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Excerpt from Manomin: Caring for Ecosystems and Each Other
Grounded in Indigenous methodologies, Manomin examines our interconnectedness with the natural world
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Chapter 8: Treaty and Mushkiki
Debwetaan manoomin, giiwiijiigoowing mushkiki gosha aye. I believe manoomin will help us because it is medicine.
My relationship with manoomin has been an unexpected love affair. It is a relationship that caught me by surprise in terms of its depth and the power it holds for Anishinaabeg to reconcile with themselves, each other, and the land. What initially drew me to manoomin was the old man, my grandfather Willie Yerxa. He can be found every Manoominike Giizis sitting by the fire roasting the grain—a modern-day Rice Chief. Manoomin is many things. For my grandfather, I have come to see that passing on his knowledge of harvesting the grain, along with the philosophies embedded in the process, is his love song to our family. As mass graves and unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the old sites of Indian Residential “Schools” are being revealed to the world, I think about him more than I already was. I reflect on the miraculous nature of my grandfather as a little boy, who attended those nightmare places, growing into the old man he has become. He carries the teachings manoomin provides to us, as Anishinaabeg, so we have opportunities to walk firmer, understanding more of who we are as Anishinaabeg—something that those schools and settler colonialism, in general, seek to destroy within us. In this way, my grandfather is also a lifesaver, even though he never intended to be.
Like many Indigenous families, mine is no different when it comes to colonial impacts playing out through disconnections, be it with ourselves, our families, our communities, or our traditional territories. My relationship with my grandfather was overshadowed for many years by distance birthed out of colonial violence. Over the years, my grandfather and I invested in reconciling our relationship. Manoomin has played and continues to play an important role in strengthening our relationship with one another. My grandfather’s knowledge has significantly shaped my relationship with manoomin, and likewise, manoomin has grown my understanding of the medicine it carries for Anishinaabeg reconciliation, governance, and nationhood. This is why, to me, manoomin sits at the intersection of the “personal is political” and vice versa.
It is the centring of and putting into motion reconciliation, on Anishinaabeg terms, which carry meaningful pathways for our healing and liberation from colonial harms. This is an important distinction to make because reconciliation often gets usurped by Western institutions to absolve settler guilt and shape-shift settler colonialism to appear more innocuous. However, Anishinaabe forms of reconciliation are about coming together with one another, picking up our ways that have always sustained us in our homelands, and being accountable to our places and one another. When we do this, we are accessing intricate systems of knowledge that guided our ancestors. Our systems embodied Anishinaabe governance and nationhood, collectively, and accounted for wellness, personally. These are necessary and powerful acts of turning away from settler-colonial logic.
Through my relationship with my grandfather and manoomin, my understanding of self, Anishinaabe governance, and nationhood continues to evolve. Because it began with something simple, but not necessarily easy, amidst colonial disarray—a granddaughter sitting beside her grandfather at a fire, accompanied by a curiosity and a craving for connection that was reciprocated—I now understand it is Anishinaabe forms of reconciliation, of reconnecting, that matter first and foremost. This is where Anishinaabe governance and nationhood exist and can flourish: within our relationships. This chapter is a story of how Anishinaabe reconciliation was made possible with the help of manoomin.
Centring Anishinaabeg Treaty Making
I have come to understand the relationship between Anishinaabe and manoomin as one of treaty. “Anishinaabeg’s treaty with manoomin is one of our most significant and oldest treaties. We revisit and renew our treaty with manoomin every harvesting season.” By centring Indigenous perspectives of treaty, drawing on Anishinaabemowin to further understand an Anishinaabe perspective, deepening my own relationship with manoomin, and hearing stories of my grandpa’s early memories of manoomin harvesting, my conceptualization of Anishinaabeg’s relationship with manoomin has evolved to one of treaty.
