Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River - (New Visions in Native American and Indigenous Studies) by Jennifer S H Brown (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River Jennifer S. H. Brown presents the dozens of stories and memories that A. Irving Hallowell recorded from Adam (Samuel) Bigmouth, son of Ochiipwamoshiish (Northern Barred Owl), at Little Grand Rapids in the summers of 1938 and 1940. The stories range widely across the lives of four generations of Anishinaabeg along the Berens River in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.

In an open and wide-ranging conversation, Hallowell discovered that Bigmouth was a vivid storyteller as he talked about the eight decades of his own life and the lives of his father, various relatives, and other persons of the past. Bigmouth related stories about his youth, his intermittent work for the Hudson's Bay Company, the traditional curing of patients, ancestral memories, encounters with sorcerers, and contests with cannibalistic windigos. The stories also tell of vision-fasting experiences, often fraught gender relations, and hunting and love magic--all in a region not frequented by Indian agents and little visited by missionaries and schoolteachers.

With an introduction and rich annotations by Brown, a renowned authority on the Upper Berens Anishinaabeg and Hallowell's ethnography, Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River is an outstanding primary source for both First Nations history and the oral literature of Canada's Ojibwe peoples.

Review Quotes

"Any effort to make archival sources more accessible to the general public should be applauded, and Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River, edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown, is no exception. This text offers readers an opportunity to hear Adam Bigmouth's voice, opinions, and stories, which otherwise may have been lost to time, forgotten in a collection of old notes. It will be of use to scholars in a variety of fields, and it is an important inclusion in academic libraries."--Wendy Makoons Geniusz, Canadian Journal of Native Studies

"The book's focus and strength is its very detailed contextualization and annotation of Bigmouth's tales. . . . It will be of considerable interest and value to specialists in Rupert's Land ethnography and ethnohistory. It will also be of interest to scholars in history of American anthropology."--Alice Beck Kehoe, author of North America Before the European Invasions, Second Edition-- (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"These stories are not merely interwoven with life situations; they are an integral part of life. This book is an immense contribution to its field. It brings to life the people, practices, and stories that were real and alive one hundred years ago. The stories themselves give extraordinary insights into the daily personal lives of the Berens River Ojibwe."--Theresa M. Schenck, professor emerita of American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and editor of The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849
-- (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Jennifer S. H. Brown is professor emerita of history at the University of Winnipeg and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Among her many publications she is the coeditor of A. Irving Hallowell's Contributions to Ojibwe Studies: Essays, 1934-1972 (Nebraska, 2010), Memories, Myths, and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader, and other books.