Birch bark biting by Lois Beardslee. Image courtesy of the author.

Minomiigiwewe Giizhigaad Gegiinawaa: Happy Holidays

By Lois Beardslee

I am an Anishinaabe author, artist, and educator from a family that is spread out geographically between northern Michigan and northern Ontario. I’m often asked to do presentations for universities, museums, libraries, and other public venues, especially around Thanksgiving, a holiday that has mixed historical and emotional implications for Native American individuals and families, as do most religious and political holidays.

About 25 years ago, I got a phone call from an interim director at a prestigious historical museum, asking me to come down to do a presentation about how Michigan’s Indians traditionally carry out ceremonies related to the winter solstice. I politely pointed out that, due to high humidity and lake-effect precipitation that lasts well past the winter solstice, we don’t have extensive traditions or archeological sites centered around the event, as one might associate with tribes from the southwestern states. We’ve always been aware of the solstice, because we had (and still have) an accurate 13-month calendar. However, prior to the internal combustion engine, we tended to hold off on major ceremonies (and the inevitable associated socialization) until temperatures evened out between the Great Lakes and the prevailing winds—a time when precipitation eased up, days were longer, and inland lakes and waterways were frozen, facilitating long-distance travel. Many of us still adhere to that schedule. Besides, (I tiptoed around the subject) it wasn’t my place to share traditional ceremonial information with the general public. To expect me to do so would be exploitive and would open up our pragmatic religious and social traditions to cultural appropriation and misinterpretation or misuse by cultural outsiders. Representing the Indigenous isn’t something one can adapt to on a whim, and stereotypes, intentional or not, reinforce socioeconomic apartheid.

Obviously peeved, the museum director insisted that she knew better. She had a good friend who came from a southeastern tribe and was an authority on these things. She knew for a fact that Native American people celebrated and built shrines to the winter solstice. Eventually I convinced her that I didn’t know any other Michigan Anishinaabe artists who could fulfill her request. I’ve found over the years that even administrators in very esteemed institutions fall prey to stereotypes about pan-Indianism, the idea that all tribes from various geographical niches have similar and interlocking traditions. It’s not their fault. They’ve grown up, like most Americans, exposed to simplistic books and school projects that involved a lot of zig-zags, geometric patterns, arrows, horses, and sometimes paper bag masks.

So, that year, my family wandered around among historic buildings and workshops, while for several hours I found myself off in a side gallery of the museum, flanked by Model-T’s and a 35-40 foot tall, barren Christmas tree, while I demonstrated examples of birch bark biting and traditional dodaim (think of the English word “totem”) bark cut-outs. I made big, floppy examples of animal cut-outs out of copier paper and handed them out to the few families who found me. The director proudly told me that every year they hired an artist representing Michigan’s various ethnic groups to decorate their Christmas tree. I suggested that in the future the museum consider hiring Anishinaabe artists to decorate the tree. At the time, there were only three of us left in Michigan carrying on traditional Ojibwe barkwork, and we were working frantically to teach our artforms to other, younger Native people—and we succeeded. Today there are dozens of Anishinaabe people teaching other Anishinaabe people how to carry on these important visual linguistic components of our culture. But that director of that particular prestigious institution wasn’t the least bit interested in anything as low brow as traditional Anishinaabe “arts and crafts”. As someone who was originally trained as a museum curator, I was disappointed, to say the least.

“People just don’t seem to have much respect for Great Lakes Indian art, unless it’s made out of stone or clay,” a curator from a sculpture museum in Saginaw told me last week, after I presented to an audience of about a dozen people. My presence was in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit of Native American women’s art that was put together by the Detroit Institute of Arts and that features a large painting of mine. And, again, I can’t blame the museum curators or the audience. The museum staff did very little to promote the event (someone in another department does that) and didn’t have the knowledge base to represent it. Off to one side of the exhibit was a table where university students could get a hands-on Native American art experience by “making a dream catcher” out of wire loops and colored twine. There was that pan-Indianism again, and a vague notion that Indigenous artists and presenters represent things that are simple and can be simulated. Museum curators and professors should know; they are cultural gatekeepers. (*Sigh*)

In some families and communities, Christian holidays and concepts are touchy subjects associated with historic abuse and forced cultural assimilation. That said, we are on the cusp of our winter solstice, which is a pan-hemispheric event, and yes, even we cloud-encompassed Anishinaabe people know about it and have traditions and language that describe it. They’ve always varied from community to community and from family to family, often depending upon our relationships with various social and religious entities. Maagoshe giizhigaad refers to a feast day generally held close to the winter solstice, usually limited to extended families and neighbors in close proximity to one another. It translates roughly as a day of perseverance, persistence, or pressing on. Its root word has to do with physical and psychological pressure. People knew (still know) that the days would incrementally get longer, and the sun would begin to move its way north. Since it’s a time of year when the earth is chilled and isn’t going to receive a lot of direct sunlight soon, there is an overall understanding that we’re going to have to work hard to stay warm and not drive each other crazy in close quarters. It’s a pragmatic “holiday” with its roots in a religion that is environmentally, rather than faith-based. It’s also a time when some overly-abundant food stores are outliving their shelf lives. It’s a good time to cook creatively and have a feast. Eventually, we merged this local feasting event with the various forms of Christianity that were introduced into the Great Lakes and “shared” with its Indigenous residents.

Minobii niibaa anama’e giizhiigaad is currently, in a very politically-correct and polite way, most often used to identify Christmas Day itself, translating roughly as Merry Nighttime Prayer (vespers) Day. The accepted approximate time of the birth of Christ was a night when the priests and nuns prayed and sang vespers, or evening prayers (think Midnight Mass), and Native people living near missions or (forcibly) attending religious schools were expected to participate. Some families referred to Christmas in shorter terms, translating them in tongue-in-cheek manners, saying things like, “They’re prayin’ up there tonight.” Sometimes priests were referred to as wewemitigoiwiniini, which could, depending upon one’s point of view, be translated as “guys who wave sticks” (think crosses). Translating from one language to another between ethnic groups that have a history of colonialism and extermination can be complex. Prejudices and social history weigh heavily upon linguistic intent. And Anishinaabemowin is as subtle and varied as any other language on the planet. So, I caution cultural outsiders to be careful about asking for simple translations of Anishinaabe words and cultural terms. One might end up with a very politically incorrect greeting card.

Minomiigiwewe giizhigaad gegiinawaa. Enjoy whichever days you make holy, and, if you have one, don’t forget to decorate your zhingob (evergreen tree)—in whatever manner represents your own Michigan ethnic identity. I’m going to go plug in the green and blue lights I tacked up around my door frame. I kind of like the way they reflect off the internal combustion engine I’ve got parked in my driveway. Although it’s not a traditional Anishinaabe feast item, I even like fruitcake.

Read more about author Lois Beardslee HERE.