“The Anishinaabe way of life, bimaadiziwin, is beautiful, purposeful, and relevant. Teachings are everywhere. They can be found in a walk, looking at a child, speaking to a friend or in any moment — awake or resting. The ability to be aware is the work and the gift.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. © Christina.
Details
Storyteller: Christina
Tribe: Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe
Created: 2018
Location: Duluth, MN
Transcript: The Anishinaabe way of life, bimaadiziwin, is beautiful, purposeful, and relevant. Teachings are everywhere. They can be found in a walk, looking at a child, speaking to a friend or in any moment — awake or resting. The ability to be aware is the work and the gift.
Specific moments are cornerstone stories in my life: Mother's wisdom, stories from ancestors, sibling hurt, and children’s philosophy. The most significant lessons were those that were the hardest and most clearly included the help of others. Participating in ceremonies, learning the language, and teaching my children have given me the opportunity to apply many teachings to my life and understand the traditional teachings in the context of contemporary life. The following are the sources of stories and teachings in my life.
This is my mom. She taught me the lessons about the heart way. Our time together as mother and daughter were rooted in poverty and deep love. Later our time together would be rooted in caring for children together. I watched her love all her children with a mother’s wisdom about the importance of connection to each other. Her love lifted barriers made by microaggressions, bias, and fear.
These are my siblings. I want to say, like many families I know, there is great hurt among us. This has been the hardest teaching, because I know the impact lasts for generations. Today the work is in ensuring my children and the children of my nieces and nephews know the beauty of family. The work is also in the understanding of trauma and the forms it takes. Like, shapeshifting, trauma shifts the shape of our thinking, our connections, and shifts our understanding of people who are living in trauma. Our ancestors paved the way for our human experience. The teachings lead us to bimaadiziwin even through trauma.
These are my children. They chose me. In their negotiation with the creator, they saw the lessons they would get from me and the lessons they would give to me. They chose me. Each day we learn about our strengths and weaknesses. Each day we give each other the backdrop of the ancestor's stories, family sacrifice and a mother’s wisdom. It's the children's philosophy that completes this circle. All teachings, all the time.
It is the beauty of all our experiences that make us truly spiritual. The lessons we receive are the spiritual practice. We only need to know this to have a place in our contemporary society as Anishinaabe. Our life is beautiful, purposeful, and relevant. We are all chosen. Mino-bimaadiziwin.