Nourish the Word

  I have loved turtles since I was a teenager. Maybe even before that. I’ve loved them since before I understood they have significance to any American culture. And my very favorite of all the turtles are the green sea turtles. Catching a glimpse of these gentle giants unexpectedly in their element has always been a moment of excitement and awe for me. At the beginning of this year, I snorkeled at the beach of an island. It was our first time trying out full face snorkel masks. My hair was braided to keep it manageable in the water, but in the undulating waves it would snake in expected directions, and a time or two it’s frayed end had startled me, mistaken for a curious fish or eel that had ventured too close to my face. At the beckoning of family members on shore, I began to return to the sand with my children, fresh from an octopus sighting. Before I reached it, I discovered one of these beautiful creatures swimming between me and the shore, to the East. I pointed it out with ch...

I had a thought the other day about two dominant religious/cultural symbols and how they represent the current state of their respective cultures in this country. In America’s Christianity the dominant symbol, is Jesus the Christ, obviously. This cultural religion is largely devoid of information regarding the other half of the image of God (the divine woman). We have the image of Christ, who came down in the name of the Father and performed His Father’s works. The image of this Son of God and knowledge of His works and instructions are largely missing in the surviving Native American traditions (though not entirely absent); however, a remembrance of the divine woman (in various forms depending on each tribe) and the tradition of listening to wisdom exists here where it does not in Christianity. These two symbols [Christ as a symbol of His Father, a divine man, and White Buffalo Calf Woman (or Corn Mother, or Sky Woman, etc), a divine woman] metaphorically represent two parts of the ...

A few months ago, I came across some interesting things in Edward Benton-Banai's The Mishomis Book that would stand out, I think, to any current or formerly endowed LDS Mormon. I showed these things (one was an illustration of a man in a particular pose, the other a passage that I will include below) to someone I know with an LDS background (a temple worker) and Ojibwe ancestry. These things also stood out to him as being familiar. The context of the passage I mentioned has the culture hero, Waynaboozhoo (aka Nanaboozoo, Nanabush), coming home after an epic battle with his father. This battle is reminiscent of the Old Testament Jacob's wrestle with "a man." It should be noted, the manitou father acknowledges his son as his equal at the end of this battle, and gives him a symbol and tool for peace (the peace pipe). And Jacob was left alone. And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touch...

The Medicine Wheel A year or more ago, I was having a conversation with a Lakota man. He asked me whether I knew the cardinal directions. I was confused by the question, thinking, everyone knows those.  But the way he asked me, convinced me he wasn't talking about just East, South, West, and North. I explained that I didn't know what he meant, and he proceeded to teach me there are actually no fewer than 7 cardinal directions. In addition to the four main directions indicated in a compass rose and the Native American medicine wheel, there is also the directions of the sky above, the earth beneath, and at the center of them all, the self. My brain imploded for a moment, before it clicked into place. Of course there must be seven directions. How did I not know this before? It makes perfect sense. Here is a link to a website that explains a perspective of the different parts of the medicine wheel. I've been learning lately some things about the four main parts of the med...

"To satisfy my own curiosity I have sometimes interpreted to their old men, portions of Bible history, and their expression is invariably: 'The book must be true, for our ancestors have told us similar stories, generation after generation, since the earth was new.'" History of the Ojibways by William Whipple Warren   This quote is interesting to me, given its time period and given William W. Warren's background. He lived from 1825-1853. He had the benefit of being raised in two cultures, that of his native mother's (before that culture would be entirely repressed) and his European father's. He comments more than once in his book of the similarities he found between the two, and developed the opinion that either his mother's people were part of the lost tribes of Israel, or had communed with them at some point. One of these similarities I see is in the creation performed by Kitche Manitou. Kitche Manitou (also Gitchie Manito) has been interpreted a...