The sound of the water drum will be heard again

This is the conclusion of a SooToday.com article about Grand Chief Eddie Benton-Banai and the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge. Click here to return to the beginning of this article.

************************* "Brainwashing and racism are intertwined, born through all the 'civilized' institutions and bring us to today," he said. "It is the reason why we [Anishinabe] have the highest dropout rates of students in public education, the highest alcohol death rate of any ethnic group in the world, a suicide rate five times that of the national average and it is at the heart of why prisons are populated with [proportionately much more of us]. We represent roughly 35 percent of the prison population and the women's population is much more than that. It's upwards of 60 percent."

"You asked what is it [Midewiwin] and I tell you these things in order for you to understand where we are today by understanding the forces that tried to kill it," he said. "These forces are still at work, despite all of the apologies and reconciliation, Steven Harper's apology for residential school survivors, nevertheless, it's still at work."

Benton-Banai said that hard-won battles by himself and others for curriculum changes and culture-based education have brought him to where he is today as Shingwauk University's academic and spiritual advisor.

He says it's also a battle for spirituality and the sound of the Creator's heart.

"The conspiracy between Church and state is horrendous," he said. "The people never think of it. They think that's Jesus' work but it isn't. It's the Church's work. Jesus did not say: 'Go ye out in the world and destroy them.' He lived very much differently."

As a humble man who preached a gospel of love, Jesus would be horrified at the things that have been done to the Anishinabe in his name, said Benton-Banai.

Long before the visitors arrived from Europe, the gift of Midewiwin was fashioned in the spirit world and lowered to human beings so they could have spiritual guidance and order out of chaos, he said.

The Anishinabe had a written language of their own, one that he provides examples of in his book, The Mishomis Book.

They had a fully developed social structure based on the clan system, gender equality and complex traditions of sharing wealth.

It was into this context that the missionaries came.

"But even so, Midewiwin is not the resistance," he said. “It is the way which we will survive.”

And that gives Benton-Banai hope that the sound of the water drum will be heard again.

"Another part of the prophesy says that the children will become curious, that they will want to know who they are and where they came from," he said. "This is happening now, here in this place."

Shingwauk University is a culture-based learning institution created by the Anishinabe in the spirit of Chief Shingwauk's vision.

It's in the context of this culture-based alternative education facility that students are discovering and taking pride in who they are and where they came from.

"Midewiwin is literally known as the heart way," he said. "It was given to us here upon the earth from the heart of the Spirit. Most generally we refer to the Spirit as the Creator."

The word Midewiwin, translated from the oldest forms of Ojibwemowin, means the sound of heart of another, that other being the Spirit or the Creator, he said.

Presiding over Midewiwin is the water drum, the drum of drums, which is the rhythm and the sound of the heart.

In practice, Midewiwin is a way of living that is led by the heartbeat of the Spirit.

It is not a religion and doesn't have redemption or salvation as a core belief.

"In the Midewiwin theology, we know that there is but one Creator," said Benton-Banai. "We know that the earth is the mother of all living things and that our physical body comes from our mother the earth."

In death, our body returns to the earth to pay back what we have taken over the years, he said.

"It's very personal, but it's very much a worldview of we the pagans and I, being who I am, am a simple pagan," says Benton-Banai, who proudly wears a button saying Born Again Pagan at times. "It's very much a statement for my own people and the public to see."

For a simple pagan like Benton-Banai, the heart speaks with the voice of the Spirit and the mind is a gift that connects him to the Spirit.

He says it's a basic underlying philosophy of Midewiwin to encourage people to use the gift of the brain and the intellect to figure things out for themselves and to discern the true voice of the Spirit from the lies found in civilization.

Through this philosophy, people reclaim their creation story.

They realize they do have a past then the thinking changes and you find young people who know what the teachings mean.

“The knowledge and the pride makes academia come up,” he said. “If you give people back their identity and their self-esteem, you give them something to be proud of and then you’ll see the academics rise and their ability and their striving and their drive. That’s what culture-based education is. It ain’t about beadwork and making moccasins. It’s more than that.”