Spirit of the north leech lake
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I could see the canoe moving through the wild rice with the poler standing in front of the canoe. A cluster of bright stars perfectly outlined the canoe and the young men. Suddenly, the image of those young men and their canoe jumped out at me in the stars. The next evening, with this dream fresh in my mind, I went out to gaze up into the night sky looking for Jiibekana. These cosmological terms in the Anishinaabe language begin to describe an afterlife according to the Anishinaabe worldview. Jiibayag Niimi'idiwag, "The Spirits Are Dancing," are what the Anishinaabe people call the Northern Lights, and they are believed to be the reflections of campfires in the Spirit World where our ancestors reside. In the Anishinaabe language, Jiibekana is the celestial passage to the Spirit World and it extends the length of the night sky. That following winter, I dreamt of those young men who perished in the waters of Leech Lake, and in that dream, the two young men and their canoe were lifted into the night sky toward the Jiibekana, the Pathway of Souls, also known as the Milky Way. The next day, I ventured to the Town of Cass Lake to visit with this elder and long-time friend about that year's wild rice harvest, and it was during that visit that he told me the fateful story. For me, it was a surreal experience to be out on the water alone that evening listening to those traditional songs.
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#SPIRIT OF THE NORTH LEECH LAKE FULL#
Coincidentally, the Sugar Point Traditional powwow was in full swing and many people were attending that day. While I was collecting data, I could faintly hear drumming and singing echoing across the immense lake. By using a hand-held GPS unit and a kayak, I paddled out onto the lake and gathered point data on the rice beds just off Sugar Point. That autumn, I was conducting a scientific study on wild rice beds in the northern half of Leech Lake. At that particular location, the westerly winds and waves on Leech Lake can be fierce. The waters just off Sugar Point, where the incident happened, are deep and dark. This elder told me about an actual incident where two young Ojibwe men capsized while hauling a canoe full of wild rice over open water to the boat landing. This dream came to me after a conversation I had with a highly respected Ojibwe elder from the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota who has harvested rice all of his life. In 2010, a story came to me in my dreams about two young Ojibwe men who died while harvesting our sacred wild rice.