Description
The Island of the Anishnaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in the Traditional Ojibwe Life-World is the 2012 reprint of Theresa Smith's 1995 thesis publication. Theresa S. Smith is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She explores the lived experience of the contemporary Anishnaabeg (Ojibwe) amid the remarkable revival of both belief in and practice of the Ojibwe spirituality. Scholars have contended that traditional Ojibwe beliefs were gradually lost during the three centuries following Euro-American contact. And yet even though traditional spirituality no longer exists as a plausibility structure for a hunting-gathering culture, historic and contemporary accounts and a revival in the arts attest to the changing and vital nature of Ojibwe spiritual traditions. This book is the first thorough and systematic interpretive treatment of the relationship between Thunderers and Underwater manitouk. Smith's work reveals the Thunderers and Water monsters as determinative beings and symbols in the Ojibwe world and explores how their relationship inscribes a dialectic that both reflects the lived reality of that world and helps to determine the position and existence of the human subject in it. Her original study took her to Elders and artists living on Manitoulin Island. Their resurgence of artistic endeavours served to highlight the expression of traditional spiritual beliefs and values. The book contains black and white illustrations, an index, Ojibwe glossary, and bibliography.