An Ojibwe Perspective on the Night Sky

and some of the partners that are here this week these programs are also supported by the environmental and natural resources trust fund as well as the national park Foundation before we begin I wanted to give our listeners a sense of some of the areas we'll be addressing today and talking about the Boundary Waters are in the traditional homelands of the anishinaabe people and are near Grand Portage and boys Fort bands of Ojibwe and all of this area is all within the 1854 treaty area which protects hunting and Gathering and fishing rates for these bands as well as the Fond du Lac band we'll learn more about these areas today with our presenters and who are uh Travis novitsky and Carl Cowboy Travis is an Ojibwe artist who specializes in night sky photography you'll see many of his examples of Photography today in the presentation he is a member of the of the Grand Portage band Carl is an Ojibwe artist author and Storyteller his art ranges from paintings watercolors drawings and more you'll see examples of Carl's art today as well and he is a member of the boys Fort band we are thrilled to have them both here with us today to talk about the night sky and the depictions of Ojibwe constellations that we can see in The Boundary Waters so I will turn things over to oh one more thing before I do uh so today we're gonna be all in this meeting together um so we're gonna ask that you keep yourself on mute and if you have questions they can be sent to the hosts and we will address them with our presenters at the end if time allows um and we're really thrilled to have them here today before we start I did want to invite folks if you if you'd like to um turn on your camera for a brief moment maybe give a wave see who we have here today I know we have a lot of folks joining from all over so if you'd like to say hello um we always really appreciate that see some classrooms tuning in that's awesome hello very cool great so glad to see you all here um at this time I'll invite you to turn your cameras off make sure that they're on mute and I will turn things over to Travis and Carl thanks so much thank you Allison um let's see if we can get this going the right way again um share my screen I might need you to uh tell me if this is um showing up the right way like we did earlier yep it looks good we can see the title slide okay so um Carl as the Elder of the two of us presenters today would you like to introduce yourself first or would you like me to go first um uh go ahead uh introduce yourself first I'll introduce myself right after okay sounds good um boujou and Dino wema gunny Doug anien Travis and Disney carsion so my greeting there I what I said was um hello all of my relatives my name is Travis and I am bear clan and I come from Grand Portage and for those of you that may not know the Grand Portage anishinabe nation is an Indian reservation at the very Northeast hip of Minnesota it's bordered by Lake Superior to the East and the south Ontario Canada to the north The Boundary Waters canoe area and Superior National Forest to the West and the boys Fort reservation where Carl is from is on the western side of the Boundary Waters so this whole area between boys Fort and Grand Portage it has some of the most dramatic terrain to be found in Minnesota uh we've got rugged mountains beautiful Inland Lakes wild rivers dense forest and some of the darkest night skies to be found anywhere and I've been a photographer for most of my life and for most of the time that I've been a photographer my favorite subject by far has been the night sky the night sky for me is something very special as much as I love photographing it even more than that I love the simple Act of just experiencing it and appreciating it I also love the water water connects the earth and the sky in more ways than one it's connected visually when you see the Milky Way or the Aurora Borealis reflected in a lake or in a river but also physically as moisture evaporates into the sky then later comes back down as rain photography the night sky and water are my most uh as I like to say they're my most important anchors they are things that help keep me centered and balanced foreign and when I'm standing or laying underneath the glow of the Milky Way bathing in that magical Starlight that's when I feel the most relaxed in that piece and my hope is that through my photography my passion for the night sky will inspire others to explore the Stars either for the first time or to deepen their already existing relationship with them and so I've been working on a number of projects over the past couple of years but the most exciting by far has been a dark sky documentary called Northern night Starry Skies and this was co-produced by PBS North in Duluth and Hamlin University's Center for Global Environmental Education the documentary celebrates Star Bright Skies dark sky places indigenous star knowledge and our stewardship of the night sky and we'll be showing a few clips from the film tonight as part of our this afternoon as part of our presentation and for me even though I grew up on a reservation indigenous star knowledge has been hard to come by there just aren't that many people at least here in my local community that seemed to know a whole lot about it so it's been quite an education and quite an honor Getting to Know Carl as he has shared some of what he's learned over his lifetime of putting some of these pieces of star knowledge together and so I'll turn it over to Carl now to give himself an introduction okay hi hello everyone I'm uh Carl gabway and I was raised in Ely Minnesota about 20 miles from the hegeman lake pictographs and I've been to Hagman Lake many times and during the 1960s and 1970s there was all kinds of people who theorized about what the pictographs mean but no one could actually explain them and my father who knew quite a bit about Ojibwe history and culture I couldn't explain them either it's known through archeology that the pictographs were done up until the 1850s and then after the 1850s there was no more new pictographs added to those 200 or so that we find in