Book Review: Onigamissing: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year
Reviewed by Karl Hele
Onigamissing is an insightful sharing of Anishinaabeg wisdom and teaching through the stories of Elder and academic Linda LeGrande Grover. This non-fiction work is an exploration of life, family, and growing up, tightly bound with Anishinaabeg teachings over the course of the four seasons.
Beginning with Ziigwan, Grover shares memories of babies and springtime activities. She then transitions into Niibin where memories of youth, hers and of her children and grandchildren, are shared within the context of the meaning of summer. Dagwaagin teachings and memories focus on the fall and adulthood. Lastly, she discusses Biboon and becoming an Elder or at least a senior.
Throughout the work, there is a wonderful personal narrative that readily invokes one’s own memories of growing up and aging in Anishinaabeg country. Beyond invoking memories through sharing, Grover presents a positive narrative set alongside a history, both personal and community based, of the various changes the people of Onigamissing have experienced over the generations.
When combined with traditional teachings and knowledge from a humble yet intimate style of writing, Grover’s work is a beautiful narrative of our survivance as a Nation and the promise of our continued existence as a people far into the future. Simply, despite the vast changes brought about by colonialism and the ‘modern’ world, we, the Anishinaabeg, have managed to maintain the core of our identity and continue to pass our knowledge from generation to generation.
Grover weaves Anishinaabemowin within the text. She offers a direct translation, but the concepts, meanings, and understandings contained within a specific word or phrase are more fully parsed out in the stories that follow. For instance, Grover speaks of mino-bimaadiziwin in terms of the past and of the present and its central importance in all things. She speaks of the importance of both traditional and modern education as key to our peoples’ present and future ‘good lives’. All of the teaching about mino-bimaadiziwin is done via story which brings the concept to life far beyond its translation as ‘balance’ or the ‘good life’.
Personally, the book reminded me of lessons and stories growing up while offering me the opportunity to explore the past and new lessons from another set of stories. This is a book that should be read.
Linda LeGarde Grover, Onigamissing: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.