the Ojibwe Legend of Turtle Island

welcome to another episode of white buffalo circles at home edition uh today i'm going to tell my daughter the story of turtle island and why the ojibwe people call this place turtle island i hope you guys enjoy i hope you're being safe out there take care and hope to see you soon honey how are you doing today good good so we've been doing a bunch of videos and um today in this video i'm going to tell you a little story now a lot of times when i work with kindergarten kids and young kids especially and i tell them that we never called this place canada we called it turtle island right a lot of them wonder why turtle island why would you call this place turtle island so we're gonna tell the story today about why the ojibwe people call this place turtle island and this story has to do with a great flood and it's very interesting about a great flood because in the bible they talk about a story about a great flood the story of noah's ark in an african culture they tell a story of a great flood and in aborigine culture in australia they have a story of a great flood all around the world cultures and histories talk about this great flood and if every culture around mother earth talks about a great flood guess what there was a great flood at some time in our history now the ojibwe story goes like this it has a little bit to do with nana beaujo and a very long time ago when god first put people here on mother earth god wanted us to behave a certain way he gave us instructions and the ojibwe people we have the seven grandfather teachings and we follow those teachings but as time went on and more and more people started to fill mother earth those people began to lose their way they began to be disrespectful to their neighbors they began to disrespect their children and women they began to disrespect all of creation and put themselves above all of that beautiful circle of creation and god looked down on the people at that time in disgust he was so disappointed with the way that we were living here on mother earth he decided to cleanse the earth of the wicked people and when you want to cleanse something what you do is you send water if you want to destroy something you just send fire and that will destroy it but he didn't want to destroy mother earth he didn't want to destroy creation he just wanted to cleanse wash away the wickedness that had become on mother earth so in the bible it says um it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and they call it a deluge in the bible and i kind of like to cross reference the stories when i do this because there's a lot of good visuals and references in that bible as well now the ojibwe story has to do with nana bonjou now nana bonjou is a spirit being a creature in our culture in many many stories and when the great floods came to mother earth nana beaujo was walking on creation at that time so the rains started to pour down for 40 days and 40 nights and pretty soon all the little creeks started to overflow their banks and all the rivers started to overflow their bags and pretty soon all the lakes filled up over the shores and all across creation the water began to rise and cover the lands now nana bonjour when this happened he was able to grab onto this humongous log and hold on tight and as that log floated through the waters and down the rivers and rushed out into the great seas he held on as tight as he could after 40 days and 40 nights nana bonjour was still holding on to that great big log out in the open waters but he was tired he was exhausted and he started to begin to slip off the law now most humans regular humans like me and you we would have died a long time ago because we really need food and water and if we don't have access to that we'd die along before 40 days banana bonjour was no regular human so he's holding on to this great big log and he started to slip off the log into the water in this great big sea turtle back then the animals were much larger than they are today so he was a huge sea turtle and he swam up underneath nana beaujo and he started to watch him on the log slip from the log and fall underneath the water so what the sea turtle did was he came up underneath the animojo and he caught him on his giant shell and he raised them back up to the water surface so that he could breathe again so the turtle has saved anabolic for the time being but nana bonjour is laying on the back of this giant sea turtle he's got no food he's got no water he's exposed to the sunlight now and he's dying still and the twinner doesn't know how to help because there's nowhere to go there's no land anywhere in sight because the water is so deep it's covered even the biggest mountains now many of the water creatures survive this flood the beaver beaver loves water right uh muskrat was out there the loons seals and walruses and all these different water creatures that are okay in the water they began to gather around the turtle's shell and look at dana bonjour they were seeing this human laying there and they were wondering what was going on pretty soon they started talking to each other and they're trying to figure out if there's any way they can help nana bonjour and as time goes by and the discussion carries on none of the animals can figure out what to do and it was the turtle in the story that i was told but turtle gets this great idea and he says to creation he says to the creatures if you can get me a little bit of soil from the bottom of the ocean with the help of the creator i might be able to create something for nana beaujo so right away the biggest strongest animal gets up the walrus you know the one with the big tusks there and he says i'm the biggest animal here i'm the best swimmer don't worry about it i got this and he gets up on turtle shells takes a deep breath down while the risk goes well we're just swimming and swimming and swimming now mammals need to breathe air they can hold their breath for a long time but eventually they have to come back up and that's walrus is swimming he's gone for about 10 minutes then about 15 minutes pretty soon 25 minutes went by and that big walrus come up out of the water he took a deep breath of air he was exhausted and he comes back to the turtle shell and he gets up on the side of turtle shell and he looks around the other animals trying to catch his breath and he says i swam as deep and as far and as fast as i could swim and i couldn't even see the bottom this water is so deep right now there's no way any of us are ever gonna make it to the bottom so next the big leopard seal he gets up there and he says i'm a better swimmer than you anyway walrus i'll give it a try he gets up on the shell takes a deep breath down he goes this is the leopard seal this time he's a torpedo he's swimming super fast deep down into the ocean to the