Transcripts

SPEAKER 1: I think one of the problems that gets in the way here is nomenclature. The words that are used in the word religion is used quite a bit. And I think that's probably not the proper word to use. And I use, in my classes, I use the word traditions. Because religion smacks of an institutional situation in which there are codes and laws that members are bound by. And this governs their lives and the way they do things.

That's not so in Indian spiritual life. Spiritual life is bound by traditions, and these traditions are very general. And you've got groups of people, that are usually elders, that remind you of what they are through stories, myths, legends, and those sort of things. And it really binds you to your world. It binds you. It's your relationship to the world around you. That's, in essence, Indian traditions.

SPEAKER 2: So it's important in this case for the Mille Lacs Band to spear and net during spawning season because their ancestors did so?

SPEAKER 1: Very much, very much. Because it's those kinds of things that remembrance of what's gone on in one's ancestral past that makes your laws, that's, in a very loose sense, your codes and your laws that govern what you do. And so you have to keep these practices up. And the idea, generally, the idea of spearing and netting is that you're exacting something from the creator's world. Everything is creation.

There's life to everything. Indians give life to inanimate objects, such as rocks, and the wind, and that sort of thing, water. And everything has life. Everything has a spirit. And everything is bound together. And so what you do is you have a cyclical sort of a nature of life. In the old days of hunting, for instance, when you went deer hunting, you said a prayer to the deer. You said, very loose translation is, my brother, my sister, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to eat you. And for that, I apologize. But that's the way the world works.

And you must remember that I too shall die. And my body being generally biodegradable, will be in the Earth. And out of that, the grass will grow after the worms have dealt with my body, which is really nothing. And it's my gift back to the Earth. And the grass will grow. And your ancestors-- or, I mean, your descendants will feed upon me. And that's the cyclical nature of our life. That's our relationship. And so everyone gives and takes in this relationship.

And the loose interpretation of that is that after the long, hard winter, in the spring-- and this is a very harsh climate up here in the area that the Ojibwe or the Anishinaabe live in. One must exact tribute, to the traditional sense, from the creator. And that's how it's done.

Now, Indians have always been very, very careful about that. They still care about the maintenance of species. And I think historically, one can go back through anthropological work, if one doesn't want to take Indian legends seriously. And you go back through anthropological work and see that Indians always did take this very seriously. And that their idea of the maintenance of species is in keeping with what any department of natural resources manual or machinery would look at and say that this is certainly in keeping with that.

And so Indians are very careful about that situation. And so the idea is traditional, and it's spiritual. And I think that's the problem, is because I think the Mille Lacs band, at least my looking at the paper makes them look bad by saying they want to spear and net during spawning season. And everybody says, well, jeez, if you do that, you're killing the broodstock and et cetera, et cetera. And that's not the point.

And I don't think the legislature is the arena in which one can have a good educational give and take and understanding. I don't think they're talking about the letter of the law and the intent of the law and that sort of thing. And that's not the arena that this understanding can take place. And I think that's the problem.

SPEAKER 2: What was so special about the spawning season, as opposed to immediately after the spawning season, which apparently a lot of people wouldn't have an objection to?

SPEAKER 1: Well, it's not so much the spawning season, it just happens to be in the spring. It's when the vernal equinox happens. That's when these transitional times take place. And they're done by moons, not by, Julian or Gregorian calendar. So Indians move by-- it's a rhythm of life, rather than a time that's set by calendar dates, which we do in this society. And I guess we have to do it.

Indians do it, again, by when things happen. You harvest maple syrup, which is called [NON-ENGLISH WORD] in Ojibwe, which is really the name for a process. You do it when the maple sap flows. So you go out and you harvest the fish when the fish are running. That's the way it happens. Because nature says that's what has to happen in that rhythm of life.

SPEAKER 2: How widespread is the adherence to tradition in the Native American community?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I think it's very widespread. And that's hard to gauge. Most rural people practice many, many things that we don't know about. And some practice some things more than others. I remember Larry Aiken, who was trying to develop the community college on the Leech Lake reservation, put together a little garden project just to plant seeds, to have people in the relationship to the Earth.

And so his students in this community college in leach Lake would plant seeds. And the students weren't real happy about that they have to go work in the dirt and everything. He got some seeds from a big company. And then he got too many. And he broadcast it through the Indian newspaper, these seeds were available. And out of the woods came all these old Indians who said, we've been planting these gardens for years. And no one knew about it. It wasn't widespread knowledge.

Now, the idea that one gets part of one's sustenance from the Earth, that's a nice agrarian concept we have here in America. But it doesn't work anymore. Our farms are owned by a big corporation. But Indians are still doing that out in these rural areas. And no one knew that. It wasn't widespread knowledge. And that just tells me that there's probably a lot of things that go on that we don't know about, that Indian individuals practice, in terms of their understanding of their own traditions.

SPEAKER 2: It seems like the potential clash of cultures, if you will, could go on forever really. I mean, for a long, long time, through this, we try to work our way through these treaties and so on.

SPEAKER 1: It will go on for quite a while. But I think it has to. I think these Indians are not going to go away. And Indians are certainly not going to give up traditions. Although cultures do change. I mean, that's the dynamics of a culture itself. But Indians are not going to change. They've shown the propensity to want to remain Indians. And so they do that. And they have these practices.

In fact, we've gone back to many of them. I mean, we've gone back to recap because there's strength in much of what Indians do. There's great truth and strength that happen. The US Forest Service found that out in the burning of forests in the parks. Before, they would protect at any cost and allow no burning at all.

And now they found that the old Indian practice of going in and with these regulated burns seasonally, that the forests work much better. And that you don't have the undergrowth, you don't have the disease and those kinds of things. Those old traditions often produce results that are very, very good environmental kinds of practices in this society.