In the shadow of Animikii-wajiw
In Thunder Bay on the Fort William reserve there is a distinct volcanic remanant called Mount McKay in English but Animikii-wajiw in Anishnaabemowin. Animikii-wajiw means “thunder mountain” so named because a thunderbird once landed there, ampong other things.
My mood has changed markedly after the work we did today working with Ojibway leaders and Elders from around the north shore of Lake Superior and parts further north and west of here on traditional governance and the assertion of Aboriginal rights and title. This is timely stuff given the historic proposed legislation that will be coming before the BC Legislature soon. There is good news on the Aboriginal title front and it can all lead to good things for First Nations – not without challenge and much effort mind you – but things are looking optimistic on the legal front in a way that is truly unprecedented.
At any rate, our work here is about exploring the meaning and practical implications of all of this stuff, introducing people to a powerful political and legal strategy that has been developed by the National Centre for First Nations Governance, and thinking about what it takes to do this hard work. Today there were three great little teachings that came my way as a result of discussing traditional leadership.
Teaching one came from Nancy Jones one of the Elders who gave us small blankets with a medicine wheel design based on a vision that she had about unity, leadership and healing. One of the great teachings in this medicine wheel was about the north, the direction from which winter weather and wind comes. We laboured here through a blizzard today, waiting for an hour until whoever was coming was going to show up, and working small processes with diminished numbers. But the Elder gave the teaching that essentially the weather teaches us that “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” and that the chaordic path is an inherent part of leadership: you can never really be in control.
The second teaching was from Ralph Johnson. I asked him about the Ojibway word “ogiimaw” which is often translated as “chief” or “boss.” I asked Ralph what he thought the word must have meant before contact, when the concept of “chief” was basically unknown. He said that word relates to the word ogiimatik which is the poplar tree, the tree that is considered the kindest of trees. Poplars are gentle, flexible, quiet and kind and are also good medicine. He said this idea of kindness is what is under the word “ogiimaw” and that influencing people through kindness is the kind of leadership that the word implies. This is very different from the kinds of leadership implied by the word “chief” which is a title now won by competition in a band election, a process that seems to engineer kindness right out of the equation. This is a great legacy of colonization – the lowering of kindness from a high leadership art to a naive sentimentality.
Ralph also gave me one more little teaching that rocked me. He told me that the word I had always understood as “all my relations” – dineamaaganik – actually means “belonging to everything.” Seems like a small change in translation, until another Elder, Marie Allen chimed in and said that the problem with leadership these days was the way ideas like “all my relations” activated the ego. The difference between “all my relations” and “belonging to everything” is the difference between the ego and the egoless I think. This is what Ralph was trying to tell me. That the centre of the universe is not me, and things are not all related to me, rather I belong to everything. Marie and I took a moment to express amazement at the way the earth used us to channel life in a particular shape for a short period of time. We come from her, we return to her, and in the interim we do our work upon her.
So tomorrow, with this platform of reverance firmly established, we return to work with young and emerging leaders in Open Space.
Not so lonely here after all is it?
Thanks for passing on the teachings. I am fascinated by the way the meanings of words shift; and by words in general, as you might guess by my profession. But it’s far more than a curiosity. Subtle changes of use often created profound changes in meaning and even our actions. Modern translations of the Bible write love or charity for the Greek karitas, which really means something of both, and more. Likewise the King James version reads:
“And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
In Hebrew the words for void are tohu va bohu, which are better read “wild and waste” which indicates emptiness, but is not quite the same. “Face of the deep” is Ocean (with a capital O), a proper noun, in the Hebrew, the primeval waters, a common and usualy divine image in ancient near Eastern mythology. The word “ruah” can mean both spirit and wind. Finally “moved” upon the face of the waters comes from an expression meaning hovering or flitting, the image suggesting an eagle protecting it’s young. Everett Fox’s new translation brings us closer to the original:
“At the beginning of God’s creting of the heavens and the earth/when the earth was wild and waste/darkness over the face of Ocean,/rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters–”
Sometimes I feel English, celebrated for it’s vast vocabulary, has too many words and makes us too literal. If we let words mean whatever we want them to–or forget what they mean, or use them too casually–we lose the poetry of language and life; or worse, we get Alice’s Humpty Dumpty (http://ovenell-carter.com/blog/2009/01/04/humpty-dumpty-school/) or Orwell’s 1984.
That promised pint is becoming tastier by the hour. Looking forward to your return.
Brad…one thing that has always interested me about the difference between English and most indigenous languages is that English is very much a polyglot, and as such, is a mash of various languages and world views. The poet in me was always acutely aware of etmology in choosing words to express particular ideas. If I was writing about and objective, static and apprehendible world, Latin based words are great for that kind of description. Writing about earthy, pungent themes are best served by words from Anglo Saxon and Germanic origins and texts about mysterious pheomena and esoteric spirit come alive with Greek based words.
By contrast, Ojibway (Anishnaabemowin) is largely uninfluenced by other languages. There is a bit of Cree and other Algonquin languages (especially in areas where Ojibway and Cree people live together) but there is something important in the way a language informed by a single worldview develops an integrated vocabulary to deeply describe that world. It makes for a deeper experience, being in conversations with these Elders, as we try to translate words and concepts that will never fully make it into English, as you have done with Hebrew here.
The very strength of English as a multicultural language means that we skate over the depth that could be there if it was concentrated.
That’s my theory anyway.
Dipping a ladle in your potions and sipping deeply, breathing in the aromas, getting hungrier…. Thank you to both of you…all of you…all….
A fascinating and beautiful post written with reverence. Much to learn in all three lessons.