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Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies:

Anishinaabe ways of learning
Volume 11, No. 4 - Summer 2000

Leanne Simpson ♦ May 15, 2000

15  

In pre- ANISHINAABE CANOE TRIP

colonial
A canoe trip through eastern Manitoba with
times, the tribal young people becomes a teaching
process of experience for these three Anishinaabe elders,
learning for

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

Aboriginal Ray Raven, Conrad Spense, and Garry Raven.

young Photo by Steve Daniels

people was
Rezilience
very
different from educational systems found in Western
societies. There were no formal schools. Rather, learning
Speaking for
was considered a life-long process embodied in the Those Who
individual and embedded in the principles of immanence Cannot Speak
and ceremony, reflection, and sharing. Learning was September 18, 2019 | By
concerned with the mental, spiritual, physical, and Jasmine Neosh
emotional being and was rooted in personal experience. In the face of continuing
environmental degradation,
the time has come to
Mainstream literature about Indigenous knowledge, written
consider the legal rights of
primarily by non-Natives, tends to focus on the data or
nature itself.
factual components while ignoring the spiritual foundations.
Read more →
For my doctoral dissertation, I decided to operate from an
Anishinaabe (Ojibway) cultural paradigm and use
Anishinaabe ways of working together, transmittingRecent Most Viewed
knowledge, and generating new knowledge.
Deputy Secretary of Education Visits
Oglala Lakota College
Aboriginal peoples use a diversity of methods to transmit
knowledge and to teach younger people. This paperTribesfocuses
Take Charge in MMIP Crisis
on four of those: learning by doing, story telling, dreaming,
and ceremonies. (Others include reflection, dreaming,Stone Child College Library Gets
song,
dance, prayer, observation, experimentation, and Grant to Improve Services, Access
apprenticeship with elders.) Although Indigenous peoples
Representative Mullin Applauds
share many fundamental beliefs, our cultures are diverse.
Passage of Higher Education Funding
My research focused upon the Anishinaabe people of
Bill that Benefits Indian Country
Manitoba and Ontario, Canada. The conclusion discusses
the benefits and limitations of using such “ways of
knowing” in academic endeavors.
Shared Stories
Learning by doing

Before schools, Aboriginal children were educated in a The Stories We

holistic way. “The traditional way encompassed all aspects Share
of the person’s life, In-Relation to the world around her or June 12, 2019 | By Scarlett
him,” according to research by F.J. Graveline (Métis, 1998, Cortez
p. 60). The learning process addressed intellectual, spiritual,
emotional, and physical dimensions.
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9/22/2019 Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe ways of learning

In her farewell blog post for

Experience continues to be a fundamental principle of TCJStudent.org, IAIA
Anishinaabe learning processes (Cajete, 1999). Knowledge student Scarlett Cortez
from an Anishinaabe perspective originates in the spiritual reflects back on the past
realm, and “other-than-human beings” largely control the year and what it means to
dissemination of that knowledge. Unlike Western share your lived
pedagogies, Anishinaabe rely upon children, spiritual experiences with others.
entities, plants, and animals as teachers, according to three Read more →
Anaishinaabe researchers, G. Raven, G. Flett, and G.
Bushie in their book, Alternative Ways of Healing from
Addictions. For example, they describe the role plants and
animals play in teaching, “Plants are teaching tools. They Employment
tell us when and where they grow, where and how they Opportunities
multiply. They anchor soil, provide food for other animals
Hoover Fellow
and often grow in harmony, preferring the company of some
September 20, 2019
plants while remaining distant or even inhibiting the growth
of others” (pp. 11-12). Hoover Fellow
September 20, 2019

Registered Nurse -
Operating Room -
Relocation and Sign on
Opportunity!
September 20, 2019

Some elders describe “the culture of plants,” according to Registered Nurse -

Raven, et al., as “having gifts and lessons of caring and Employee Health -
sharing. We could not survive without them. The plants that Relocation and Sign on
animals eat are a clue for food and medicines …We learned Opportunities!
of them in the first place — by watching what the animals September 20, 2019
used to heal themselves. …. Plants and animals teach us
Health Information
respect, caring, and sharing for our environment. Grass
Management Tech I-III -
represents compassion because although we trample it down
Sign on and Relocation
or walk on it or cut it, it continues to grow and flourish and
Opportunity!
provide a refuge. Our spirits are that way too. And so we
September 20, 2019
are indeed connected to all living things. By watching how
they produce and reproduce, by respecting what is around
us and the life within it, we learn lessons for ourselves” (pp.
11-12).

