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ANISHINAABE CANOE TRIP

A canoe trip through eastern Manitoba withtribal young people becomes a teachingexperience for these three Anishinaabe elders,

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Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies:Anishinaabe ways of learning

Volume 11, No. 4 - Summer 2000

Leanne Simpson ♦ May 15, 2000

In pre-colonialtimes, theprocess oflearning for

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Ray Raven, Conrad Spense, and Garry Raven.Photo by Steve Daniels

Aboriginalyoungpeople wasverydifferent from educational systems found in Westernsocieties. There were no formal schools. Rather, learningwas considered a life-long process embodied in theindividual and embedded in the principles of immanenceand ceremony, reflection, and sharing. Learning wasconcerned with the mental, spiritual, physical, andemotional being and was rooted in personal experience.

Mainstream literature about Indigenous knowledge, writtenprimarily by non-Natives, tends to focus on the data orfactual components while ignoring the spiritual foundations.For my doctoral dissertation, I decided to operate from anAnishinaabe (Ojibway) cultural paradigm and useAnishinaabe ways of working together, transmittingknowledge, and generating new knowledge.

Aboriginal peoples use a diversity of methods to transmitknowledge and to teach younger people. This paper focuseson four of those: learning by doing, story telling, dreaming,and ceremonies. (Others include reflection, dreaming, song,dance, prayer, observation, experimentation, andapprenticeship with elders.) Although Indigenous peoplesshare many fundamental beliefs, our cultures are diverse.My research focused upon the Anishinaabe people ofManitoba and Ontario, Canada. The conclusion discussesthe benefits and limitations of using such “ways ofknowing” in academic endeavors.

Learning by doing

Before schools, Aboriginal children were educated in aholistic way. “The traditional way encompassed all aspectsof the person’s life, In-Relation to the world around her orhim,” according to research by F.J. Graveline (Métis, 1998,p. 60). The learning process addressed intellectual, spiritual,emotional, and physical dimensions.

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Experience continues to be a fundamental principle ofAnishinaabe learning processes (Cajete, 1999). Knowledgefrom an Anishinaabe perspective originates in the spiritualrealm, and “other-than-human beings” largely control thedissemination of that knowledge. Unlike Westernpedagogies, Anishinaabe rely upon children, spiritualentities, plants, and animals as teachers, according to threeAnaishinaabe researchers, G. Raven, G. Flett, and G.Bushie in their book, Alternative Ways of Healing fromAddictions. For example, they describe the role plants andanimals play in teaching, “Plants are teaching tools. Theytell us when and where they grow, where and how theymultiply. They anchor soil, provide food for other animalsand often grow in harmony, preferring the company of someplants while remaining distant or even inhibiting the growthof others” (pp. 11-12).

Some elders describe “the culture of plants,” according toRaven, et al., as “having gifts and lessons of caring andsharing. We could not survive without them. The plants thatanimals eat are a clue for food and medicines …We learnedof them in the first place — by watching what the animalsused to heal themselves. …. Plants and animals teach usrespect, caring, and sharing for our environment. Grassrepresents compassion because although we trample it downor walk on it or cut it, it continues to grow and flourish andprovide a refuge. Our spirits are that way too. And so weare indeed connected to all living things. By watching howthey produce and reproduce, by respecting what is aroundus and the life within it, we learn lessons for ourselves” (pp.11-12).

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Human teachers function less as absolute disseminators ofknowledge and more as facilitators in the learning process.Relatives, children, elders, or spiritual leaders may all serveas teachers for Anishinaabe. The elders focus on learningfrom one’s experience through respectful and patientobservation, according to J.E. Couture (Anishinaabe) andhis research on the role of Native elders (1996).

To a large extent, this type of learning is still practiced bytraditional people in Aboriginal communities. Althoughchildren are required by the state to attend schools, they alsolearn Anishinaabe life-ways by listening, observing,reflecting, and participating (Simpson in press, Graveline1998, Couture 1991).

