Canoes still popular (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Canoes still popular

By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
Thursday, May 4, 2006 10:59 AM EDT
http://www.nilesstar.com/articles/2006/05/04/news/ndnews2.txt

DOWAGIAC - A “renaissance” in building birch bark canoes shows no sign
of abating well into its second decade, a Pokagon Band member said
Wednesday night at The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College.

In fact, said John Low of Niles, “More and more people are engaging in a
revival of traditional building. Individuals and small groups of
Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa Indians have initiated such projects.

To Low, who traveled to Guam last summer to meet with master builders, a
canoe is not only the “product of indigenous engineering genius,” but
also a symbol, “a rich metaphor for carrying Great Lakes indigenous
peoples into their futures on our terms.”

An effort to collect and preserve the culture of indigenous peoples
occurred “presumably because we were going to disappear,” Low said.
“The delicious irony is that we did not disappear - nor did our
traditions, although sometimes they were preserved in part by
ethnologists. Indian peoples are cautiously appreciative of the
attention paid to them and their cultures and indebted for what
documentation and preservation were done by non-Natives. We recognize
this. Had this not been done, much might have been lost during the last
500 years.

“The canoe-building renaissance in the Great Lakes reclaims canoes as a
part of Native heritage and inheritance,” he said. “It places the
Indian centrally inside the canoe - both literally and symbolically.

The 10-county Pokagon Band based in Dowagiac is part of the revival.

The tribe applied for and was awarded a Michigan Native American
Foundation mini-grant in 2003 to reach Native youth and to engage them
in the process of gathering materials to construct a traditional
16-foot canoe.

The project to complete two canoes is still under way. A language
component will further help elders pass on their knowledge to younger
generations.

An instructional video will document the construction process and
associated Potawatomi vocabulary.

Building a birch bark canoe becomes “an effort to mark, re-establish and
re-assert the uniqueness of a community's history and practices and the
importance of that legacy to its future,” Low said.

In the Three Fires Confederacy, the Potawatomi are the “Keepers of the
Fire.” They refer to themselves as Anishnaabe, which roughly translated
means “the original people” or “the true humans.”

“They may have had the canoe since the beginning of time,” Low said.
“Oral histories of our communities include references to a great flood”
which creatures survived by clinging to a log or canoe.

“Our migration west 500 years ago may have been based upon the search
for food - wild rice that grows on water. Canoes were always important
to us,” he said. “Birch bark canoes transport people and ideas. It's an
important symbol of Great Lakes Indian identity. They have never ceased
being built.”

Non-Natives have also been “enamored” with canoes, Low said, from early
eras of fur trade and exploration to romance, art, poetry and commerce.

Low read Longfellow's “Song of Hiawatha” from 1855 as an “appropriate
example of this embrace of canoes by non-Natives.”

He showed examples of products canoes pushed, including locally, Round
Oak stoves and Heddon's fishing lures, plus potables, candy, medicine,
canned goods, fresh fruit, vegetables and even toothpicks on his “list
of misappropriations” and a tacky toy canoe of the type sold in
souvenir stands.

“Canoes have become both Native icon and symbol of conquest by
non-Native appropriation,” he said. “Native religion and ceremonies
were often driven underground until the last decades of plurality. Our
role in the narrative of America has too long been as a foil to the
dominant non-Native. We're either colonized, devoid of our own culture,
or as primitive peoples frozen in cultures on the margins of American
history. As pressures to assimilate into the mainstream continue,
Indians, including the Pokagon Potawatomi, are finding new ways and
symbols for our reimagined indigenous identity.”

Low's last installment in the museum's spring lecture series provided a
prelude to an exhibit on Potawatomi Indians and the Dowagiac-based
Pokagon Band running June 21 through December. July's brown bag lunch
series may also focus on Native Americans, Director Steve Arseneau
said.

Low said he grew up on the St. Joseph River. He is a Turtle Clan member.
His last talk was at an American Indian museum in Evanston, Ill.

“I took this idea of lifelong learning to the extreme because I'm back
in school,” he said. His first academic tour concluded with a law
degree and practicing law. His second bachelor of arts degree was in
American Indian studies from the University of Minnesota.

“Then I got a scholarship to the University of Chicago,” Low said, “and
I got a master's degree in social sciences, which is all about why
people do the things they do. That has fascinated me since. I've
carried that forward and it was the impetus of this project I've been
working on for the last year or so - trying to think about why people
in the Great Lakes,” including his tribe, “re-engage with the building
of birch bark canoes. I may not have the answers, I may be completely
off, but I toss off some ideas” as part of his Ph.D. program at the
University of Michigan.

Low introduced the topic by showing an excerpt from the 1994 WNIT
program, “Keepers of the Fire,” featuring the late Mark Alexis and Mike
Daugherty talking about canoe building. The clip also mentioned Dan Rapp
and Greg Ballew. Ballew and Mike's son, Kevin Daugherty, were in the
audience.