northern Minnesota parts of Canada all the way up to Hudson's Bay and so one day I one night I woke up in the middle of night and I said oh my gosh they're constellations and so I hurried out to look at them because living in Ely you can get there you can get to the Hagman Lake pictographs and a few a few hours and then I started gazing at the night sky and I got to be very intimate with the night sky and trying to find the images from the pictographs in the night sky and my goodness I found them um I have to say that I talk to a lot of people a lot of Indian people about it and they were very very supportive of my theorizing and one told me that getting connected with the night sky and Ojibwe tradition is like getting reacquainted with an old friend uh so I'm very excited about it I I I I didn't invent this no I want to remind you I uh what I did was connect things together so I connected Ojibwe art which is the pictographs Ojibwe storytelling the um uh the Legends which often have a Celestial connection and uh the uh and the pictographs themselves and so connecting them together uh really worked and so this is what I want to talk about uh today migwitz Carl thank you um next we'll show you um about a three minute clip from the the northern night sky Starry Skies documentary foreign [Music] [Music] everywhere you have these great big Cliffs these vertical clips that come down to the water there are about 200 sites of pictographs between Northern Minnesota and Hudson's Bay and the ones at Hagman Lake are absolutely beautiful the colors are clear there are three big visual images and over the years have been all kinds of people who wrote above pictographs Dallas talked about them as uh mysterious something from the past but we don't know what they are how do you climb inside the brain of someone who lived 300 years ago and I must have gone to that site about a dozen times over the years from high school on all the way to a few years ago I made sketches and I took photographs of the site and I kept working over these images over and over again trying to piece them together but I didn't realize then that I had to think like a scientist and not an artist and that was a big leap for me yeah and and when I did that that's when I that's that's when things started to go together who are the people that met there and said well this is what we have to remember and this is what we have to teach and this is the way we're going to remember it by putting these images on the rocks the winter maker great Panther and a great moose figure so that we see the image of the Rocks we see the consolation and then there's this prophecy the prediction the story that goes with it Traditions that extend all throughout Ojibwe lore that go with that so I'd rather than just looking at the picture graphs themselves as art and you know I was tempted to do that because I'm an artist looking at the pictographs and I said well this is the work of my ancestors it's like being reunited with an old friend all this knowledge that there you're going to say the Moose isn't important to Ojibwe culture it's Central to Ojibwe culture the winner maker yeah the winner maker we live six months of winter here in this part of the world it's very very important so there's all kinds of stories about either the great moose or the winner maker that's a great Panther the spirit of the water in the spirit of spring the dangerous part of spring the floods the Hegman Lake site is not only the clearest site the most photogenic that is a picture that you take of it it's always real clear and bright but it's a it's the greatest collection of the visual images of them it depends are the most in the winter makers there's a lot there there's still to be interpreted [Music] all right so um Carl you've already kind of talked about your efforts to understand the connections between the pictographs cultural stories and Ojibwe constellations can you maybe tell us a little more about how these Star Stories kind of interweave cultural wisdom traditions and sometimes moral advice uh gosh sure I'm talking about this great image here of the hegeman lake pictographs should remember that the paintings are on a sheer rock cliff but it's not smooth the rock cliff is Bumpy and so the Hegman Lake artist did the Silhouettes and then rubbed parts of the Interiors clear and you can see them here look at the Moose figure there are two white dots in the middle of the body of the moose and this wonderful moose is kind of squarish because moose bodies are kind of square they're very Hefty animal and these two stars that Mark the heart are set at an angle to the squared you notice that and then in the winter maker figure itself there's an area rubbed clean where the heart is and it's not very clear in this Photograph but in each hand there is an area weight clean where it makes the you can see the rock underneath so not only are is the heart marked out but in case of the winner maker the hands have a little white dot right in the middle and that's when I realized when we're looking at the winner maker figure the constellation Orion that these big outstretched arms reached to the star procyon and the other hand reaches to aldebaran uh uh I'm sorry I I I I I didn't hear I didn't hear that uh I don't think it was a question Carl I think somebody just came off mute oh okay I'm already meaning too okay and then on this picture see that big X that's way up on the top of the screen uh slide uh that's the brights the brightest star in the night sky when the winner maker is is uh in full View um and and that's that uh that big bright star that's right up in the middle of the sky it's not the North Star that's what I thought at first but uh if you go up to the shoulder of Orion and go and when you're out Skye uh Sky watching and go up over the the shoulder of Orion and then raise your head and raise your head and right overhead is about the brightest star in the night sky um and because I'm getting old I can't remember the name of that star but but it's but it's there you'll see it um so here we've got a star map with some of your illustrations on it Carl that's