Individuals with Knowledge or Skills
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Individuals with knowledge or skills include matriarchs (mothers or grandmothers in the family who are acknowledged as heads of families), medicine people, and others who have the opportunity to use their gifts to support family and community wellbeing. Today, individuals with knowledge and skills may also include band representatives and other frontline workers who can provide input and help families to navigate colonial systems more effectively.
Certain individuals hold specific or unique knowledge or skills in relation to the health and wellbeing of children. Within families, these individuals may be matriarchs or “natural helpers in the community.” As one focus group participant from Sagamok explains, “there are different roles that we carry within our families. So, family members will make their connections within the family.” Others may hold skills in the areas of medicine or spirituality that enable them to provide guidance and services that enhance health and wellbeing. Other individuals may hold particular skills in resolving conflicts or addressing harms that occur within families and communities.
Chantal Fiola describes herself as a “naawenangweyaabe: a person who mends; or from the centre, keeps others together and from wandering; a mediator.” Other individuals such as artisans and hunters may hold particular knowledge and skills that enable them to meet family and community needs and provide education to future generations. Today, these individuals may include frontline workers in the community. Importantly, there is a need for respected individuals to engage in bigidnigeng or personal healing within their own lives in order to be effective in their roles. As one focus group participant from Batchewana said, “our workers need to be healthy, and they need to be mentally healthy, too.”
Medicine people, midwives, and others who hold special knowledge about medicine, spirituality and the life continuum have responsibilities to contribute and care for community members, particularly children, throughout their lives. Kim Anderson stated that, as managers of the life continuum, midwives had lifelong relationships with the babies they helped deliver, and they had various ways of celebrating and honouring those relationships. In Serpent River, Waweotnook was well-known in the community as a midwife, medicine woman, and generous helper. People would come to get her during the night and Betty would go with her. When anyone dropped by, she usually had the medicines they needed. When someone was dying, she nursed them and then washed the body and prepared it for burial until the priest arrived. Midwives were seen as managers of the life continuum.
Similarly, Agnes Commanda was a midwife and partnered with Doctor Hamill on difficult births in the community. She practiced traditional medicines and was well known for her heart, ulcers, TB and pneumonia remedies. She prepared bodies for burial, using cedar on the top of the woodstove to smudge herself and cedar water to wash the body and purify herself. In addition to her healing work, Agnes Commanda was also known to be an authority within the community of Serpent River. Joyce Dillen said of Agnes Commanda that she seemed to be “the boss.” Jeannette Commanda said that there was a kind of hierarchy, Agnes was the oldest in the community at the time. What she said, or how she presented herself to Chief and Council at the time, they listened to her, even though she didn’t sit with them as Chief and Council. This example demonstrates how individuals with knowledge and skills often receive respect and may hold other roles as leaders within their communities or families.
In the story of The Need for Kindness by Basil Johnston, a boy runs away from his family after being abused by his parents. A medicine woman intervenes to force the parents to take responsibility for the role they played in his disappearance.
Back at the village, the mother wept while the father searched day and night for the son who had disappeared. Finally, believing the boy to be dead, the family put black on their faces in mourning. An old medicine woman asked the father and mother why they were putting on such a show of grief, since they had given little care to their son and had driven him away by their harsh treatment. She said that they ought to be glad for the little boy, who was safe and happy where he was now. The parents’ sorrow was even keener – but it was too late.
This story demonstrates how the medicine woman used her insight to encourage the parents to take responsibility and ultimately to treat the boy with kindness and care when he returns.
In The Story of Spirit Lake and Indian Head, the people are unable to stop a windigo from killing their people and limiting their mobility. “Finally, they called in a medicine man for help. The medicine man called on the Thunderbirds, who hit the cliffs with lightning and thunder, and the cliffs shattered. What remained in the side of the cliffs was the man’s head, which can be seen there today, and his spirit lives in the lake just behind the hillside, which is why it is named Spirit Lake” (as told by Sagamok Elder Dominic Eshkakogan). In this story, the medicine man uses his abilities to enhance the safety and mobility of the community members, calling upon the Thunderbirds to act and enabling the community members to move about safely and meet their needs.
Brandon Petahtegoose of Atikameksheng is an Oshkaabewis. He describes how holding this role requires him to communicate between the spiritual and physical worlds and to help those in your community.
Brandon is Atikameksheng Anishnawbek’s Oshkaabewis and to him that role holds more responsibility than to simply help during ceremony. In different communities, the name is a little different, but the role is the same. People look to them as being the helpers but the word itself speaks of being the one who receives the messages from the Spirit and brings them forward to the People and similarly brings the messages from the People and brings them to the Spirit. There’s a connection between us and the Spirit World and the Oshkaabewis acts as a translator bringing the knowledge from the Spirit to the People.
He has been in this role since childhood, when his father would call him Azhiniwe, or my apprentice, the one who I am training. The Oshkaabewis came a little bit later. He says that you must put yourself forward in ceremonies and ask others if they need help and over time, over years, you can become Oshkaabewis. They help everybody, not just the Elders. It was after many ceremonies, learning, and dancing in Sundance, that he learned to be comfortable in his role as Oshkaabewis.
Phil Lancaster describes how many individuals contribute to a healthy justice system within the Anishinaabe community of Muskrat Dam. He explains that this system “can be characterized as an elaborate four-part system in which all members of the community had both responsibilities and obligations. The system focused on healing and retaining persons in the community. The Chief played a central role in the maintenance of community harmony. Other key players were the spiritual leaders, elders, certain persons who played special roles in the community and others.” In particular he describes how these individuals work together to address harms as they arise in various circumstances through observing early signs of harm and providing teaching and counselling to prevent further harm. In one example of this, Eileen Smith describes how peacekeepers in her community of Sagamok prevented youth from behaving badly at night by conducting patrols throughout the community at this time.