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

News and events that

Human teachers function less as absolute disseminators of impact you happen more
knowledge and more as facilitators in the learning process. often than we can print.
Relatives, children, elders, or spiritual leaders may all serve Stay up to date with
as teachers for Anishinaabe. The elders focus on learning enews, blogs, and the
from one’s experience through respectful and patient latest job openings.
observation, according to J.E. Couture (Anishinaabe) and Sign up today!
his research on the role of Native elders (1996). Email
Subscribe
To a large extent, this type of learning is still practiced by
traditional people in Aboriginal communities. Although
children are required by the state to attend schools, they also
learn Anishinaabe life-ways by listening, observing,
reflecting, and participating (Simpson in press, Graveline
1998, Couture 1991).

Because experiential learning is the fundamental principle

behind the transference of knowledge, the Anishinaabe
elders and community experts from Manitoba asked me to
participate in a number of activities in spiritual, emotional,
physical, and mental dimensions. I went on hunting trips
and checked fishnets and traps. I traveled old canoe routes. I
visited sacred sites and participated in sweat lodges and
shaking tent ceremonies. I camped with community
members and observed healing and sentencing circles. I
participated in a number of smudging ceremonies and
sharing circles. I was also asked to share my dreams and
visions. In this way, Anishinaabe people teach by doing.
Thus, if researchers don’t “do” they cannot learn from the
people. (For a discussion of some of these ceremonies, see
TCJ, Vol. VII, N. 4, pp. 20-23.)

Story telling

Story telling remains an effective means of teaching and

learning in Indigenous communities, according to Gregory
Cajete (Tewa) and D.Y. Buffalo (Cree). In her book, Life
Lived like a Story, Julie Cruikshank emphasizes the
importance of cultural processes for understanding
Aboriginal worldviews. She says we must pay close
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attention to the way elders teach us. “By looking at the

ways people use the traditional dimension of culture as a
resource to talk about the past, we may be able to see life
history as contributing to explanations of cultural process
rather than as simply illustrating or supplementing
ethnographic descriptions,” Cruikshank says.

Practitioners of the oral tradition often transfer knowledge

through traditional story telling. Anishinaabe people are
recording and interpreting traditional stories to help their
children and outsiders understand and appreciate the
Anishinaabe principles and values. Sylvia O’Meara, an
Anishinaabe from Cape Crocker, Ontario, explains, “Stories
remain a key component of passing on knowledge and
expressing an Anishinaabe world view. Community history,
treaty rights, land surrender, gender roles, the old ways, they
were all taught to me by my leaders through traditional
stories” (Eigenbrod & O’Meara, 1997).

Traditional stories provide us with a lens to see the past and

with a context to interpret that experience. It is therefore
vital to be aware of the cultural “rules” regulating the oral
tradition. These rules must be practiced when interpreting
the stories.

Cruikshank explains, “I always brought questions to our

sessions…about childhood experiences, about seclusion,
about marriage and childbirth…the women would give brief
answers to my direct inquiries and then suggest that I write
down a particular story they wanted to tell me. Usually such
stories involved a bewildering series of characters and
events, but with practice I learned to follow the complex
plots and to understand that when women told me stories,
they were actually using them to explain some aspect of
their lives to me” (Cruikshank, 1990, p. 15).

The Anishinaabe people distinguish between two different

types of stories. The tabatacamowin include anecdotes or
narratives about exceptional experiences. The atiso’kanak

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are the sacred stories — “our Grandfathers” (Smith, 1995.

Hallowell, 1992). Over the course of my work with the
community, I heard both types.

