Quotes About Ojibwe

As brutal and bitter as the winters are in the northern reaches of the Ojibwe homelands, there is a kind of peace that falls over the land in February and March. Or if not a peace exactly, a kind of watchful waiting: April and May will erupt with their usual vernal violence soon enough.

In English there was a word for every object. In Ojibwe there was a word for every action. English had more shades of personal emotion, but Ojibwe had more shades of family relationships.

As with most other reservations, the government policy of attempting to excite pride in private ownership by doling parcels of land to individual Ojibwe flopped miserably and provided a feast of acquisition for hopeful farmers and surrounding entrepreneurs.

When I moved to Minnesota, I found there was a thriving and determined movement, a grassroots movement, to revitalize the Ojibwe language. And I've never come to be a competent speaker. I have to say that right now. But even learning the amount of Ojibwe that one can at my age is a life-altering experience.

Smallpox raced along the network through the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, ricocheting among the Mandan, Hidatsa, Ojibwe, Crow, Blackfoot, and Shoshone, a helter-skelter progress in which the virus leapfrogged from central Mexico to the shore of Hudson Bay in less than two years.

Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well-worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed.

Readers anticipate that a significant element of every story will be additional exposure to the ways of the Ojibwe. The truth is that I enjoy this aspect of the work. Although I have no Indian blood running through my veins, in college I prepared to be a cultural anthropologist, so exploring other cultures is exciting to me.