Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (Religion in America) 1st Edition

I suppose the appropriation of Christian hymnody by the 19th century Minnesota Ojibweg is not a subject of vital interest to a broad sweep of American consciousness, but the sensitivity and delicate perception with which Michael McNally has opened the subject should not pass without notice. It is no less than fascinating to watch his unwinding the knot of early American religious music as it was absorbed by the Anishinaabe and reinterpreted in such a way that it became a stalwart (albeit quiet) support of the original Ojibwe culture itself. The subject fascinates and the quality of writing engages the reader. A fine piece.

This is a great reference book. It's easy to read and provides historical pictures.

Discussing American nationalism (or the maintenance of counter-nationalisms) from the perspective of various Amerindian nations is especially problematic, for these nations and populations remain under colonial geographical and cultural occupation to this day in a sense that is not true for other populations in the United States. In Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion, Michael McNally works to uncover the politics of ritual power and performance with regard to the practice of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) hymn singing. For the Ojibwe, the very real development in harmonic and narrative structure of Christian hymn-singing, nonetheless camouflaged the incommensurability and resilience of Ojibwe language to subjugation from colonial missionary concepts and relations to sacrality. Thus, as McNally demonstrates, a close analysis of Ojibwe hymnody as developed before the 1870's reveals a strong continuity with this-worldly concerns of Ojibwe religion and living life in proper relation to the web of nature through an economy of power (manidoo), rather than an emphasis on Christian transcendence as exemplified by the original English words. Moreover, the Ojibwe Christians, the Anami'aajig, among whom this tradition is strong, see their religious commitment in terms of the practice or ritual prayer, and acting as ones-who-pray, rather than in terms of believing a set of theological suppositions. These ritual prayers turns out to be very different than the hymns intended to be passed along by Christian missionaries.McNally accomplishes this project by setting up the history of Ojibwe/Missionary encounter alongside the original missionary hymns side by side with the Ojibwe versions, and then English retranslations of the Ojibwe. The retranslations show that Ojibwe (Chippewa) language is itself quite resistant to co-optation by Christian missionaries. While the same words often show through the translations--the words themselves, like "world," "heaven," and "sin" just do not mean the same thing. What this implies is that two cultures can sing the exact same words in a hymn, but yet be singing totally different songs. For example, "sin" (baataziwin) and "grace"(zhawenjiigewin) don't have the character of human helplessness and outside holy intervention in Ojibwe. The terms used imply a simple temporary upset of the integrated relationships of Nature (Bimaadiziwin) the actions undertaken in pity to repair these relationships. Throughout the songs transcendence largely becomes immanence, although the language is as faithful as possible. And the form of performance changed too--as the Ojibwe hymnody largely became associated with moments of grieving and potential loss of persons to the community, and the Ojibwe continued to largely reject or become indifferent to other forms of Christian religious instruction, even as they began to identify themselves as Christians.This is especially important as two sets of communities took shape in Ojibwe culture over time, one community less assimilated and less economically developed (in an `Anglo' sense) and one more assimilated and more economically integrated into the dominant narrative of `mainstream' American life. The culture of the former became folklorized, preserved as historical artifact yet emasculated from the power to address its more assimilated audience. Yet the practice of hymn prayer itself indigenizes Christianity to Anami'aawin, and its continued practice functions to re-member and maintain a "geography of home," a "singing sodality," or a continued nation identity of Ojibwe in the midst of all-too common violent death/loss of community members, not to mention other ongoing issues related to being occupied and colonized. This habitus of hymnody, this "embodied history" then is the practice of `accommodating' hope, the practice of `resistant' community-indeed the practice of cultural nationalism, in the face of many forces of dis-memberment, through the ongoing American nationalist colonization.But we cannot stop there, for while we could argue that the preoccupation of white American-ness since the early days of its inception was the place of "Indianness," within a cultural politics of core and periphery, this would misplace the agency examined in McNally's work, which is that of the Ojibwe. In the face of being marginalized (to put it mildly) hymn singing functions to rekindle the identity of the Ojibwe, drawing the departed away from physical death (a limnal periphery to the world in terms of Ojibwe cosmology) into an ongoing core of Ojibwe religious personhood. This is simultaneously replicated in the larger pattern of re-membering the Ojibwe core away from "forgetting," [a cultural death], and contesting "American"ness, which is, for the Ojibwe, perhaps the ultimate peripheralization.I do want to point out that this project resists the term "religion" in many ways, which is vitally important to undestand. McNally's own conception of Ojibwe hymnody frames it as lifeway "practice," and the process of creating this sound object is for him always already bound in the historical process of Ojibwe language. In Ojibwe religiosity, as with many Amerindians, the emphasis is on personhood, power, and place all negotiated within the field of language, which reflects the underlying assumptions of the lifeway.Moreover, for the Ojibwe the hardships of contemporary life become a form of `penitential supplication' in their lifeway/religion. Deliberately produced Ojibwe hymn sound objects then occur in the context of the promotion and re-membering Bimaadiziwin ("Nature," understood both as it is and as it should be) in the face of physical challenges like the death of persons, and cultural "forgetting," which is itself a kind of death. Therefore this music exists neither purely as entertainment culture, as in modern capitalist societies, nor as a worship of transcendence, as in most forms of Christianity. Yet it undergoes historical shifts like aspects of any other "culture in motion." Whereas once Ojibwe music was primarily concerned with thaumaturgical power, the "new Ojibwe" music was transformed by its encounters with missionary, as well as other ongoing pressures related to continuing occupation, into a negotiated process/product of colonization. Specifically McNally terms Ojibwe hymn music a "rekindling" of and within the habitus of Ojibwe Bimaadiziwin- a praxis of hope and "re-membering" of the community in the face of dismemberment pressures.