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Tracing the Text of Ojibwa Hymn No. 35 from 1910 to 2010

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Tracing the Text of Ojibwa Hymn No. 35 from 1910 to 2010 BABAAMIINWAJIMOJIG (PEOPLE WHO GO AROUND TELLING THE GOOD NEWS): TRACING THE TEXT OF OJIBWA HYMN NO. 35 FROM 1910 TO 2010 By Janis Angela Fairbanks A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of American Studies - Doctor of Philosophy 2015 ABSTRACT BABAAMIINWAJIMOJIG (PEOPLE WHO GO AROUND TELLING THE GOOD NEWS): TRACING THE TEXT OF OJIBWA HYMN NO. 35 FROM 1910 TO 2010 By Janis Angela Fairbanks My dissertation is based on a question: Why do Ojibwa people continue to sing Ojibwa hymns in Ojibwa even though many of the singers no longer understand the words they are singing? To find answers, qualitative methods were used. I found 22 people to participate in interviews that took place around the Great Lakes in both the United States and Canada. The people interviewed are known as the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwa People), although one person interviewed is not indigenous, but has worked with indigenous students teaching Ojibwa language and hymns for over half a century. As an Ojibwa woman, I felt it was important to consider primary-source oral history of current-day Ojibwa people, and to include secondary sources of information, such as CDs, phonograph records, books, articles and Internet websites in my research. Five themes emerged from analysis of the interview transcripts. These are (1) language translation issues, (2) the importance of the Thunderbird as a cultural icon, (3) spirituality, (4) community and individual identity, and (5) continuity of culture. Within these categories is evidence that the continued use of hymn no. 35 in the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910 (Kah-O-Sed 1910:35) demonstrates both continuity and change in the Anishinaabeg western Great Lakes Diaspora. This includes how the hymn fits into oral tradition, how it was produced and continues to be reproduced as a literary textual cultural icon, how it is used by community members, and how it is understood to impact perceptions of identity. I think the most significant findings of the research are the following: I propose that the Anishinaabeg took ownership of Ojibwa hymns as a unique but distinct aspect of Ojibwa culture, adapting Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society) ceremonial singing practices to Ojibwa hymn- singing practices that have carried forward to the current day, and that today’s Midewiwin ceremonial singing and Ojibwa hymn-singing purposes are very similar. The Anishinaabeg did this to establish and maintain a sense of continuity of culture that exists today, despite variances in spiritual beliefs and differing levels of fluency in Anishinaabemowin (Indian language, especially Ojibwa) among local and wide spread geographical expanses around the Great Lakes. The hymns in some cases are being used to learn the Ojibwa language. There is a deeper meaning to the continuous use of Ojibwa hymns from the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910 and it is this: that spirituality of Ojibwa people is much more complicated than previous researchers and ethnographers have indicated. It is a tangled picture and complicated by the conversions, first, from Midewiwin to Christianity, and, more recently, from Christianity back to Midewiwin. There has been a shift in spirituality during the last 100 years that is continuing today. The Anishinaabeg community is bound by cultural markers, such as the Thunderbird icon and the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910, that have become cultural icons that which each generation passes down to succeeding generations. For the Anishinaabeg of the Great Lakes region, the practice of singing the century-old Ojibwa hymn no. 35 is one way for babaamiinwajimojig (people who go around telling the good news) to continue. (Alphonse Pitawanakwat, in discussion with the author December 9, 2010) Copyright By JANIS ANGELA FAIRBANKS 2015 This work is dedicated to my family, to indigenous peoples and those who wish to gain a better understanding of indigenous people, to our ancestors, and to future generations. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I first and foremost acknowledge my guidance committee members, Dr. Gordon Henry Jr., committee chair, Matthew Fletcher, J.D., Dr. Patrick LeBeau, Dr. Mindy Morgan, and Dr. Margaret Noodin. Thank you for your consistent level of support, for your honest assessment and helpful advice during my progress, and for your encouragement and comments as I worked through the revisions to reflect what I wanted to say in a coherent and productive manner. Thank you for persevering with me until the end product was evident. It was a privilege to have you serve on my committee. Special thanks to my husband, Kazimierz Roterman, and son, John Roterman, for their love and encouragement, for their patience in listening to or reading portions of my work back to me, and for tolerating my periods of frustration and celebrating my steps toward finishing my work. To Patricia Marie Gardner and Jacqueline Allison, thank you for your clerical assistance and for being the true friends that you are. Thank you for insisting that I see a movie or share a meal with you when you detected before I did that it was time to take a break. Special thanks to Patricia Marie Gardner for her dedication and assistance during our travels for my fieldwork, when she served as the main driver and photographer during the summer of 2011. