idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...
idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...
idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...
idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...
idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...
idlenomorewisconsin: “ Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path? by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good...

idlenomorewisconsin:

Minobimaadizi: How Is Your Path?
by noise of rain Feb 16, 2014 5:30pm PST

Every year, the Lac Courte Orielles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe hosts a “Mid-Winter Social Dance” in Hayward, Wisconsin. Hayward is way up north, a good 7 hour drive from Milwaukee, and is a strikingly beautiful part of the state. Rolling hills and fields are broken by patchwork pine and oak and maple forests, as well as the white barked beauty of paper and yellow birch, all trimmed and softened with billows of pristine snow, whiter than it ever is in the city. The town of Hayward looks like the winter will never leave it; the wide streets have a snow-globe charm, all lovely and lonely and cold. The Mid-Winter Dance serves as an important community gathering of various Wisconsin tribes, and is also an important venue for the discussion of the issues surrounding the proposed Gogebic Taconite open-pit iron mine that will be upstream to important estuaries that make the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation some of the most productive wild rice land in the nation. The mine will leave open tailings that will leach acidifying sulfites into the water, and it has been discovered - and suppressed - that there is significant asbestos content in the bed rock. Our group, the Overpass Light Brigade, had been invited to hold forth messages on stage right before the evening powwow. We had done a similar action last year, inviting the future generation to hold messages such as NO TAR SANDS, NO FRAC SANDS, and NO MINES. This year, we wanted to highlight the teens, highlight the struggle against the colonial forces of out of state corporations, and do it all in the Ojibwe language. In short, we were up for a challenge!

I have a friend and colleague who teaches Ojibwe language and culture in Milwaukee, and sought her help for some words that would be meaningful and compelling, without too many vowels, and short enough for both the stage and the limitations of our now 71 letter alphabet array. Did I say that the number of vowels was an issue?

Another dear friend of mine, Sarah LittleRedfeather, had agreed to read the script to the assembled crowd, but also to riff with it and improvise, because it is quite difficult to get complex messages re-sorted in real time in terms of the backstage needs to get this all worked out, as there is overlap of letters from phrase to phrase and when one phrase comes in, it is a real scramble to get the next letters out and in the right order! Since Sarah isn’t fluent in Ojibwe, she asked an elder to help her with the pronunciation. It was a wonderful generational link between her, the elder, and the teens on stage, all negotiating the lighted letters of living language. We had invited hand drummers, and the Haye Creek Drummers of the LCO along with the Pipestone Drummers came in force and sang traditional songs to open and close the oratorial action, and they were amazing as their rhythms and pitch surrounded the audience in an eerie sonic embrace.
An event like this is more like improv guerrilla theater than anything else - there is no rehearsal, there are no experienced actors, there are only real people, generous and willing to put themselves into a creative community that, in this case, was organized around political resistance in the form of both message and medium. Language is the life of culture, and the lighted letters offer a strange performative embodiment of text.

How is your path? Minobimaadizi?

A path is connected with the ground we stand on, but is also worn, over time, by the people walking with you, walking before you, walking beside you, and walking after you. It was suggested to me that “Minobimaadizi” might also translate as “Solidarity Forever.”

See more: http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/16/1278120/-Minobimaadizi-How-Is-Your-Path

(via baapi-makwa)

Mon, Feb 17th 2014 at 21 PM