right uh the uh you'll see on the uh left side uh the winner maker the constellation of Orion and you see the big outstretched arms going to procyon and aldebaran and then look down at the bottom in the uh the Moose constellation is the constellation Pegasus the great square of Pegasus makes the square body of the moose and there are stars that Mark the front legs and the hind legs the bell of the Moose this this the uh fur and fat that hangs down from the throat of the moose uh it's there in the night sky you can see the con the stars that Mark that um the uh then going over to the other side uh on the right side the figure of Nana Boucher which you can appear only in summer uh oh uh you can see only summer it's a constellation of Scorpius and uh do you see that circle around there those are wolf tracks because for the Ojibwe they Mark the path of the moon and the planets which always keep to the same path in the night sky and they call it the Wolf Trail because the Stars the planets I I should say don't obey the rules that the stars do the planets moved through the constellations as the year goes on and they follow this path and the same with the Moon the Moon because our solar system is arranged in a kind of a flat plane so that from the Earth's point of view the planets move independently from the constellations like wolves wolves take their own path and make their own way through the night sky so on this star map the the the Wolf Trail marks the marks the path of the planets so going back to the Moose a little bit here I want to share a story a couple of stories about moose encounters that I've had and uh in the clip that we saw a few moments ago you mentioned that the Moose is Central to Ojibwe culture and moose you know they are sort of this you know to everybody kind of an icon of the Northwoods and just about everybody that visits Northern Minnesota when you ask them what they want to see they almost all say well I want to see a moose it's like the number one animal I want to see and over the years I've been lucky enough to have had you know some memorable encounters with them being that there's a lot of moose up here in northern Minnesota and this photo here is one such moment where as I was paddling down the Pigeon River I came around a bend and here was this beautiful cow and calf just grazing right along the riverbank and as soon as I saw him I stopped paddling and I grabbed my camera and as I drifted by I was kind of you know gliding past they just they watched me their ears kind of went forward like they were listening they could see me and hear me and as I drifted by um I took a series of maybe four or five images just kind of went click click click as I went by and because it was in the evening and I was moving the light wasn't real good um only one picture came out sharp and that's this one here the rest were all blurry and so that moment was mostly luck I just happened to be there right when the Moose were there but other encounters have required more deliberate planning and action and such as the time uh a few years ago when my friend Paul and I went moose calling up near Eagle Mountain which is the the highest elevation location in Minnesota and the best time to call for moose is first thing in the morning in the fall and the location that Paul wanted to go to was about 30 to 40 minutes Inland from the town of Grand Marais so this meant I had to get up a few hours before sunrise in order to have enough time to get ready drive down to Grand Marais to meet Paul and then drive Inland to this series of logging Cuts where Paul had been seeing a lot of signs of moose activity and we got there just as daylight was beginning to creep into the sky it was a really foggy morning as you can see here and we went to this first location that Paul had scoped out and we called for over an hour and we didn't see any sign of any moose and Paul had had told me that in his experience if you don't see a moose in the first hour you're probably not going to see one at all so after that first hour we were pretty much resigned to the fact that the day was probably a bust as far as moose sightings were concerned so we drove up into the next logging cut where I wanted to get out and take some pictures and Paul said well I'm going to get out and just keep practicing with my moose call you know just for the practice I really doubt that we're gonna see anything so I wandered off toward this big stand of pine trees to take some pictures and just a few minutes later as Paul was practicing his calls I looked towards the big trees and I saw the silhouette of a moose at the base of the trees and I'm not sure if you guys can see my pointer on your screen but he's right in the middle down here towards the bottom and I look towards Paul and in my best I guess I'd say loud whisper I said you know Paul Paul he turned toward me and he's like what you know just loud and I said there's a moose over there huh there's a moose over there and then he looked and right away of course he saw the moose and at that moment probably because he heard us the Moose turned and he looked right at us we looked at each other Paul and I and then we look back at the car which was a couple hundred feet away and we both just knew that you know we nodded at each other and understood as we needed to walk as slowly and quietly as we could to make our way back to my Jeep and once we were by the vehicle we set up our tripods and started watching this moves and he very slowly kept approaching but he never seemed aggressive just kind of curious and he would walk a little bit closer then stop and look around for a moment then walk another 50 feet or so then stop and look around again and every time he stopped he was kind of in this perfect position for some really nice photos we both swore that he knew he was being photographed and was posing for us so he got to within maybe a hundred feet or so of us and then he turned and walked off into the woods it was one of the coolest moose experiences that either of us had ever had and the fog made for some pretty Unforgettable photographs neither of us could believe how