazingly frail.  They often fell over, with their feet in the air, and couldn’t get back up again.  If the shepherd didn’t rescue them, they would bloat up and die.  Lambs often had to be hand-raised because their mothers didn’t recognize them or feed them.

“There was great power in a wolf, even in a coyote.  You have made him into a freak — a toy poodle, a Pekingese, a lap dog. … You have not only altered, declawed, and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves. … You live in prisons which you have built for yourselves, calling them homes, offices, factories.”

In the 1880s, the Indians of the west were in despair, and the Ghost Dance movement was spreading from tribe to tribe.  It was a grand magic act intended to bring a new world into existence via sacred song and dance.  The dead would come back to life, the buffalo herds would return, the whites would get sent back home, and the civilized world would be rolled up like a dirty old carpet — the cities, mines, farms, and factories.  This would reveal a healthy unspoiled land, with many teepees and animals, as it once had been.

Dancers were not allowed to possess things from the white world: liquor, guns, knives, kettles, or metal ornaments.  They would dance for four days.  Whites feared an armed uprising, so they attacked the dancers.  Hundreds of unarmed Indians were murdered at the Wounded Knee massacre. 

The magic dancing did not succeed, but today many can see that a great healing is badly needed.  Obviously, the madness cannot continue forever.  Lame Deer was clear: “The machine will stop.”  He said that a young man would one day come who would know how to turn it off.  “It won’t be bad, doing without many things you are now used to, things taken out of the earth and wasted foolishly.”  We will have to learn how to live more simply, and this will be good for one and all.

Lame Deer asked Richard Erdoes to help write his story, to pass along important information.  He included several chapters describing the sacred culture of the Lakota.  He wanted hold up a mirror for us, to give us a different perspective, to feed a sane voice into our lost and confused world.  “We must try to save the white man from himself.  This can be done if only all of us, Indians and non-Indians alike, can once again see ourselves as part of this earth.”

Lame Deer, John (Fire) and Erdoes, Richard, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, Washington Square Press, New York, 1994.

Ojibway Heritage

What would it be like to wake up every day in a sane, healthy, life of wildness and freedom?  Imagine stepping outside at dawn, and observing a landscape that remained as the creator made it, undefiled by the catastrophe of industrial civilization — a gentle misty morning of peace, fresh air, and good energy.  You pause and offer a prayer of gratitude, giving thanks for the gift of another day to celebrate the perfection of creation. 

This is not easy to imagine, because we no longer live like human beings.  Our culture provides us with almost no information about living in harmony with the land, because that is not the nature of our culture.  Memories of our own wild ancestors have been erased by the passage of time, and by the sharp turn we made when we surrendered our freedom.  We have forgotten who we are, and how to live.  We are lost.  Our entire way of life is lost.

Basil Johnston’s book, Ojibway Heritage, pulls back the curtains, and allows us to explore a healthy way of life.  It’s disturbing to read this book, because it illuminates how far we have strayed from the path of balance and good life.  It carries us to a sacred mountain, far above the toxic smog of civilization, and helps us remember things of great importance.

Johnston is an outstanding storyteller.  His book describes Ojibway culture to those who are not close to it, in a manner that outsiders can easily comprehend and appreciate.  We learn about wild freedom — a way of life similar to how our wild ancestors once lived.  It’s a world of sharing and cooperation, honor and morality, a world of overwhelming reverence and respect for the natural world and the family of life.

The Ojibway people inhabit a vast region in the middle of North America, on both sides of the US-Canadian border.  They have always avoided the political unification of all Ojibways because they cherish independence.  Nothing was more abhorrent to them than the notion of submitting to control.  They were free people who enjoyed living in free communities.

Community had greater importance than the desires of the individual.  Each individual was entitled to food, clothing, shelter, personal inner growth, and freedom.  For all other matters, the permission of the community was sought.  The people were consulted for guidance, so that the custom and will of the community was respected.

Each community had chiefs for various purposes, and they became chiefs based solely on their merits.  If anyone lost respect for a chief’s abilities, they could ignore him.  His influence was based on persuasion, not authority.  Those who followed his lead did so voluntarily.

Stories were powerful cultural tools.  They encoded the moral principles of the society.  Always tell the truth.  Respect your elders.  Always be thankful for food, for life, and for your powers.  Seek wisdom and peace. 

Stories provided guidance on hunger, courage, generosity, fidelity, creation, death, transformation, history, and all matters that related to life and being.  On a simple level, a child could find meaning in them, but they could also be understood on deeper levels by adults and elders.

Males were expected to quest for a vision.  “No man begins to be until he has seen his vision.”  Every person had different gifts and powers, and the self-discovery of vision provided purpose and meaning for their existence.  Women fulfilled their existence by bringing life into the world, so a vision was optional for them.

Boys were ready to begin questing for their vision by the age of 12 to 14.  They would be ceremonially purified, and then spend four days alone in a remote quest lodge, with no food.  Rarely was the first attempt a success.  Sometimes nothing happened, and sometimes the vision was incomplete.  Quests were made every year, until a complete vision was finally received.  A man was not considered to be an adult until he received his vision.  One fellow didn’t receive his vision until he was 50.  This was not a cause for shame.

Your vision was personal and private, not to be shared.  You had a sacred obligation to pursue and complete your vision.  Straying from your path was not unusual, but it was seen as betraying your vision, and “such a state was tantamount to non-living in which acts and conduct had no quality.”  To avoid this, men and women went on annual retreats to review their lives, and verify that they were still on their true path.  The Ojibway were big on living with integrity.  I like that.

They were also big about personal independence.  “The individual and his individuality were inviolable; his vision was equally inviolable.  No person was to surrender to another; no person was to seek dominion over another man or woman.”  They weren’t into playing master and servants.  Likewise, no person could own the land. 

Johnston talked at length about healers.  There were both medicine men and medicine women.  A few boys and girls displayed special gifts of curative power, and they were trained in the art of healing.  Part of the training process was observing what animals ate when ill, because they possessed knowledge of medicinal plants.  Some of the trainees became herbalists, and others advanced to become philosophers.  Illness was seen to be a punishment for a failure to live a good life, so healers attempted to guide patients back to upright living.  They analyzed dreams, and provided advice.

Every year, healers gathered for the Midewewin ceremony, by invitation only.  The initiation process took at least four years, before a healer earned the full rights and privileges of membership.  An important component of the healer’s initiation was learning the history of the Ojibway people, so that they had a solid understanding of the path of life, and the gifts received from the grandfathers and grandmothers.  People couldn’t enjoy good health and good life if they were disconnected from their history.

This book reminds us of who we once were, in the days of our wild ancestors.  It allows us to gaze into a mirror and observe the wounded beings that we have become.  It presents us with a portrait of a coherent culture, living intimately in harmony with nature.  We see a beautiful picture of what life could be like, following the collapse of industrial civilization, several generations down the road.  It’s precious information for people who are in contact with reality, and seeking dreams for a better tomorrow.

A better tomorrow will not come to our descendants automatically.  It must be envisioned, and then the vision must be fulfilled.  “A man or woman begins to learn when he seeks out knowledge and wisdom; wisdom will not seek him.”

This is a small book, but it’s loaded with fascinating information.  I have just scratched the surface here.  It’s an important message.

Johnston, Basil, Ojibway Heritage, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1990.  [Originally published in 1976.]