Because experiential learning is the fundamental principlebehind the transference of knowledge, the Anishinaabeelders and community experts from Manitoba asked me toparticipate in a number of activities in spiritual, emotional,physical, and mental dimensions. I went on hunting tripsand checked fishnets and traps. I traveled old canoe routes. Ivisited sacred sites and participated in sweat lodges andshaking tent ceremonies. I camped with communitymembers and observed healing and sentencing circles. Iparticipated in a number of smudging ceremonies andsharing circles. I was also asked to share my dreams andvisions. In this way, Anishinaabe people teach by doing.Thus, if researchers don’t “do” they cannot learn from thepeople. (For a discussion of some of these ceremonies, seeTCJ, Vol. VII, N. 4, pp. 20-23.)

Story telling

Story telling remains an effective means of teaching andlearning in Indigenous communities, according to GregoryCajete (Tewa) and D.Y. Buffalo (Cree). In her book, LifeLived like a Story, Julie Cruikshank emphasizes theimportance of cultural processes for understandingAboriginal worldviews. She says we must pay close

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attention to the way elders teach us. “By looking at theways people use the traditional dimension of culture as aresource to talk about the past, we may be able to see lifehistory as contributing to explanations of cultural processrather than as simply illustrating or supplementingethnographic descriptions,” Cruikshank says.

Practitioners of the oral tradition often transfer knowledgethrough traditional story telling. Anishinaabe people arerecording and interpreting traditional stories to help theirchildren and outsiders understand and appreciate theAnishinaabe principles and values. Sylvia O’Meara, anAnishinaabe from Cape Crocker, Ontario, explains, “Storiesremain a key component of passing on knowledge andexpressing an Anishinaabe world view. Community history,treaty rights, land surrender, gender roles, the old ways, theywere all taught to me by my leaders through traditionalstories” (Eigenbrod & O’Meara, 1997).

Traditional stories provide us with a lens to see the past andwith a context to interpret that experience. It is thereforevital to be aware of the cultural “rules” regulating the oraltradition. These rules must be practiced when interpretingthe stories.

Cruikshank explains, “I always brought questions to oursessions…about childhood experiences, about seclusion,about marriage and childbirth…the women would give briefanswers to my direct inquiries and then suggest that I writedown a particular story they wanted to tell me. Usually suchstories involved a bewildering series of characters andevents, but with practice I learned to follow the complexplots and to understand that when women told me stories,they were actually using them to explain some aspect oftheir lives to me” (Cruikshank, 1990, p. 15).

The Anishinaabe people distinguish between two differenttypes of stories. The tabatacamowin include anecdotes ornarratives about exceptional experiences. The atiso’kanak

9/22/2019 Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

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CANOE ON LAKE

Ando pawachige n means seekyour dream, live your dream,understand your dream, andmove forward with your dream.Photo by Steve Danielss

are the sacred stories — “our Grandfathers” (Smith, 1995.Hallowell, 1992). Over the course of my work with thecommunity, I heard both types.

Dreaming

Knowledge is oftentransmitted from thespiritual world tohumans throughdreaming and visioning.Anthropologists say thatthe Anishinaabe peoplebelieve the physical anddreamed world are one, or they are equally real (Driben,Auger, Doob, & Auger, 1997. Hallowell, 1955).Anishinaabe take dreaming very seriously.

“In other words, the Anishinaabe experience of the world,whether awake or in dream, is an experience of a worldcontrolled by the actions of persons, human and otherwise,”according to T.S. Smith in his book, The Island of theAnishnaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in theTraditional Ojibwe Life-World. “The levels and directionsare not ‘animated’ or ‘anthropomorphized’ by humans who,in a purely cognitive exercise, posit souls and spirits andascribe them to things in the world. Rather, the cosmos isexperienced as a place literally crowded with ‘people,’”Smith found.

Garry Raven, an Anishinaabe sweat lodge leader fromHollow Water First Nation, explains:

“DreamsRemember your dreamsThey tell you what you need to doAsk elders what your dreams meanYou will learn more aboutChoices

9/22/2019 Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

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Meaning in Your LifeThe Contributions you should make”(Raven and Prince [Anishinaabe], 1996, p. 53).

During my work in the community, dreams were repeatedlyshared, interpreted, and used to make decisions about mywork. Tobasonakwut Kinew, another Anishinaabe elder,confirms Raven’s teaching: “It’s called ando pawachige n,which means seek your dream, live your dream, understandyour dream, and move forward with your dream. Thatdetermines how I’ve lived all my life, and how my parentslived. It points to the fact that when I go into the forest,often I realize I have been here before, although I know fullwell that I have never before set foot in this particular pieceof land. This particular piece of forest reminds me of adifferent time. When I go to sleep at night, I may have asituation that I cannot comprehend. I make offerings, andinvariably the choices I have to make to resolve the problembecome clear. That is how I have lived my life” (Kinew,1998, p. 34).