lucky we were to have shared that moment that those moments that morning was such a majestic animal and so going back to Carl's illustrations here's a little more detail of the moose and of course um as I mentioned you know Autumn is sort of the time of the Moose when they are most active and most aggressive as they look for a mate and the Moose as Carl mentioned of course is represented in those Hagman Lake pictographs and so Carl is there is there a cultural story maybe that can be shared associated with the moose well the the the great thing about the moose consolation is that it's a fall constellation when moose are getting more powerful as you say they're getting more aggressive they're getting bold and so as the Moose constellation rises in October and November moose out in nature are getting more aggressive then what happens in mid-winter is that the Moose start getting weaker they lose their beautiful antlers and as the consolation starts to slide into the West moose are at their most vulnerable they're at their weakest and they're they've lost all that wonderful fact from the fall and uh and they really struggle and that fun so for the Ojibwe uh a rising consolation means that it's gaining power a sinking constellation sinking into the West means that it's losing power so what works in the sky works also on the land so that there's this marvelous connection between what's happening in the sky and what's happening on the land uh on on this picture here notice that the bell of the Moose you saw it in that beautiful picture just previously here to this the belle of the Moose with the uh is actually marked by two stars the overhanging snout of the Moose is marked by an oval of stars the uh the square body you could see beautifully in that previous picture um with the uh with the two heart Stars uh do you remember the Higman Lake pictograph where he rubbed clear where the heart Stars well those two stars are there and astronomers have given them names of Tau pegasi and Omega pegasi referring to the brightness of the stars in the constellation Pegasus uh and they are the heart stars of the the great moose uh this is a collection of drawings that I get uh the uses of moose hide and the number of purposes that they serve uh moose is um moose hide is best for Snowshoe lacings better than deer because the deer hide tends to give a little bit when it gets wet and moose hide is very very tough perfect for snow Chase uh here in the middle of the picture is a wonderful glove decorated with moose hair embroidery and it shows all the marvelous things that the Ojibwe people made with parts of the moose a moose hide dress uh work to Moose hide is is as soft as velvet and this luxurious clothes came from the moose and not so much for the ojibwean look down on that picture below there is the Moose hide canoe if a group of hunters were off well away from their home Village and got their moose they could make a boat out of the out of the hides and Stitch them together to carry the Moose back to their home village now I have to say that the athabascans were more famous for doing something like this than the Ojibwe were but I would suspect that the Ojibwe were were able to pull this off too that they knew about it and they probably did it this uh moose hunting when the Moose is at its most fat and it adds most healthy and an at its most aggressive is in the fall of the year in the first of November and the water is very dangerous as the water starts to freeze up Birch bar canoes are are kind of at risk so but a Moosehead canoe can bounce off ice and rocks carrying that moose meet back to the Village foreign thank you Carl and here we have um an illustration done by William Wilson who is an Ojibwe artist and along with Carl one of the I believe one of the founders of the Native Sky Watchers group correct right right and you see William here has the the Stars marked out the straight square of Pegasus the bell of the fur hanging down from the throat whoops uh the antlers uh here um and then they they're actually stars that Mark the front leg in the back leg of uh of the Moose constellation oh and then uh he also painted in here the heart of the moose um do you see that there so that uh uh William uh Paints in the style of the Canadian Ojibwe then they're called The Legend painter so the Algonquin Legend Pinterest of Canada and it's just one of the Mysteries to me that the Canadian artists all Paint This Way and the Minnesota Ojibwe paint in all kinds of different styles so I I don't know why that is same culture same language same tradition but a completely different way of contemporary painting and as we transition from this illustration into the next actual photograph that I took you can kind of see the orientation of how the Moose is looking upwards here and you see the the great square of the body of the Moose you'll see that um here in the sky as well to the upper right of the photo yes uh a marvelous photograph now see that square of the brighter Stars uh the uh in astronomy it's called the Great square of Pegasus and sometimes it's called the Autumn Square so for the Ojibwe to look at that as the Great moose the great square body of the moose and then do you see where the heart would be there are two fairly Bright Stars against the Fancher stars of the background those are the two stars that are on the Hegman Lake pictographs the Internet is just marvelous now the artist who did the Eggman Lake pictographs rubbed those two stars clear so there's no mistake that you're looking at a constellation and you're looking at this constellation um uh oh what what a story so in the fall of the year when you're looking up at the Great the great moose constellation look for those two star uh those two stars that Mark the heart yeah okay gonna jump just for a moment here over to a few Aurora photos and I keep losing my pointer there it is um so the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights um the night sky being my favorite subject to photograph amongst night sky subjects like Milky Way you know uh Moonlight lightning um things like that the northern lights are my