Reaching for Midewiwin
Waubgeshig Rice
Most Sunday mornings, we went to church. We wouldn't get dressed up too fancy. The United Church itself was a pretty humble building.
Waubgeshig Rice
There were cracks in the outside foundation that led up to chipping white paint on its wooden exterior. The outside walls were punctuated by thin, drafty windows obscured by the opaque plastic sheets stapling them shut — meant to keep the cold air out.
Out front, meanwhile, was the steep bell tower that hadn't rung in years. Still, that peak made it the tallest building on the rez. It was a weathered structure, much like the dozen or so people who lined its pews every week.
It wasn't routine for our parents to take my two younger brothers and I there. They just wanted to give us an idea of where we came from.
Visits to 'the Lodge'
We were raised in the depths of the reserve by an Ojibwa father and a white mother. Sometimes that Sunday ritual of self-understanding and spiritual exposure meant going to a place called "the Lodge" almost right after church.
It was another tired building, an old dining hall in another tucked-away corner of the community. Its blistered burnt-orange plywood made it almost like a beacon in the snowy bush.
The Lodge is where the old Ojibwa ways made a comeback of sorts in our community. People were learning again about Midewiwin life: traditional spirituality.
Sometimes there happened to be ceremonies there on a Sunday as well — either a young child getting his or her traditional name, or celebrating someone coming out of a fast.
Midewiwin means Grand Medicine Society, and it's about the harmony of life on Mother Earth, and the respect and love for all of that life.
To live it is to be "Mide." It's also known as being part of "the Lodge" in Ojibwa circles in parts of Central Canada and the U.S.
Initiation ceremonies. Fasts. Sweat lodges. Cleansing smudge ceremonies with sweetgrass and sage, tobacco offerings in prayer and thanks.
The day I became a believer
Those double-barrelled Sundays of devotion gradually relented as we got older. Both of our parents started leaning more towards the Lodge and away from the church.
By the time I was a teenager, we were making road trips to communities in Wisconsin and northern Ontario for seasonal gatherings. Celebrations of spirituality and culture, where people would sing, pray and be initiated into the old ways.
Like any other defiant youth, I was skeptical about what any religion could offer me. Then on the day my father finally officially became Mide himself — high on a cliff overlooking a windy Lake Superior — I became a believer.
The water drums were pounding, people were dancing. The maple saplings that made up the skeleton of the lodge itself shimmered. People started looking up. I tilted my head back. Hundreds of metres up were a dozen or so eagles - the most sacred beings on Earth — circling the sky directly above us. It didn't get any more real than that.
The struggle to be Mide
But to truly be Mide, you have to be devoted. You have to make a year-long series of commitments and sacrifices to be initiated in. Something I've never done, so I can't call myself that.
My priorities shifted after time — I went to school, and eventually got a job. Spending a week away for ceremonies became less of a priority. I didn't even make time for sweat lodges. Just the occasional personal smudge, and maybe a sharing circle here and there.
Today I live in Winnipeg and work in television. I work long hours to daily deadlines, and I'm only allowed so many holidays a year. For me it seems almost impossible to marry my spiritual and professional lives.
I feel like I'm perpetually standing on the outside of the Lodge looking in, almost like trying to peer through those foggy windows of the church all those years ago (which my Ojibwa grandmother eventually became a minister of).
But becoming Midewiwin is something I'll always be reaching for. And hopefully some day I'll find a way. Maybe the eagles will take me there again.
Still, these traditional beliefs and values of love, respect and kindness that were passed on to me are what I will always cherish the most in this life.
Waubgeshig Rice is a reporter for CBC News at Six Manitoba in Winnipeg.
He grew up on Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario on the shores of beautiful Georgian Bay. He has been a freelance writer since age 17, when he began sending monthly reports to a local newspaper about his year-long adventure as an Ojibwa kid on exchange in northern Germany.
Waub is deeply proud of his Anishinaabe background. His interests are aboriginal issues, music and sports.
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