Dreaming

Knowledge is often CANOE ON LAKE

transmitted from the Ando pawachige n means seek
spiritual world to your dream, live your dream,
humans through understand your dream, and
dreaming and visioning. move forward with your dream.
Anthropologists say that Photo by Steve Danielss
the Anishinaabe people
believe the physical and
dreamed 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 world
controlled by the actions of persons, human and otherwise,”
according to T.S. Smith in his book, The Island of the
Anishnaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in the
Traditional Ojibwe Life-World. “The levels and directions
are not ‘animated’ or ‘anthropomorphized’ by humans who,
in a purely cognitive exercise, posit souls and spirits and
ascribe them to things in the world. Rather, the cosmos is
experienced as a place literally crowded with ‘people,’”
Smith found.

Garry Raven, an Anishinaabe sweat lodge leader from

Hollow Water First Nation, explains:

“Dreams
Remember your dreams
They tell you what you need to do
Ask elders what your dreams mean
You will learn more about
Choices

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Meaning in Your Life

The Contributions you should make”
(Raven and Prince [Anishinaabe], 1996, p. 53).

During my work in the community, dreams were repeatedly

shared, interpreted, and used to make decisions about my
work. Tobasonakwut Kinew, another Anishinaabe elder,
confirms Raven’s teaching: “It’s called ando pawachige n,
which means seek your dream, live your dream, understand
your dream, and move forward with your dream. That
determines how I’ve lived all my life, and how my parents
lived. It points to the fact that when I go into the forest,
often I realize I have been here before, although I know full
well that I have never before set foot in this particular piece
of land. This particular piece of forest reminds me of a
different time. When I go to sleep at night, I may have a
situation that I cannot comprehend. I make offerings, and
invariably the choices I have to make to resolve the problem
become clear. That is how I have lived my life” (Kinew,
1998, p. 34).

Ceremonies as sources of spiritual

knowledge

The stories of Anishinaabe story-teller Maude Kegg show

how spiritually derived knowledge is fully integrated into
the consciousness of Anishinaabe people and contemporary
Aboriginal people who follow traditional ways. She tells her
stories in Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood
(Kegg & Nichols, 1992). “Spiritual knowledge” or “power”
forms both the foundation of knowledge and knowledge
itself. It is at once context, content, and process.

Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo) describes the

relationship between the self and the rest of the world in her
book, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in
American Indian Traditions. “Because of the basic
assumption of the wholeness or unity of the universe, our
natural and necessary relationship to all life is evident. All

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phenomena we witness within or ‘outside’ ourselves are,

like us, intelligent manifestations of the intelligent universe
from which they arise” (p. 61).

Since Indigenous knowledge is spiritual in nature, many

Indigenous peoples rely on the ceremonies passed down to
them from their ancestors as sources of knowledge,
guidance, and support. Traditional people use different
ceremonies, depending upon the community and the culture.
When performed properly by trained spiritual leaders,
ceremonies can be a medium for beings from the spiritual
realm to communicate with humans. For example,
traditional Anishinaabe people use the jiiksaan or shaking
test ceremony to receive knowledge from the spirits and
ancestors about the future. Some Aboriginal researchers
who seek to understand Indigenous knowledge use
ceremonies as a source of knowledge (Martin-Hill, 1995).
However, the sacredness of these ceremonies prevents
Aboriginal researchers from writing about these experiences
in much detail.

Academe remains especially suspicious of knowledge

gained through dreams and ceremonies. Many researchers
simply do not accept the reliability or validity of spiritually-
derived knowledge. Even when using community-based or
collaborative research paradigms, spiritual knowledge is not
often acknowledged and treated as the foundation of
Indigenous knowledge. Social scientists often focus instead
on “collecting,” “gathering,” or “documenting” non-
spiritual knowledge.

Those who do accept spiritually-derived knowledge find it

difficult 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 Resource
Management Systems (1992). They risk offending and
potentially harming their traditional teachers if they have
not received permission to include this knowledge, and their
academic colleagues often dismiss their work as unreliable.