favorite night sky subject and a belief among the Ojibwe people is that the lights are the spirits of our ancestors um kind of Dancing in the Sky um but scientifically the patterns of the lights kind of move in Cycles like a lot like almost everything or pretty much everything in nature goes in Cycles so there's there's periods over the years of maximum activity and minimum activity and this is kind of referred to as solar minimum and solar maximum and over the past couple of years we've been in this like deepest part of solar minimum and what that means is that Aurora events have been you know few and far between but this last summer we've kind of been or summer 2022 we started to come out of solar minimum and that meant we started to see some some better Aurora events than we had seen previously for the first for the two or three years leading up to last summer so this one here is was from July 2nd and this is in Grand Portage um overlooking Lake Superior and I had gone down there that night to capture the Milky Way which is to the South so I had my back to the north and after a while you know I was looking at my pictures and I could see that the Rocks along the shoreline had kind of this weird kind of color to them so when I zoomed in on my camera like I noticed it was green so I turned around like like where's that light coming from and I looked and oh my gosh like the Aurora was just going nuts behind me and then um on September 4th we had another really amazing display that started about 9 or 10 p.m and went all through the night until at least four in the morning and between about two and three is when the lights were at their brightest and had their best shape and structure and it just it just went nuts like this this ribbon that you see here was kind of waving through the sky like this which is real common when you get that Arc or that those arcs in the sky and then out of that ribbon were these pillars shooting up vertically and those kind of Wiggle through the sky sorry my cat was trying to jump on my lap here um so you got all kinds of stuff going on when when you see what's portrayed in an image like this like there's a lot of movement there's a lot of color and it's just an incredible thing to witness and that same night so as I mentioned this is early in September September 4th so around three o'clock in the morning or between three and five let's say um you can see Orion up here on the right you see the the main part of Orion right here and he starts coming up you know early in the fall and as Carl mentioned constellations kind of as they're Rising they gain power so maybe Carl if you would tell us a little more about wintermaker yes the uh uh and and about the first of November there's a very dramatic uh rising of Iran and the first thing that you notice is the belt Stars the three stars that are in a straight line that Mark Orion's Belt and for the Ojibwe it would be the winter maker sash and in the Northeast as you see Orion starts to rise up out of their uh off the Horizon those three stars are in a straight row a vertical role because Orion jumps out of Over the Horizon kind of sideways and in the middle of the winter he's upright and then in the spring of the year as he starts to fade when winter starts to fade he's kind of tumbles forward on his uh on his face but what's what's kind of amazing is that those three stars in a vertical row are actually marked on the Hegman Lake pictographs so the uh pick the the pick pictorial figures are the most dramatic it had been like but there's some abstract shapes to the side and one of them are three stars marked in a row and vertical row and that marks the beginning of the beginning ah wonderful the the beginning of Winter the very first indication that Winter's coming so if you have an elder who's sitting around the fire and telling you about this Con these consolations and then suddenly everyone sees these three vertical stars in a row he says rightly that get ready Winter's coming because the winter maker is here and mod keg uh who who is from Mille Lacs wrote a very interesting book called Tales my grandmother told me and she says uh the book is really a great book because it's in Ojibwe I gotta make a club a plug for this book it's on Ojibwe and then translated into English and in she starts off with this little paragraph saying it's cold and the children are tired of winter and the so the uh parents tell make toy bows and arrows and they tell them go outside and shoot the winner maker and so the little children go out with their toy bows and arrows and shoot up into the night sky at this great winner maker that's lumen in the February sky and then she says and sure enough it warms up so the winner maker defeated by little children isn't that wonderful and after that in March the winner maker tilts forward into the West so I want to do a painting of it and so a trapping family moving out onto the ice the little kids with their play bows and arrows shooting up into the night sky it's a great painting Carl yeah thanks and here we have um another of Williams William Wilson's illustration showing the winter maker and it'll kind of again have oriented this to so you can see the fade into an actual photograph of winter maker yeah and that William's painting is up against uh um an actual photograph of the night sky uh so you can see the three stars at Marcus sash the three the two stars that Mark her shoulders the aldebaran over uh on the right in this picture and procyon on the left and here we can see them the three sash stars are right here right right can you see my mouse pointer and then the hand the outstretched arms or hands go way out here yep yep very nice very nice photograph and here's another one where it's a little more a little easier to see yeah the St the the main stars of Orion are a little brighter yeah and uh you can see it's sash the winner make a sash the two bright hands oh it's stretched okay so let's move on to mitsubishu the great Panther yep so um or the the tale of Michigan or the great Panther is the head from the constellation Leo um right the uh yeah there's the head from a