Treaty making for Anishinaabeg is a practice of diplomacy that predates the creation of the Canadian state. Our ancestors engaged in treaty making with other Indigenous Nations and other beings long before engaging in treaty negotiations with European settlers. Stark reaffirms that “treaty making was a long-standing tradition” among the Anishinaabeg who have always been about maintaining peace through “healthy collective relationships.” Therefore, Anishinaabeg have always “had their own [treaty making] processes for making and maintaining peaceful diplomatic relationships.” These relationships were sanctioned in front of Gitchi Manidoo because the Anishinaabeg understood that the treaty making process was “also sacred [and to be] made in the presence of the spiritual world and solemnized in ceremony.”
Simpson summarizes the Anishinaabeg concept Bimaadiziwin (the Good Life) as the foundation for Anishinaabeg living a life of balance and peace: “This was the foundation of a set of ethics, values, and practices known as Bimaadiziwin. . . . [It] is a way of ensuring human beings live in balance with the natural world, their family, their clan, and their nation and it is carried out through the Seven Grandfather teachings, embedded in the social and political structures of the [Anishinaabeg].” Bimaadiziwin is the goal of treaty making.
Anishinaabeg treaty making extended to other life forms. Our stories provide us with insight which can continue to guide our people in maintaining peaceful coexistence with all life forms. For example, Stark shares an Anishinaabeg story about the woman who married a beaver and highlights how the story represents the forging of a new relationship. Because significant Anishinaabeg treaty making principles such as mutual respect, responsibility, and renewal are present in the negotiation of the new relationship, between Anishinaabeg and the beaver, it is one of treaty. The “beaver offer themselves up to the [Anishinaabeg] as food, and in exchange the [Anishinaabeg] agree to return the bones of the beaver and make offerings so that the cycle can continue.”
Anishinaabemowin also reveals how our ceremonial ways were not separate from politics. For Anishinaabeg, it was an important part of how we prepared and engaged in political matters. It is through ceremony that our ancestors ensured our philosophies were brought forward in the political realm, in the practice of spirituality.
Zagaswe means to offer a smoke, especially in a pipe ceremony, or to invite to council. Zaagaswe’idiwag means they are “offering smoke to each other.” It means they have a council meeting. It means they have a ceremony. The root word, zagaswe, tells how making our offering and to smoke together was part of the process when Anishinaabeg had “a meeting or when we had to meet about an important decision coming up.”
When Anishinaabeg smoke, we call upon our ancestors to help us carry things out in a good way. Ceremony has always been an integral part of political practices and treaty making for the Anishinaabeg. At the negotiations of Treaty #3, Treaty Commissioner Morris noted the drums, singing, and how he was offered the pipe of peace by the Anishinaabeg.9 My grandfather also recalls ceremonies when he was out in the manoomin fields to harvest with his parents and other elders. “All these things that they were doing out there, before they did anything, was through a ceremony. They had a drum. They sang. Somebody always would say a prayer.” These are the practices we maintain to this day when engaging with manoomin.
Treaty Between Anishinaabeg and Manoomin
In Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o discusses the importance of language. Language is a carrier of culture which holds “the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history” as well as “the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world.” Anishinaabemowin reveals the sacredness of manoomin for the Anishinaabeg. Manito Gitigaan is an ancient term, older than the term manoomin, which means the “Great Spirit’s Garden,” and manoomin, when translated into English, means Spirit Food.
In our sacred stories, Anishinaabeg are responsible for caring for Manito Gitigaan and in return, manoomin will care for us. Manoomin gifts us life by providing nourishment for our bodies and helps Anishinaabeg to understand our place in relation to the world. Manoomin, an other-thanhuman person, is deserving of respect and care and has always been an important part of our society: “It is through the exchange of gifts that one maintains its membership in Ojibway society. Are not these other-thanhuman persons with whom they exchange gifts members of that society and entitled to the same respect and help accorded to any other member of the community? There is, we suggest, a moral obligation to protect the habitat of the moose, the beaver, the muskrat, and the lynx; the habitat of the geese, ducks, grouse, and hare, not just because of the Band’s wish to continue hunting and trapping, but because these other-than-human persons are also members of Ojibway society.” Our stories reaffirm the sacredness of manoomin to our Nation, governance, and existence as people. We are told manoomin was gifted to Anishinaabeg by Gitchi Manidoo. My great-grandfather, the late Bert Yerxa, acknowledged that manoomin was “the spiritual foundation of [Anishinaabeg] people and government.”
