Abstract
The coupling of water politics with water spirituality will be sharpened in Chapter 4 by recounting continuing efforts of Ojibwe “Water Walking” Women to recover older indigenous practice in attending to the water “herself” as living Spirit, before moving into a consideration of the spiritual force of White “Biopolitics” and Christian “Domination” under the rubric of Pauline notions of “Principalities and Powers” and Potawatomi ideas of the “Windigo” phenomenon. Robin Kimmerer’s invocation of Nanabozho and unpacking of the Seven Fires Prophecy will open the discussion toward a more indigenous comprehension of Great Lakes dwelling and struggle.
The original version of the chapter was revised: Post-publication corrections have been incorporated. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14998-7_10
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02 June 2019
The coupling of water politics with water spirituality will be sharpened in Chapter 4 by recounting continuing efforts of Ojibwe “Water Walking” Women to recover older indigenous practice in attending to the water “herself” as living Spirit, before moving into a consideration of the spiritual force of White “Biopolitics” and Christian “Domination” under the rubric of Pauline notions of “Principalities and Powers” and Potawatomi ideas of the “Windigo” phenomenon. Robin Kimmerer’s invocation of Nanabozho and unpacking of the Seven Fires Prophecy will open the discussion toward a more indigenous comprehension of Great Lakes dwelling and struggle.
Notes
- 1.
The third–first century BCE Book of Enoch (which was excluded from the biblical canon by most Jewish and Christian traditions except in Ethiopian communities) has a somewhat similar characterization of blood-drinking, cannibalistic monsters called Nephilim (hinted in Gen 6:4), supposed offspring of interbreeding between the Ben Elohim (“Sons of God,” “Fallen Angels” or “Watchers ”) and human women (2 Enoch 18; Howard, 5).
- 2.
A recent Common Dreams article, citing a recent United Nations FAO report to the effect that “business interests chasing short-term profits [and] wag[ing] war against the productive topsoil of the planet” have reduced the entire globe to only 60 remaining harvests—60 years before topsoil is entirely wiped out, that is—was entitled “Beyond Wetiko [Windigo ] Agriculture : Saving Ourselves from the Soil Up” (Newmark, 1). “Burning through 10 tons of soil per hectare per year of cropland” (which is “up to 20 times the amount of food being produced on that land”), industrial agribusiness has already contributed to the loss of “50% to 75% of life-sustaining soils worldwide.”
- 3.
A figure widely shared across Ojibwe, Algonquin, Ottawa, Menominee, Shawnee, and Cree peoples going by various similar names such as Meshkenabec, Msi-Knebik, Kichikinebik, Kichiginebig, Psikinépikwa, etc.
- 4.
Other tales speak of the prime water giant here as Mishipeshu (discussed below).
- 5.
A being remembered in story and honored in ritual widely across Northeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes and even Arctic (Inuit) indigenous peoples also going by a wide range of appellations such as Msipessi, Missibizi, Michi-Pichoux, Gichi-anami’e-bizhiw, Gitche-anahmi-bezheu, Nampeshiu, Nambiza, Nampèshiu, etc. (Conway 2010; Kohl 1985).
- 6.
Perhaps akin to the Azteca Plumed Serpent, Quetzacoatl, and even later, Haitian-creole amalgamation of the latter with Afro-diasporic traditions in the serpent-loa known as Damballah in Voudou practice (Deren , 69, 277; cf. also Rabinowitz , 101).
- 7.
Deloria will trace Native accounts of similar “water monsters” across the Plains to the Pacific Northwest, in arguing that—contra Western scientific hubris pretending to certainties about time lines and fossil remains—indigenous knowledge could perhaps even be “remembering” here a version of something akin to dinosaurs who are themselves more recently being re-conceived as mammals rather than reptiles (Deloria 1999, 142–143).
- 8.
Known in Ojibwe as onamin or wunnamin, the “paint” used on the white granite rock face here was a combination of ochre-colored hematite or ferric oxide powder mixed in with fish (often sturgeon ) glue and oil, itself, over time, “sealed” in by rock veneer drippings of dissolved mineral (Conway 2010).
- 9.
For a suggestive parallel, see Carlotto’s work on Poles Hill , Massachusetts, investigating a Native rock observatory, mapping star configurations with ground boulders arranged along equinox vectors, perhaps associating the Wabanaki culture hero, Glooscap (equivalent to Nanabozho ) with the Hercules figure between the snake constellations Draco and Serpens Caput (Carlotto 2016).
- 10.
In the interpretation offered Warren, the megis refers to the Me-da-we (Midewiwin ) religion, whose lodge of practice was first erected through the Great Spirit intercession of Manabosho (Nanabozho ) for healing and restoration, at each point along the way where fires were kindled (Peacock, 26; Warren, 79–80).
- 11.
Lightning -strike forest fires, that is.
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Perkinson, J.W. (2019). Water Story Around the Bend: The Windigo Monster and the Nanabozho Trickster. In: Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14998-7_4
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