consolation Hydra yes yep and that's a big sickle of stars it's almost an unmistakable and it's a spring constellation you start noticing it in March and then April and May it's high in the sky and the uh the head of the great Panther is the head of uh Hydra the constellation of Hydra it's a little trapezoidal shape real bright stars that make a perfect head of uh the great Panther and the great Panther is always tilted forward it's hind legs are taller and the front legs are kind of small so it's kind of always tilted forward as he moves through the night sky and of course that's how real panthers are uh real panthers are an attack Predator their shoulders are real tough and they always tend to be lower down the hind legs are the pounce and Limbs and they're always seem to be taller now an actual practice of course the front legs and the back legs are the same height but the way the pants are always crouches ready to pounce the hind legs are always seem to be taller now I've never seen a panther in the wild but I've seen a lot of pictures and a lot of wildlife documentaries and they always carry their tail in a curve they're always curved and the hind legs are always upright and ready and the front legs are muscular and down ready to pounce and grab their prey so this the Stars just work out just nicely with for the way real panthers are in uh but the great Panther is associated with water and the uh and what happens in the spring uh snow gets wet and moist and thus it becomes dangerous the ice starts to break and becomes dangerous to walk on the floods make get water dangerous to walk so all winter long you can walk on the ice like it's a Pavement in the spring you got to watch it and it's the panther that's depicted as a water bin and canoes would form a semicircle when they would offer gifts to the great Panther to keep them safe from harm because the great Panther is dangerous and the Panthers in nature don't particularly care for water so Alice used to wonder well why is there great Panther always is a water spirit and associated with water and one of the people that I talked to one of the Indian folks and this young land was about 16 when he told me this and he said well of course it's a spring constellation spring means water and it's like oh my gosh that's right so I just want to I tell the story because I just want people to know that it's not all me I talk to a lot of people about this and there's a lot of people who contributed insights into my putting all this together so let's see so here we can see him in the sky here yep William again tilted forward yeah like you were saying um unfortunately I do not have a photograph of this constellation that's something I have not been able to get a good photograph of and so I'm making it a mission to try to get some photos in the future um so now I would like to show another quick clip from the documentary and this is about the Milky Way or the river of Souls [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] or further west where there's more Pathways over the landscape than there is water routes to call it the path of souls where you'd walk it but in this part of the country it would be the river and what a beautiful River it is it's brilliant Shining foreign [Music] one time I asked my dad I said what's Ojibwe heaven like and he said it's the greatest place in the world it's just like here and I said you mean like with winter and he said yes just like here is it mosquitoes mosquitoes said yes it's just like here what could be better I'm bringing it be the Ojibwe who think of Heaven as just the greatest place in the world it's just like her just like her if you lived an evil life though you you disappear into the cosmos and you're gone there's no after world for you when the Ojibwe talked about a person dying and going to the after world you traveled at River of Souls and the Milky Way has a band of beautiful light coming down to the horizon and then there's another branch of it that Forks off and then disappears and people who've lived and done evil in their life took that other branch and would just disappear into the cosmos but those that are good live the good and proper life would continue on their Journey to the after world where there was they came to a land of forests and prairies was full of game and full of all the ancestors that had died when I'm before you get reunited remember foreign that I made of the Milky Way and this kind of illustrates that connection too with with the sky and the Earth like I love that reflection that's one of my favorite things to try to portray is how it's it just comes down and you know ties the two together um any other comments um besides the video Carl that you'd like to make about the Milky Way or oh these photographs are just great I'm just swimming in them thanks so yeah this is just a beautiful photograph the shining shining River uh that goes down to the horizon oh there's another maybe we should check in with Allison we're pretty we're up we're almost up on our hour um let's see we've probably got another 10 minutes worth of stuff is that okay or do you want us to kind of Jump Ahead I think that's just fine if that's okay with you guys and yeah yeah if if folks need to drop out they can but um just so we'll have this all as a recording to send everybody as well okay so next we will talk about um a constellation visible to us in the summer and that's Nana baju or Scorpio and Nana baju of course is a prominent figure in Ojibwe culture um Carl could you tell us a little about his importance yeah uh one thing that was kind of amazing about this consolation is that his sash is trailing behind him and he's got a bowl and a lot of Nana bushu stories tell about his skill with a bow um one of the things that Nana bus you did in Ojibwe tradition is to clear the land of all these monstrous animals that actually threatened Human Society and with his bow he was able to clear the land and giant beavers and giant moose and one of the things about this of course is that after the Ice Age there were giant animals in North America and it would have been almost impossible for