Around the Great Lakes, between the United States and Canada, live the Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, part of the wider group of peoples who call themselves Anishinaabe. Their culture has produced two very different things: an initiatory society of great depth, the Midewiwin, and an object now found all over the world, the dreamcatcher. Knowing both helps to tell living tradition apart from commercial image.
The Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society
The Midewiwin is often called the Grand Medicine Society in English. The word «medicine» should be understood in the broad sense it has in many Native languages: not only care of the body, but knowledge of the forces of life, of right conduct and of the relationship with spiritual beings. Its members are called Mide.
The society is organised in successive degrees, usually four, with more added in some communities. Each step requires long teaching, offerings and an initiation ceremony held in a long structure of poles and branches, the midewigaan, oriented east to west. At the heart of the rite is the gesture in which the initiate is «shot» with a sacred shell symbolically cast by the Mide: the candidate falls as if dead and rises again as a renewed person. It is a clear example of the initiatory pattern of death and rebirth.
The birchbark scrolls
One of the most remarkable features of the Midewiwin is the wiigwaasabakoon, birchbark scrolls incised with figures and signs. They are not alphabetic writing, but a mnemonic system: each figure recalls songs, teachings, stages of the rite or episodes from the people's history. Only those who have received the oral teaching can truly «read» them.
Some scrolls depict the plan of the ceremonial lodge; others trace the stages of a great migration. For many communities they are sacred objects, carefully kept and not meant for public view.
The migis shell and the migration
Among the stories linked to the Midewiwin is that of the great migration of the Anishinaabe. According to tradition, the people once lived by the salt waters of the East. A sacred shell, the migis, often identified with a cowrie, appeared on the water and led the people westward, stopping at a series of places.
The prophecy told them to continue until they reached «the land where food grows on the water»: wild rice, manoomin, which grows in the lakes of the Great Lakes region and is still a central food and symbol for the Ojibwe today. The stages of this journey are handed down orally and represented in some scrolls.
The dreamcatcher: its Ojibwe origin
The dreamcatcher, in Ojibwe asabikeshiinh, literally means «little spider». The name reveals the story behind it. A figure called Spider Woman, Asibikaashi, looked after the children of the people. When the Anishinaabe spread over a vast territory, it became hard for her to reach every cradle. So mothers and grandmothers began weaving small webs on willow hoops, imitating the spider's web, and hanging them above the cradles.
The features of the traditional object are simple:
- a hoop of flexible wood, usually willow, which dries out over time;
- a web of plant fibre or sinew, woven like a spider's web;
- a small size, suited to a cradle;
- sometimes a feather or a small stone tied to the web.
According to the most common teaching, the web holds back what is harmful and lets what is good pass through, just as a spider's web catches what lands on it. The hoop that dries out is a reminder that childhood is a passing season.
From cradle to market
In the second half of the twentieth century the dreamcatcher spread among many different Native peoples, becoming a symbol of pan-Indian identity. Then it entered the global market for decorative objects, often in large plastic versions, loaded with feathers and made with no connection to the communities of origin.
Many Ojibwe see this spread as a loss of meaning. Remembering that the dreamcatcher was born as a gift for children, tied to the story of Spider Woman, is a simple way to give it back its dignity.
In short
- The Midewiwin is an Ojibwe initiatory society organised in degrees, with a rite of death and rebirth.
- Birchbark scrolls are mnemonic tools that only initiates can read.
- According to tradition, the migis shell led the migration toward the land of wild rice.
- The dreamcatcher, asabikeshiinh, began as a small web for cradles tied to Spider Woman.
- Its commercial spread has often erased its original meaning.