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In Aboriginal paradigms, knowledge from the spirit-world

is taken seriously, as an integral component of knowledge
and the processes of coming to know (Graveline [Métis],
1998. Martin-Hill [Mohawk], 1995. Beck [Navajo],
Walters, & Francisco, 1990). In my own work, I
acknowledged that spiritual knowledge provided the
foundation of my studies, but I avoided discussing the
details in my dissertation. I relied on previously published
works on spirituality by Native authors to fill in this gap.

Conclusion

My use of these “methods” for my dissertation research

generated profoundly different “results” than conventional
social science methods. Since Anishinaabe people continue
to 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 and
education projects. De-colonizing our processes–turning to
our ancient ways– is one way of maintaining a distinct
cultural identity in the face of an increasingly globalized
world.

However, these processes are not appropriate for use by all

academics.. Nor are they appropriate in all research or
educational situations. Communities are best equipped to
decide. Some will use Western scientific methods, while
some communities may use collaborative or participatory
methods to work with outside researchers. Others may use
Indigenous methods or processes, and still others may use
combinations of methods from the natural sciences, social
sciences, and Indigenous knowledge. As Aboriginal peoples
take control over research in our own communities, it is
certain that we will employ a diversity of methods to meet
our local needs.

Leanne Simpson (Petasamosake — Walking Towards

Woman) is a researcher, advisor, activist, negotiator, and
teacher working with Aboriginal peoples in Canada. She
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has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies from the University

of Manitoba. She is of Anishinaabe ancestry and is a
member of the mishibishi dodem (lion clan).

References

Beck, P.V., Francisco, N., & Walters, A.L. (1990). The

sacred: Ways of knowledge, sources of life. Tsaile AZ:
Navajo Community College, Northland Publishing.

Benton-Banai, E. (1988). The mishomis book: The voice of

the Ojibway. Hayward, WI.: Indian Country
Communications.

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 Indigenous

science 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: Emergent

issues. In D.A. Long & O.P. Dickason, (Eds.) Visions of the
heart: Canadian Aboriginal issues. Toronto: Harcourt Brace
and Company Canada, Ltd.

Couture, J.E. (1991). Natives and the earth. In J. Martin,

(Ed.), Alternative futures for prairie agricultural
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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 of
wildlife among the Cree and Ojibwa of Northern Ontario.
Ayaangwaamizin 1(91), 108.

Eigenbrod, R., & O.’Meara, S. (1997). Wo/Men’s place: A

cross-cultural dialogue. Paper presentation, 29th Algonquin
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Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. (1996). Final

report. Vol. 5, Canada Communication Group, Ottawa ON.

Graveline, F. J. (1998). Circle works: Transforming

Eurocentric consciousness. Halifax NS: Fernwood.

Gunn Allen, P. (1992). The sacred hoop: Recovering the

feminine in American Indian traditions. Boston: Beacon
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Hallowell, I.A. (1992). J.S.B. Brown, (Ed.). The Ojibwa of

Berens River, Manitoba: Enthnography into history.
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Hallowell, I.A. (1955). Culture and experience. New York:

Schocken Books.

Holzkamm, T., Waisberg, L., & Lovisek, J. (1998). Rainy

River: Heartland of the Grand Council Ojibway. In J.
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lands: Aboriginal world views, claims, and conflicts (pp.
107-117). Occasional Publication No. 43. Edmonton:
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Kegg, M. & Nichols, J. (1991). Portage Lake: Memories of

an Ojibwe childhood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
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Kinew, K.A. (1997). Exploring the myths of Manomin. In

Issues in the North, Volume II. Winnipeg: University of
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Kinew, T. (1998). “Let Them Burn the Sky”: Overcoming

repression of the sacred use of Anishinaabe lands. In: J.
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of healing from addictions. Native Alcohol and Drug
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Insights, issues and implications. (Unpublished doctoral
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Smith, T.S. (1995). The island of the Anishnaabeg:

Thunderers and water monsters in the traditional Ojibwe
life-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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management systems. In First Nations Series. Guelph ON:

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