In our treaty with manoomin, we are to care for and respect manoomin, which will ensure it grows in abundance. In return, manoomin will care for the Anishinaabeg and be a plentiful source of nourishment for our bodies. Throughout many hard winters, manoomin has sustained our people, making sure we did not starve. When I speak with my grandfather, he reminds me of the spiritual responsibilities we carry: “It’s a spiritual food. It was given to us from the Creator. We have to take care of it. Watch over it. You have to keep manoomin in good water and in good soil. You have to keep it healthy. It is alive. That’s your responsibility because if you don’t, it won’t look after you.” Our treaty with manoomin is based on respect, care, reciprocity, and interdependence.
When we situate the relationship within an Anishinaabeg treaty framework, there is a re-emergence of Anishinaabe philosophy that recognizes the interconnectedness between our spiritual and political practices. From an Anishinaabe perspective, treaty is a living relationship, as is my relationship with my grandpa, as is my relationship with manoomin. So, if you do not take care of it, how good is that relationship going to be? This is what our teachings tell us.
Nindinawemaa. I Am Related.
Yes, Anishinaabeg’s relationship to manoomin is one of treaty. Like I said earlier, it is many things. I have also come to understand my relationship with manoomin as a birthright I inherited being Anishinaabe, a birthright meaning that manoomin is a relation of mine—a relative. My grandfather reminds me every year during harvesting season, that when we are with manoomin, it is “not work”: “We have to take care of it. Watch over it. To me, it isn’t work. It isn’t a job. If I thought about it as work, I probably wouldn’t do it or enjoy it. I just love doing it. I love doing it.” It took me years to understand what the old man was communicating to me. It finally occurred to me that waking up and realizing that manoomin is our relative, someone we care for and cares for us, is the only way harvesting manoomin is not conceptualized as work. When we know manoomin as our relative, part of our kinship relations, we can see our caring as our responsibility that is linked to our own wellness. This is similar to how mothers care for their children or how any of us care for those we love. Our care ensures a collective well-being. Reciprocity. When those we care for are well, we are well.
I also have agency, as does manoomin, which brings about the normal ebb and flow of relations. Despite what the practice of agency may look like in our relationship, at any given time, what remains consistent is this—the teachings manoomin carries is medicine that can help me navigate life at any given time, and this was determined a long time ago. The migration story of the Anishinaabe and our language, Anishinaabemowin, let me know how deep, far back, and significant this relationship is and how it was brought into existence for me, hundreds of years before my human birth.
In the Seven Fires Prophecy of the Anishinaabeg, the story of the great migration of our Nation, from east to west, is told. Our ancestors were told by the prophets, who came to visit, that they were to keep travelling west until they came to the place where the food grows on the water. Manoomin is “the sacred gift of their chosen ground.” It is estimated that the migration of the Anishinaabe took five hundred years to complete, spanning generations and vast distances. The beginning of the migration story and the instructions that were provided to my ancestors let me know that my relationship with manoomin was a long time in the making. Before my existence, this relationship was already thought about for me, and my ancestors helped bring it forward. My grandfather, playing a vital role, reminds me of these careful thoughts and purposeful, loving acts, that we must continue:
JY: Our migration story talks about manoomin. It got me thinking about how we, too, are part of that story—the migration story.
WY: Yes, because it goes way back. Way back. See, somebody was thinking about you a long time ago and here, we are, thinking of someone again. [Manoomin] will keep going forward. It won’t die. It’s a big picture.
Excerpted from pages 137–144 “Treaty and Mushkiki,” by Jana-Rae Yerxa and Pikanagegaabo William Yerxa in Manomin: Caring for Ecosystems and Each Other, 2024, published by University of Manitoba Press. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
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