Anton Treuer - The Cultural Toolbox: Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World

The Cultural Toolbox

The Cultural Toolbox

Traditional Ojibwe Living in the Modern World

Anton Treuer

Text and photos copyright 2021 by Anton Treuer. Other materials copyright 2021 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 551021906.

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ISBN: 978-1-68134-214-6 (paper)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941313

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For my dauntless product and purveyor of the cultural toolbox, Chi-ogimaa-binesiikwe (Big Boss Eagle Woman), my daughter Luella Treuer

MY HANDS WERE TREMBLING slightly as I grasped the first pouch of tobacco. I was only twenty-seven years old. I was young and strong, so it was weird to see my hands shake.

The dance hall at Round Lake, on the St. Croix Reservation in Wisconsin, was a tiny building with white-painted walls that had long ago acquired a weathered grayish color from years of steady usemuddy kid fingerprints that had never quite wiped fully clean, a film of tobacco smoke from numerous social and ceremonial smokings. It would be hard to describe the place as regal to an outsider, but thats what it was to me.

There were around two hundred people packed in that little building, sitting side by side, three rows deep, around the edges of the grayish walls. They were laughing and eagerly visiting with one another. Kids were all over the place, too, some milling around the edges near their parents and grandparents, but mostly sent outside to play in the late summer sun so they wouldnt disturb the doings inside. Many of the attendees were fluent Ojibwe speakers, singers, and tribal culture carriers of every kind. There were at least twenty ceremonial drum chiefs present. They were gathering for a drum ceremony, as they did in Round Lake a dozen times a year. I admired them. The St. Croix Ojibwe were the descendants of those who had refused to leave their ancestral homes along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border and relocate to Lac Courte Oreilles and other Ojibwe reservations in the late 1800s. They just stayed where they had always lived as their lands filled up with white settlers. Their rights to stay there werent even validated until after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, within the living memories of many of the elders in attendance. They were so tenacious. And they knew so much.

I had been a longtime apprentice to Archie Mosay, one of the great spiritual leaders from the area. He was born in a wigwam in 1901, raised speaking Ojibwe only. He didnt even get the name Archie until he was a teenager, soon after the first time he met a white mana local farmer who he ended up working for. The farmer said hed never be able to pronounce the name Niibaa-giizhig (Evening Sky), so he named him Archie, and it stuck. Archies Ojibwe namesakes were US Civil War veterans. He was in his thirties when he first met a Black man and first saw a car. He was too old to serve in World War II. And I had stumbled into a life-altering journey with him in 1991, when he was already ninety years old. I pestered that old man for years, living on his couch at times, driving him to funerals, carrying his pipe and drum to various ceremonies. I was just excited to be there and see into the Ojibwe culturemy culturein a way that few Ojibwe are privileged to see.

People came from all over Wisconsin and Minnesota to see Archie. They wanted Indian names. They needed him to officiate funerals for their loved ones. They wanted medicine, healing, initiation into our sacred society. And they came to the drum ceremonies there, too, to honor the drums, but also to hear him sing (which he did even in his nineties) and listen to him speak for the feasts and bundles. The old man had a natural second-bass voice. It was deep, resonant, and amazingly loud. It was a special experience just to hear him.

But something was different in 1997. Archie had died the year before. They were breaking a bundlea special way to honor the dead and bring the bereaved relatives out of mourning. Lots of people wanted to be there, to honor Archie. And they all wondered who would be speaking. The room was full of competent speakers, deeply knowledgeable about the drums, fluent in our language. But they had always deferred to Archie. It would be novel and strange to hear someone else talk for the feast.

Betsy Schultz was one of Archies children. She was in her seventies now. She had lupus and got around in a wheelchair, using a cane to stand when she needed to. She shook that cane at her grandkids with some regularity, too. But with me, she had always been super sweet. She would kiss me on both cheeks every time we met and hug me close. I always remember the softness of her skin and her disposition toward meit stood in contrast to her dark shaded glasses, which framed the perfect mean Indian look she used when she was getting her grandkids in line, which was a permanent occupation for her.

At the drum ceremonies, the main feast is set on tablesmaybe a hundred bowls of venison, pork chops, wild rice hotdish, potato salad, beans, boiled eggs, and frybread. People who wanted to make special requests of the drum brought additional bowls of food and tobacco, and they asked for special prayersto help a sick relative, to watch over a relative serving as a soldier overseas, or to remember a relative who had passed away and send food to them in the spirit world.

Betsy was only a foot away, but she was staring at me. For the first time, she was looking at me the way she looked at her grandkidsstern, serious, and like she was ready to tune me up with her cane. Youre talking today, she told me. You followed my dad around these past years, and now Im going to hear what you learned. There were thirteen bowls on the ground, each for a different request from a different person. Betsy placed the first pouch of tobacco in my hand. Thats for my dads spirit bowl. My hand shook. Then she lined up all the other people and had each tell me their Indian name and what their bowl was for. I had pouches of tobacco between all my fingers on both my left and right hands and five more in my palms. Betsy leaned closer. My dad never forgot what a bowl was for. And never forgot an Indian name. Ill be listening.