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank Michigan State University Graduate School College of Arts and Letters, the Council of Graduate Students, and the Fond du Lac Reservation Scholarship Division for financial assistance in completing my dissertation. vi PREFACE This dissertation explores how hymn no. 35 in the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910 demonstrates both continuity and change in the Anishinaabeg western Great Lakes Diaspora, including how the hymn fits into oral traditions, how it was produced and continues to be reproduced as a literary artifact, how it is used by community members, and how it is understood to impact perceptions of identity. The Anishinaabeg are an adaptable, resilient, flexible people with a love of song and culture. They also have a strong spirit and will to survive. Even through colonization, they took ownership of one form of conversion, the use of Ojibwa hymn no. 35 from the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910. Through established Anishinaabeg cultural norms, they converted the use of that hymn to a recognizable, cultural pattern of symbolic rhythm. That rhythm hails back to cultural symbolic rhythm used by the Midewiwin. During the 100-year-period since the hymnal has been in use, many fluent elders have passed to the spirit world. Often when fluent elders die, there is no one left to replace them to carry on the language at the same fluency level. Although second-language-learners are studying the language and have joined in with the few remaining fluent elders to create written language forms, there are several challenges and issues with language translation. First, Anishinaabemowin is changing. Some of the changes are that words have been lost and new words have been created, spelling conventions are different, and the written form of Anishinaabemowin is moving toward a uniform orthography, the Fiero system. After 100 years of continuous use of the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910, which adapted Midewiwin rhythms and practices to Christian hymn-singing practices, the ostensible split between the members of the Midewiwin vii and the members who identify as Christians obliterates the similarities in practices for these groups. The one thing both groups share is the ideal of retaining and maintaining the Anishinaabe language. Although there is a need for translations and re-translations of Ojibwa hymns written over 100 years ago, several of the people interviewed said it would be difficult and time consuming to translate from the Anishinaabe language back into English. The structure of the English language, noun-based, is different from the structure of the Anishinaabe language, verb- based. Anishinaabemowin is dependent on the creation of a visualization of what is happening at the time, and translators today would not be in the same situation or setting as the translators from 100 years ago. The Ojibwa Hymnal 1910 is being used by the communities in northern Minnesota as a method of preserving individual and community identity through the practice of singing songs in the Anishinaabe language and for the purpose of providing comfort to others in the community in times of sickness or bereavement. These reasons are the same as the reasons members of the Midewiwin sing their songs: a preservation of identity and a healing device for those who are ill or grieving. It does not matter when Anishinaabeg move from their home areas to other areas, on or off the reservations in the United States or the First Nation reserves in Canada; they retain and cherish their identity as community members in their respective homelands. Ojibwa people remember the past and recall the old ways of the people through their actions and through their oral history. I submit that one factor of oral history is the use of the Ojibwa hymns from the Ojibwa Hymnal 1910. The use of these hymns has been constant among the Ojibwa Hymn Singers. Their spirituality is not hindered by boundaries. Finding several other viii hymnals around communities of the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada that are still in use but come from the missionary era illustrates that the Anishinaabeg have taken ownership of the hymns. Missionaries are no longer the driving force behind the singing of the Ojibwa gospel hymns. Now it is the Ojibwa people themselves who continue to use the Ojibwa hymns in a manner that is closely related to the Midewiwin system that the translated hymns were intended to replace. There are many references to the Ojibwa people’s love of music and dance, and I explored references to their spirituality and spiritual beliefs, both in personal interview primary sources and in secondary sources.
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