Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions - Softcover

Peacock, Thomas; Wisuri, Marlene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0873517857 ISBN 13: 9780873517850

Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009

Synopsis

"The story—dibaajimowin—told here is a story of Indian Country. It is the story of land-based cultures and our histories. It is also an amazing and wondrous set of stories told by those who dearly love their history and peoples—a great gift to us all: the scattered and dispersed leaves of our stories brought together with this generation's faces and living words."—Winona LaDuke

Ojibwe: Waasa Inaabidaa is a uniquely personal history of the Ojibwe culture by Ojibwe educator Thomas Peacock. Illustrated with color and historic black and white photographs, artwork, and maps, it is the story of how the Ojibwe people and their ways have continued to survive, and even thrive, from pre-contact times to the present.

Praise for Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa:

"This fascinating introduction to the Ojibwe is recommended..."—Library Journal

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

This is the story of the Anishinaabe, or Ojibwe people, who have lived on the North American continent for many thousands of years. Beginning in the dim past and continuing to the present, Ojibwe: We Look in All Directions chronicles in text, photography, and illustrations the saga of a still vibrant and evolving people, still strong in their ways.

What is known of Ojibwe origins begins soon after the last ice age, recorded by their Lenape ancestors on bark tablets and song sticks in an epic poem, the Wallum Olum. The Wallum Olum describes an eastward journey across the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains to the eastern Woodlands, where the Lenape settled along the Delaware River. From there they branched out to become several distinct tribal nations.

The Ojibwe lived for untold generations in the St. Lawrence River Valley in what is present-day Newfoundland. There they were told in a series of prophecies of their future, including a westward migration. This westward journey took over five hundred years, leading them at last to Moningwunakauning—place of the golden-breasted woodpecker. Known today as Madeline Island (just offshore Bayfield, Wisconsin), Moningwunakauning is the great spiritual homeland of the Ojibwe people. Eventually the Ojibwe developed communities in which they continue to live today, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and southern Canada.

The Ojibwe are a people as old as stone. And they will be here forever. They will be here because they are part of a much larger story of their own weaving—a story foretold by their ancestors that is lived by all those who travel the good road.

And so the story begins.

About the Author:

Marlene Wisuri’s photographs have been exhibited regionally and nationally.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0873517857
• ISBN 13: 9780873517850
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160