human beings to live when there were short-faced bears and saber-toothed tigers and uh there was a even a giant beaver that was probably 200 pounds and and stood about four feet tall at the shoulder uh for the Ojibwe probably saw these fossils just as a modern paleontologist would find them and talked about these animals and wondered what happened to them and of course it was a great cultural hero that that must have made the world safe for humankind so there's a lot of stories about Nana would you pursuing and chasing giant animals like this one and the way the uh oh go ahead girl oh no William Wilson again uh with uh Nana bus you in the bow figure and one of the big stories is that Nana busu actually almost killed the great Panther so if you look at the stern map you can see the the great Panther constellation and you can see Nana bus route chasing after him so as the year goes on these two constellations Chase each other in almost an endless Pursuit so it just works out so nicely that Nana boujou is aiming his Arrow at the Great uh great Panther that's on the other side of the sky and I'm looking and looking for at the night sky for the arrow because boy sometime I'm gonna find it that floating between those two constellations the row of stars on a straight line that that marked this Arrow it's there somewhere I'm convinced of it and here here again we see in an actual photograph um got oops got those stars on the bow here yeah right represented here right right and this is um one of my more surreal night sky photos I think because we've got I'm often asked is this the moon on the left well it certainly looks like it could be um because it's so bright but that's actually Mars right here and this is um Jupiter over here and Saturn shows up here too it's I'm not sure if it might be this one it's somewhere in here in the middle of the Milky Way pretty cool photo though yeah and here's another one where we can see uh Nana boujou and the bow here a little bit right and that big bright star and Terry is is uh the is Nana bhuju's heart is that this one yes that's one right okay okay so the last constellation we'd like to talk about today is one that we're almost all certainly familiar with and to the Ojibwe it was known as the Fisher but most people probably know him as by several other names um Ursa Major The Great Bear or more com perhaps most commonly the Big Dipper and Fishers really are amazing creatures with Incredible agility and prowess and I've seen him move through the forest as if the forest isn't even there they climb trees more easily and silently than you can imagine and while I've seen them now and then over the years this is the only time I've ever gotten a good photograph of one and there's a story about how Fisher earned his place in the night sky and Carl if you'd be so kind to share a summary of that story with us yes uh the fisher of course is a great hunter and one time he was hunting with his friends and they couldn't find any birds anywhere and so somebody told Fisher that this birds were all held prisoner up in the sky world by a group of ogres so Fisher decided to go climb a tall pine tree and jump from the pine tree up to the trap door that held away to the Overworld and as he went into the Overworld he saw all the birds were held prisoner in cages so he went through opened up all the cages opened the trap door all the birds flew down through the trapdoor and down into the world below and the ogres were so angry at Fisher for liberating the birds they chased after him with bows and arrows and Fisher jumped through the chapter himself ran all over Lake Superior through the Canadian Shield being pursued by the ogres and that finally he jumped up into this big pine tree and jumped up into the sky and one of the ogre's arrows pinned him to the sky and there he is to this day now even though he's pinned to the night sky he still has power and as the Fisher Stars rise in the Northeast it's spring and what happens in the spring is that the birds come back he still has he still liberates the birds and as the Fisher Stars swing to the West and start to set the birds fly away so his influence on the birds is still left as you as you look at the Big Dipper and you can see the outline here in Williams uh painting in the tail of the fissure there's an arrow and those two stars are there it's it was really hard for me to see this because I kept looking at the asterism of the Big Dipper and I looked and looked and looked oh I don't know for years and then all of a sudden there was the arrow and I saw the two stars it takes them really looking if you're trained as an astronomer as a backyard astronomer even to kind of get your head out of looking at asterisms and the the Greek consolations and look at them differently and once you do you can't miss it and I can't look at the Big Dipper anymore without seeing that Arrow with the poor Fisher still pinned to the sky I like that story um and here you can see it again continuing our Trend here of showing an illustration followed by a photograph here is Fisher the Big Dipper right and you've got the the tail Stars up here yep and there's the arrow uh right up above this last tail star there's two stars in a row that marked the arrow where he's pinned to the sky and then down uh down at the bowl of the Dipper and move your eye to the to the to the left downward at an angle and you can see the Fishers know us and that was the name of the stars that the the name of the star that the Ojibwe gave excuse me kind of blathering here uh the Ojibwe named that star the Fisher's nose and that's and that's that star uh you see the the bowl of the Big Dipper and you see that the upper two stars and the lower two stars follow them along let them taper on and you see that kind of brightest star further down a little bit further down right there right there as the Fisher's nose and this Photograph also has a wonderful comet um in it one of the our visitors from Outer the outer limits of the solar system and the there's a lot going on here this is a meteor yes yeah and of course we've got Cassiopeia up here this is the W in the