Thursday December 10th, 2020 by WannaskaWriter Steven Reynolds

 I was sitting in my chair reading a Kent Nerburn book titled,”the Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elders Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows,” when my wife, sitting at a table behind me opened a family site on Facebook, and unexpectedly began listening to Anishinaabe Ojibwe drumming and singing; by four boys about eleven years of age, one our grandson Ozaawaa, and two men, one our son John. They were sitting in John’s living room, on a northern Wisconsin Ojibwe reservation, practicing drumming and singing with the boys; the large diameter elk-hide drum, “Blackwater,” sitting on a wood base parallel to the floor.
This never ceases to interest me that these things happen in our space and time as I become increasingly familiar with the culture. It sometimes spontaneously erupts in some form as it did, loudly this time, from Jackie’s computer speakers.
I’m not implying there are spirits at work here, although I’ve learned there are realms of life of which I am vastly ignorant; I neither deny their existence nor totally accept them. Perhaps my skepticism stems from my own cultural beliefs, however ill-defined they are, so it is, in one respect, why I’m working to broaden my understanding of a culture other than my own.
Kent Nerburn’s character, “Dan,” a Lakota elder originating in his book, a biography titled “Neither Wolf Nor Dog,” talks frequently (and fiercely) of this difference between white people and Indians. Nerburn, who lived in Bemidji for over twenty-five years, worked on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation helping create and publish two books of the memories of Red Lake elders, one of which was “To Walk the Red Road: Memories of the Red Lake Ojibwe.” He is credited by several Indigenous authors and educators, as being one of very few non-Indian authors who has effectively bridged the gap between the two cultures.
I began reading Nerburn’s books about four years ago, and after my third read-through of three of them, that I completed this week, I’m mailing them to John and his family for their home library given this opportunity to read more during these covid-times when so many are confined to close spaces. Reservations across the country are closed down; schools are virtual; movement between families limited. Social gatherings like pow wows have been cancelled, so opportunities to get together at all impact the people. What John and Ozaawaa hosted in their home that evening, enlarges the cultural aspect of their lives; the boys are learning to drum correctly, and learning words to different Ojibwe songs, although I swear I heard them singing, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” at some point.
I don’t know or recognize many Ojibwe words yet; the wife is better at it. And, I admit, to my old white ears, many of the pow wow songs sound the same, but to my credit, when the gang greatly increased their tempo on the drum during one song, I correctly guessed it was a “Sneak Up.” Can’t fool me . . .
Of course, I’ve been attentive to the variances and styles of drumming and singing for the past ten years; I think I counted eighteen pow wows Jackie and I have attended in that time; some all day events. Ten year old Ozaawaa, and his mother Gretchen, a shawl and jingle dress dancer, as well as master sewer and beader, dance; John primarily drums and sings, so we like to support them and their community.

Jackie’s ancestry is German on her mother’s side; French, and Mi’kmaq on her father’s side. The Mi’kmaq are a First Nations people of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. Her paternal grandfather’s name, was changed from French to English: Leblanc to White, upon entry into the United States. Her French and Mi’kmaq ancestry provides a link to an indigenous past, however tenuous it remains at this point.  
My ancestry on my father’s side has been documented for four generations and quite possibly more by unknown others in the family. Known as Scots-Irish, they came to the United States from northern Ireland as Ulster Scots, and beyond that, the Scottish lowlands. In one book I read, the Scots-Irish were brought here to fight Indians, not a heritage particularly conducive to my 21st century endeavours, except that the new immigrants often identified with the Indians as a fierce independent culture, and through the effort of trade negotiation sometimes even intermarried with them. The Reynolds originated here in the United States in the mountains of Maryland and Pennsylvania and date from the 1700s.
My mother’s ancestors are the easily traceable Swede and Norwegians. So documented is their immigration, if we earnestly search a little while, I’m sure I can arrive at an address in one or both of those countries for some long lost or found relative. Why I’m not as interested in my own ancestry as I am the Ojibwe/Lakota cultures, is that so little has been known of any great accuracy about the people who were here on the land before us.
So, we’re much more likely to listen to Anishinaabe Ojibwe songs and drums than Hardanger fiddle tunes: or the rousing Swedish Nyckelharpa I know my mother would’ve enjoyed listening to especially the fiddle music and would’ve had many stories about the country dances she and her family attended when she was growing up here in Roseau County in the 1920s.
Despite the liveliness of the Swedish traditional folk dance Väva Vadmal ‘An imitation of the weaving of cloth.’ (Uffda, quite the toe tapper, that one) and the Norwegian Folk Dance: I still prefer listening to and watching an Ojibwe Men’s Traditional Sneak Up dance at a pow wow. I think we have a pow wow CD here someplace. Here it is, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star . . .”