Ceremonies as sources of spiritualknowledge

The stories of Anishinaabe story-teller Maude Kegg showhow spiritually derived knowledge is fully integrated intothe consciousness of Anishinaabe people and contemporaryAboriginal people who follow traditional ways. She tells herstories in Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood(Kegg & Nichols, 1992). “Spiritual knowledge” or “power”forms both the foundation of knowledge and knowledgeitself. It is at once context, content, and process.

Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo) describes therelationship between the self and the rest of the world in herbook, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine inAmerican Indian Traditions. “Because of the basicassumption of the wholeness or unity of the universe, ournatural and necessary relationship to all life is evident. All

9/22/2019 Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

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phenomena we witness within or ‘outside’ ourselves are,like us, intelligent manifestations of the intelligent universefrom which they arise” (p. 61).

Since Indigenous knowledge is spiritual in nature, manyIndigenous peoples rely on the ceremonies passed down tothem from their ancestors as sources of knowledge,guidance, and support. Traditional people use differentceremonies, depending upon the community and the culture.When performed properly by trained spiritual leaders,ceremonies can be a medium for beings from the spiritualrealm to communicate with humans. For example,traditional Anishinaabe people use the jiiksaan or shakingtest ceremony to receive knowledge from the spirits andancestors about the future. Some Aboriginal researcherswho seek to understand Indigenous knowledge useceremonies as a source of knowledge (Martin-Hill, 1995).However, the sacredness of these ceremonies preventsAboriginal researchers from writing about these experiencesin much detail.

Academe remains especially suspicious of knowledgegained through dreams and ceremonies. Many researcherssimply do not accept the reliability or validity of spiritually-derived knowledge. Even when using community-based orcollaborative research paradigms, spiritual knowledge is notoften acknowledged and treated as the foundation ofIndigenous knowledge. Social scientists often focus insteadon “collecting,” “gathering,” or “documenting” non-spiritual knowledge.

Those who do accept spiritually-derived knowledge find itdifficult to use or include in their studies, according to J.Wolfe, C. Bechard, P. Cizek, and D. Cole in their book,Indigenous and Western Knowledge and ResourceManagement Systems (1992). They risk offending andpotentially harming their traditional teachers if they havenot received permission to include this knowledge, and theiracademic colleagues often dismiss their work as unreliable.

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In Aboriginal paradigms, knowledge from the spirit-worldis taken seriously, as an integral component of knowledgeand the processes of coming to know (Graveline [Métis],1998. Martin-Hill [Mohawk], 1995. Beck [Navajo],Walters, & Francisco, 1990). In my own work, Iacknowledged that spiritual knowledge provided thefoundation of my studies, but I avoided discussing thedetails in my dissertation. I relied on previously publishedworks on spirituality by Native authors to fill in this gap.

Conclusion

My use of these “methods” for my dissertation researchgenerated profoundly different “results” than conventionalsocial science methods. Since Anishinaabe people continueto learn about our environment and ourselves in these ways,it may be appropriate that Anishinaabe teachers, academics,and communities utilize them in our own research andeducation projects. De-colonizing our processes–turning toour ancient ways– is one way of maintaining a distinctcultural identity in the face of an increasingly globalizedworld.

However, these processes are not appropriate for use by allacademics.. Nor are they appropriate in all research oreducational situations. Communities are best equipped todecide. Some will use Western scientific methods, whilesome communities may use collaborative or participatorymethods to work with outside researchers. Others may useIndigenous methods or processes, and still others may usecombinations of methods from the natural sciences, socialsciences, and Indigenous knowledge. As Aboriginal peoplestake control over research in our own communities, it iscertain that we will employ a diversity of methods to meetour local needs.

Leanne Simpson (Petasamosake — Walking TowardsWoman) is a researcher, advisor, activist, negotiator, andteacher working with Aboriginal peoples in Canada. She

9/22/2019 Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

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has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies from the Universityof Manitoba. She is of Anishinaabe ancestry and is amember of the mishibishi dodem (lion clan).

