Manoominike-giizis (Ricing Moon), August 2, 2021
Just a thought. I'm not sure, since I do not think Gichi-manidoo – or "Creator" like everybody seems to call it nowadays – is a he or a she; I see it more like a genderless source of life, or a measureless entity that enspirits all living things in the cosmos. If this is true, would it be able to have thoughts then, like you and I? And if that where the case, could it be that when it was born its first thoughts were anangoog and aadawaa'amoog ogimaag, the stars and the planets? And his first "intelligent" thoughts, the anangoog madogaanan, or star formations?
Those lumps of gas out there we call stars, were they the origin of life as we know it? Are we made of stardust like a growing group of Western scientists seem to believe, and do our clans come from the star world as our own scientists/stargazers have taught us for uncountable generations?
Most of the elements of our bodies were formed in stars over the course of billions of years and multiple star lifetimes, this much seems a proven fact. This anang nibwaakaawin, this star knowledge, can teach us so many valuable things, not only about our bodies and our clans and about animal behavior and about bigwaji-bimaadiziwinan, the natural cycles on the earth, but also about our minds, our thoughts, our behavior as anishinaabeg, human beings.
If the first thoughts of Gichi-manidoo were indeed stars, and our bodies originate from the stars, made up of stardust even, it seems to me that it is about time that we humans learn to align our own thoughts, and with it our mental condition and social behavior, with those of Gichi-mandoo itself.
All we have to do is learn to read its thoughts.
After all, it has been a while since we were lowered onto this earth, but what have we learned since then?
Haw sa. Maybe it is time we, as a human society, start using our minds.
Illustration at the top of the page: Discovering Wisdom, acrylic on canvas by Bebaminojmat (Leland Bell).