Click to access Chippewas_of_Nawash-Encountering_the_Other.pdf

– David McLaren (except where noted)

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sacrifice, literally “the making sacred”

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But it’s useful to think about the metaphor of the cave itself. To take part in reality as defined by the Sun—to be able to perceive Plato’s higher Forms—you have to leave Mother Earth. There is no discussion in Plato of what has to be given up to gain knowledge of his Forms. There is also no discussion about what might be learned if you were to go deeper into the cave, away from the shadows cast by the Sun. There is an assumption that one ought to leave the Earth behind and “progress” toward the sun.

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Humans and animals each have at least two souls—one remains with the body
after death.

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To you the Great Spirit has given the book, to us He has given the earth.

– Red Jacket, 1805

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There was a time in Europe when the wolf was the second most populous animal, after man. During the fierce winter of 1439 the people of Paris were besieged by wolves. The alpha male they named Cut-tail. Finally, they lured the wolves into the city where archers cut them down.

Werewolves, in European folklore are men transformed or capable of changing into wolves. In the European mythos, the transformation of wolf to man is a metaphor for the submersion of the intellect into the natural—it is a de-evolution. The result is a release of rapacious emotions that overwhelm reason and action based on rational motives. In other words, it is not the proper state for a gentleman. The transformation from wolf back to man is a replay of the evolution of mankind and an assertion of reason over base animal instinct.

In the tales of the Brothers Grimm, wolves are greedy and rapacious. In the tale of Little Red Cap (aka Little Red Riding Hood), the wolf tricks a girl on her way into the woods to visit her grandmother into straying off the path. While Little Red is trying to find her way back to the path, the wolf enters her grandmother’s cottage and eats the old woman. When Red finds her way back to the cottage, the wolf eats her too. A huntsman happens along to apprehend the wolf. Little Red and her grandmother are cut out of the wolf’s stomach unharmed and are rescued.

As in most myth, everything is significant. The wolf has to trick his way into the cottage where the grandmother lives. She lives in the forest, not the town where Little Red lives because, being old, she is still part of the earthy dark force of nature that huntsmen, wood-cutters and towns are set in opposition to.

Huntsmen (never huntswomen) and woodcutters in the old tales are always poor, but heroic. The men who cut down the dark and dangerous forest for firewood, houses and furniture are, in European popular thought, culture-bearers. They are the heroic force of progress transforming wild nature into civilization and, in the process, rescuing the feminine from falling back into the chthonic.

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As for wolves, even today, a ramble through an English Thesaurus will uncover mostly unhappy associations: poverty or famine (wolf at the door); deceit (cry wolf, a wolf in sheep’s clothing); loneliness (lone wolf—but also freedom); lechery (wolf whistle); gluttony (don’t wolf down your food); rapacious (wolfish); inequality (wolf and the lamb).

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There is an equivalency between the land and mankind: “Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.”

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Native language itself is shaped by the land. To make conversation, Native people ask of others, “Where are you from?”. In Anishinaabemowin, one says: “G’boonzehbah”, literally, “Where does your sound come from?”

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To separate Aboriginal peoples from the land, whether by treaty or by “enfranchisement” is to empty the mind of the land—to create a terra nullius of the soul.

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To an Euro Canadian, time is quantitative. But to the First Nation, it is qualitative, as evidenced by the older Aboriginal man, who was living on a reserve, when asked if he had been — if he had lived on the reserve all his life, he replied, no, not yet.

The white man has the clocks and the watches … but, our people have the time. A word to describe one of the major qualities of time among the First Nation circle, is appropriateness. An event begins when it is appropriate. Most aboriginal languages don’t even have the words to designate time. In western cultures, however time is regarded as a commodity. Canadians buy it, sell it, borrow it, waste it, kill it, make it up, take it and if they run afoul with the law, do it.

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In the 19th century there were no wrist watches. White men carried pocket watches, some Plains Indians said white man carries his God in his pocket because he never did anything without consulting it.
(Wally McKay)