References

Beck, P.V., Francisco, N., & Walters, A.L. (1990). Thesacred: Ways of knowledge, sources of life. Tsaile AZ:Navajo Community College, Northland Publishing.

Benton-Banai, E. (1988). The mishomis book: The voice ofthe Ojibway. Hayward, WI.: Indian CountryCommunications.

Buffalo, D. Y. (1990). Seeds of thought, arrows of change:Native storytelling as metaphor. In: Healing voices:Feminist approaches to therapy with women (pp. 118-142).San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishing.

Cajete, G. (1999). Igniting the sparkle: An Indigenousscience education model. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press.

Colorado, P. (1988). Bridging Native and western science.Convergence 2(3), 49-86.

Couture, J.E. (1996). The role of Native elders: Emergentissues. In D.A. Long & O.P. Dickason, (Eds.) Visions of theheart: Canadian Aboriginal issues. Toronto: Harcourt Braceand Company Canada, Ltd.

Couture, J.E. (1991). Natives and the earth. In J. Martin,(Ed.), Alternative futures for prairie agriculturalcommunities. (pp. 253-268). Edmonton: University ofAlberta.

Cruikshank, J. (1990). Life lived like a story. Vancouver:University of British Columbia Press.

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Driben, P., Auger, D.J., Doob, A.N., & Auger, R.P. (1997).No killing ground: Aboriginal law governing the killing ofwildlife among the Cree and Ojibwa of Northern Ontario.Ayaangwaamizin 1(91), 108.

Eigenbrod, R., & O.’Meara, S. (1997). Wo/Men’s place: Across-cultural dialogue. Paper presentation, 29th AlgonquinConference, Thunder Bay ON. October 23-26, 1997.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. (1996). Finalreport. Vol. 5, Canada Communication Group, Ottawa ON.

Graveline, F. J. (1998). Circle works: TransformingEurocentric consciousness. Halifax NS: Fernwood.

Gunn Allen, P. (1992). The sacred hoop: Recovering thefeminine in American Indian traditions. Boston: BeaconHill Press.

Hallowell, I.A. (1992). J.S.B. Brown, (Ed.). The Ojibwa ofBerens River, Manitoba: Enthnography into history.Toronto: Harcourt Brace.

Hallowell, I.A. (1955). Culture and experience. New York:Schocken Books.

Holzkamm, T., Waisberg, L., & Lovisek, J. (1998). RainyRiver: Heartland of the Grand Council Ojibway. In J.Oakes, R. Riewe, K. Kinew & E. Maloney, (Eds.), Sacredlands: Aboriginal world views, claims, and conflicts (pp.107-117). Occasional Publication No. 43. Edmonton:University of Alberta, Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

Kegg, M. & Nichols, J. (1991). Portage Lake: Memories ofan Ojibwe childhood. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.

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Kinew, K.A. (1997). Exploring the myths of Manomin. InIssues in the North, Volume II. Winnipeg: University ofManitoba, Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

Kinew, T. (1998). “Let Them Burn the Sky”: Overcomingrepression of the sacred use of Anishinaabe lands. In: J.Oakes, R. Riewe, K. Kinew & E. Maloney (Eds.) Sacredlands: Aboriginal worldviews, claims, and conflicts (pp. 33-39). Occasional Publication No. 43. Edmonton: Universityof Alberta, Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

Martin-Hill, D. (1995). Lubicon Lake Nation: Spirit ofresistance. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McMasterUniversity, Hamilton ON).

Raven, G., & Prince, B. (1996). Role of the elders:Yesterday and today. In Issues in the North, Volume 1 (pp.51-55). Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, CanadianCircumpolar Institute.

Raven, R., Bushie, G., & Flett, G. (1998). Alternative waysof healing from addictions. Native Alcohol and DrugAddictions Program. Hollow Water First Nation MB.

Simpson, L.R. In Press. Anishinaabe ways of knowing. InIssues in the North, Volume 4. Winnipeg: University ofManitoba, Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

Simpson, L.R. (1999). Traditional ecological knowledge:Insights, issues and implications. (Unpublished doctoraldissertation, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg MB).

Smith, T.S. (1995). The island of the Anishnaabeg:Thunderers and water monsters in the traditional Ojibwelife-world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Wolfe, J., Bechard, C., Cizek, P., & Cole, D. (1992).Indigenous and Western knowledge and resource

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