darkness as fast as he can swim he's gone the same thing about 20 minutes 25 minutes go by a little more than 25 minutes 30 minutes go by big leopard seal jumps out of the water takes a huge breath gasp of air and he comes back to turtle's shell and he gets on the shell and the same thing he looks around the other animals and he says i swam as fast and far deeper than walrus faster than walrus and i couldn't even see the bottom there's no way anyone's gonna make it to the bottom of this ocean so then the beaver gets up there he says okay i'll give it a try and beaver goes down same thing comes back up and the loon goes down loon tries and there's this really cool water bird called the hell diver and the hell diver goes down one after another after another the animals are trying desperately to get to the bottom so they can bring up some soil and put it on the back a turtle shell but they're all failing and the day is going by now it's getting late in the afternoon and you're starting to see the sunset and the animals are starting to give up hope they're starting to talk to each other and say look we tried our best to help nana bonjour but there's just no way that we're going to be able to do it so finally as they're kind of talking in amongst themselves they hear this tiny little voice coming from behind them say i'll give it a try and they're looking around while we're studying to see who it was because there's so many animals gathered around and this little creature called the muskrat comes out from beneath the other creatures in between them and he looks up and he says i'll give it a try and right away when the other animals see muskrat they start laughing come on muskrat if i couldn't do it there's no way you're going to be able to do it don't even waste your time don't bother but muskrat steps up and he speaks up and he says look it i want to help nana bonjou i'm going to give it a try and he gets up on turtle shell that little guy took a big breath as he could and down he went he disappears under the waves and he's swimming down he's swimming down he's swimming down the other animals are up there they're laughing like this isn't going to work at all so 20 minutes go by no muskrat and then 25 minutes go by this is about when the other animals started to come up 30 minutes went by no muskrat 35 minutes still no muskrat and all the animals are really getting worried they're starting to look around and wonder where muscat had gotten to 40 minutes go by and you see off in the distance there little muskrat's body pops to the surface and they see his body float to the surface so they rush over and they grab little muskrat and they bring him back to turtle shell and they put him on the back of turtle's shell and they flip him over he's not moving so they start to check for signs of life right they listen for his breath but there's no breath there and then they check his little pulse to see if he's got a heartbeat there's no heartbeat muskrat has died muskrat drowned trying to get to the bottom so now all the animals are feeling really sad because they were just laughing at this poor little guy for trying to help nana bonjou and here he tried so hard he sacrificed his life and he died trying to get to the bottom of the ocean so they're all sitting around feeling really sad and it was the beaver beaver looked over that little muskrat and he noticed that muskrat's paw was in this tight little fist so he comes over and peels open muskrat's tiny little paw and inside that little paw was some soil with some earth so muskrat made it he got all the way to the bottom of the ocean when those big animals were getting down and they knew they were running out of breath they turned around they gave up and they went back a bus grab pushed through it and he went all the way down and got right to the bottom of the ocean and got that little bit of soil but as he was swimming back to the top he ran out of air in each round so it's kind of a sad situation but muskrat is the hero so they take that little bit of soil in muskrat's paw and slap it on the back of turtle shell and as soon as the soil hits the back of turtle shell the shell starts to expand and get bigger and bigger and bigger and that little bit of soil started to spread out across the shell and then pretty soon grass started to pop up off the back of that turtle shell in that little bit of soil and before the animals knew it they were looking around and they couldn't even see the edge of turtle shell it had gotten so so big and it just kept growing and growing and growing and then that grass turned into bushes those bushes turned into trees and before they knew it once again they were standing around nana beaujo in the middle of this thick dense forest that had grown on the back of turtle's shell and that shell grew up and grew out and got so big it grew into what we now know as north america we grew into the home that we call turtle island so that is the story of turtle island do you like that story sunshine yeah yeah what i like about most of the ojibwe stories is that it's never the bear that's the hero it's not the big wolf that's the hero in most of our stories not all but most it's usually the little guy it's the mouse that gnaws the rope to save the day or it's the little hummingbird that comes in and she's the hero in this case that little muskrat he was the hero of this story and what's cool about the beaver and the muskrat during and then that particular story is that even today the beaver watches out for the muskrat when the rivers freeze in the winter and that muskrat can't get into his little burrows the beaver allows the muskrat to come in to the beaver dam and live with them all winter long so there's this relationship that the beaver has with that little muskrat he takes care of him and i think it directly is related to that story of turtle island so that is why we call north america canada turtle island and that's all we've got for you for today so hope you guys are staying safe and we'll see you soon okay i hope you enjoyed that story of turtle island keep in mind that um when you hear stories and teachings there's a lot of regional differences so in the story that i was taught it's nana beaujo the character in that story but i've heard that story where it's a female in the story and if you're researching the medicine wheel you'll see the colors shifted sometimes so there's regional differences around turtle island but generally a lot of the teachings are very very similar if not exactly the same so uh hope you enjoyed that hope you're being safe bom ap take care and i hope to see you soon you

Channel: White Buffalo Circles - at home edition

Views: 28,635

Rating: 4.8675861 out of 5

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Id: I0WNbz36EdI

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020