Medicine society held special place

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2003 (8452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS historian Michael Angel explains in this informative new book, the Midewiwin has occupied a special place in the culture of the Ojibway for many decades, perhaps even for centuries.

The medicine society of Ojibway culture, which passes on its ancient knowledge of herbs and other plants for healing disease, it has figured significantly in the history of Manitoba.

A senior librarian at the University of Manitoba for more than 20 years, as well as being an author, Angel now lives in British Columbia, where he is engaged in aboriginal land claims research.

Sympathetic

Approaching the subject as a “sympathetic outsider,” Angel sets out to describe the Midewiwin. He locates its geography, which stretched from the Great Lakes into at least Minnesota and southern Manitoba.

He pieces together its history from sources, in French as well as English, dating back some 200 years. One of the most remarkable is History of the Ojibway People written in English in the mid-1800s by William Warren, a person of Ojibway heritage. As much as anything in his treatment of the Midewiwin, Angel is intent on correcting misconceptions, and outright falsehoods, resulting from the ethnocentric perceptions of Euro-American observers dating from at least the 18th century.

Besides the end notes, the maps, the glossary of Ojibway terms and index all contribute to the readability of this presentation on a complex subject.

In defining the subject, Angel reviews quite exhaustively the evidence of the origins of, and various developments in, the Midewiwin. For example, he considers the debate as to whether it predates the arrival of Europeans.

Among the many questions he examines is that of the nature and meaning of Medewiwin ceremonies. He identifies and describes many salient works, including one (by Walter Hoffman, an American ethnologist and linguist) said to be a key source for present-day Ojibway in “in their attempts to revive the Midewiwin.”

Angel is up front about confining his research to written materials. Oral history is beyond the scope of this publication.

His comprehensive examination embraces sources from not just anthropologists and ethnologists but also from fur traders, priests, government officials and others who have interacted with the Ojibway into the 20th century.

The latest in the Manitoba Studies in Native History series, Preserving the Sacred is a scholarly publication, as reflected in the 42 pages of end notes. While he does not say so exactly, he seems to be hoping his insights reach beyond academia.

Apparently included in his intended readership is “a new generation of Euro-Americans (who have begun) to exhibit a more open attitude to learning about aboriginal culture.”

Ron Kirbyson is a Winnipeg writer and teacher.