by Siomonn Pulla
Public History Inc., Winnipeg
Number 46, Autumn/Winter 2003-2004
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Michael Angel, Preserving the Sacred: Historical Perspectives on the Ojibwa Midewiwin. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2002. xiv, 260 pp., 3 maps, 11 illus., notes, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 0887556574, $24.95.
Preserving the Sacred is an excellent and rigorous historical analysis of the role of the Midewiwin in Ojibwa culture and society as described by early European texts. While the overall effect of Angel’s analysis is very powerful, it could be strengthened by the inclusion of a wider array of Anishnabeg perspectives and oral histories of the Midewiwin. However, Preserving the Sacred provides a fascinating glimpse into the historical and present day significance of the Midewiwin within Ojibwa culture and society.
The texts Angel examines in Preserving the Sacred can be split into four specific groupings: early French and English colonial texts; early ethnological writings; acculturated and mixed-blood Anishnabeg texts; and professional anthropological accounts. The first three chapters emphasize a stronger Aboriginal component, while chapters four and five are mainly concerned with non-Aboriginal representations of the Midewiwin.
In the first three chapters, Angel culturally contextualizes the Midewiwin as an integral aspect of Ojibwa culture and society. He incorporates general anthropological and historical accounts of Ojibwa culture together with acculturated and mixed-blood Anishnabeg accounts of the Midewiwin. This provides a multilayered background, emphasizing the importance and prevalence of “the sacred” in Ojibwa culture and society. For example, Angel notes that mide leaders, like Shingwaukonse (p. 103), usually performed both civil and ceremonial duties and that the “integration of religious and political terminology and practice was a common feature of Anishnabeg life” and that “religious concepts and ceremonies played an integral role in socio-political organization and leadership” (p. 45).
In chapters four and five, Angel provides his detailed historical analysis of the early and more contemporary texts on the Midewiwin. In chapter four he examines the early French and English colonial texts of Raudot, Grant and Cameron and the early ethnological writings of Nicollet, Schoolcraft, Day and Kohl. In chapter five, he mainly analyses accounts of the Midewiwin written by professional anthropologists such as Densmore, Hoffman and Hallowell. In chapter six, he concludes his analyses by synthesising all the chapters and offering some reflections on the textual representations and historical resilience of the Midewiwin.
In his analysis of the early French and English colonial texts, Angel illustrates how early writers like Antoine Denis Raudot, Peter Grant and Duncan Cameron struggled with Anishnabeg concepts like “Manidoo” that are central to the Midewiwin. The struggle stemmed from the authors’ attempts to fit the Midewiwin within Western structures of thought. The result, according to Angel, was that many early accounts of the Midewiwin “concentrated on externals and rituals, which were easier for their audiences to comprehend, since this kind of information was more straightforward, and since they probably had a greater emotional effect on their attended audiences” (p. 178).
The interior of a Midewiwin Lodge. From Preserving the Sacred.
Source: Archives of Manitoba
Angel suggests that in the mid 1800s, texts on the Midewiwin shifted from the romantic “Nobel Savage” motif exemplified by the writings of Raudot to a more ideological focus which attempted to systematically understand the Midewiwin within the context of Ojibwa culture. In particular, Angel examines and contrasts the early ethnological writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Joseph Nicollet, E. H. Day and Johann Georg Kohl. He concludes that although these texts marked the beginning of an attempt to contextualize the role of the Midewiwin in Anishnabeg culture and society, they failed in their efforts and ultimately “perpetuated distorted images of the Midewiwin and the Ojibwa who followed its tenets” (p. 179).
The third set of texts Angel examines were written by Peter Jones, George Copway and William Warren, who were acculturated and mixed-blood Anishnabeg. Compiled at roughly the same time as the writings of Schoolcraft, Day and Kohl, Angel notes that these texts provide a limited Anishnabeg view into the role of the Midewiwin and the meaning of various Mide rituals and beliefs. He questions the authenticity of the texts by suggesting that the authors’ “general acceptance of Euro-American beliefs and values distorted their vision” (p. 179). By positing the existence of an “authentic” Aboriginal voice, Angel discredits, to some degree, the validity of the texts as Anishnabeg historical documents. He does suggest however that “[a]ssimilated as they may have been, their works provided readers with an alternative image of Ojibwa culture” (p. 179).
The end of the 19th century heralded another shift in the textual representations of the Midewiwin from the writings of dedicated amateur ethnologists to the studies of professionally trained anthropologists. According to Angel, extended fieldwork, coupled with the use of Aboriginal informants, enabled early anthropologists like Francis Densmore and Walter Hoffman, and later anthropologists like A. Irving Hallowell, Ruth Landes, James Howard and Laura Peers to produce comprehensive, yet not exhaustive, texts on the role of the Midewiwin in Ojibwa Society. Angel points out that the work of Densmore and Hoffman coincided nicely with the efforts of some traditional Mide leaders to preserve the various aspects of the Midewiwin. As a result, “these practitioners were willing to pass on unusually detailed descriptions, songs, and pictographs, that, in the past, had been considered highly secret” (179).
Preserving the Sacred is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the role of the Midewiwin in Ojibwa culture and society. Angel’s multilayered analysis can be read on many levels and provides the reader with a sense of the historical complexity and importance of the Midewiwin for the Anishnabeg people. Preserving the Sacred also provides Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal historians access to a rich and varied literature on the Ojibwa. While I do not feel that Angel brings “voice to a subjugated people through an analysis of the colonial processes and constructions of knowledge that have muted their voices” (p. ix), Preserving the Sacred does contribute to an ongoing dialogue of decolonization whereby new “generations of Ojibwa who [have] lost their language and much of their heritage [are] able to use written records in order to begin to regain part of their lost oral traditions” (p. 174).
Page revised: 19 September 2010