sky right yeah and here's one more that shows Fisher right with some Aurora some Northern Lights yeah okay we've got one more short video and then we're gonna wrap up foreign [Music] water connects the earth and the sky and a lot of times that's most evident when you're at an inland Lake and you see the stars of the Milky Way reflecting in the surface of a nice calm lake thank you and you're gazing up at the Milky Way which is just Larger than Life it seems and there's absolutely no wind on those nights you can see the stars reflecting in the lake almost the perfect reflection of the sky no matter what's going on no matter what kind of difficulty I might be having I can come to a place like this and just lose myself in it and be kind of get lost in the mindfulness of that experience [Music] there's that connection right like you've got the water which makes its cycle through evaporation goes up into the atmosphere and comes back down when it's rain it's all connected just like everything in life is connected and being there in those moments and seeing something that's so far away and by that I mean the Milky Way tied to something that's right there in front of you that water the surface of that Lake it makes you feel insignificant and kind of large all at the same time and part of all of that part of that energy that ties everything together oh [Music] foreign night sky presentation um but uh lastly Carl if I can I'd like to close today by reading a short paragraph that's um kind of a I don't know if it's the last thing in your book talking Skye but it's right near the end um so in Carl's book talking Skye he says or he writes when you think about it stars are just Stars but constellations the star figures are the imaginary lines drawn between them and constellations reflect the identity of the people who drew them their creativity their imaginations wisdom traditions and science so trying to put together the Ojibwe night sky the sky figures and the stories is a real and important way of understanding appreciating and honoring the Ojibwe and their life on the land and with that unless there's anything you'd like to add in closing Carl we'll say um migwitch and thank you everybody for uh attending today oh no I'm fine I'm I just love your photographs Travis uh and I love your artwork too and your story Mutual admiration there yeah it's always fun to to hear you um um share this stuff with us so Mig witch thank you and thank you guys for Allison and for voyager's conservancy and Friends of the bonji waters yeah thank you both this was wonderful um I am really excited that everyone could make it today and um that we'll be able to share this out with lots of other classrooms that have uh signed up for this week so thank you both so much this is wonderful and did you end up with any chat questions or you know I don't see any questions in the chat um maybe just in we'll hold a moment if anyone does have a question um feel free to put that in the chat um we can take just a couple minutes here if that's okay with you two yeah thank you I don't see any coming up will be just a moment um I had heard um I had seen some images of the Fisher and the Big Dipper but I never knew about the arrow so I really enjoyed learning about that today I'm definitely going to look for that in the sky like like Carl said once you um once you notice these things it's really hard to unsee them or or not see them when you look up like I know for for myself like I used to look at Orion as just Orion right the little small part I didn't know about the outstretched arms and now that I know that like it's impossible to not see it just so so obvious now uh looks like there is a question in the chat um uh Jenny Radcliffe is at her class is at wondering about the Little Dipper if there is an Ojibwe constellation that goes along with a little different that you know of yeah I can go back to we it actually showed it in this one slide right here Saloon yeah it's uh right it's it's a loon figure the uh when William did this he made the Loon figures just a little bit bigger than it really is uh you can see the outline of the Little Dipper there so the Dipper part of the Little Dipper is the head of the Loon and there's a kind of a hunched back and uh and then a straight line at the bottom you can see that there and that's you can when a when a moon is when the Loon is swimming in the water you can see that straight line uh there's a great cut there's a couple of great stories about the Luna and his connection with the night sky the back of the Loon is a star pattern um when you think about it uh those beautiful white spots against the dark background that's the night sky uh the uh the North Star which makes the tail of the Loon um is uh yeah is is is the star that doesn't move of course that's the the North Star which becomes the the uh direction finder but from all I've been able to find out the Ojibwe didn't really find the direction by using the North Star they knew about it they knew it was a star that didn't move and that you could kind of count on the direction once you were able to find it in the night sky but if Hunter was caught out at night having to get back home he used uh the landmarks uh Teresa went against the Starry Sky there's always some lights in the night uh rather than using the directions Maritime people use the North Star and that was real crucial for them uh but uh I can't really find the Ojibwe using the North Star so much as a has a navigation tool but I might be wrong on that awesome well thank you for that that's really cool uh in the chat their student Piper says thank you um to their question on the Little Dipper I don't see any other questions um but thank you so much um English to you both this has been amazing thank you and you're welcome thank you and you're welcome as well thanks for joining everybody goodbye thank you

Channel: FriendsOfTheBWCA

Views: 2,393

Keywords: Boundary Waters (Geographical Feature), canoeing, camping, Minnesota, wilderness, BWCA, sulfide mining

Id: Ot9Frw8i5YY

Length: 71min 49sec (4309 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023