Of Dogma and Ceremony

by Tara Williamson

This article is about dogma. Not Christian dogma or Western political dogma, but North American Indigenous dogma. And, particularly (because that is the tradition I am from), Ojibwe and Cree dogma.

You know what I mean.  It starts off as rules. Medicine people aren’t supposed to kill things.  You shouldn’t pay for medicine.  Women need to wear skirts to ALL ceremony. Women don’t sit at a drum.  And, ceremony should definitely, DEFINITELY, not be documented.

I want to start with some stories about my great-grandmother, Kaapiidashiik.  My kookoo was a medicine woman.  And she was a good medicine woman. One of those women people travelled miles to see.  One of my favourite stories is about how, when my mother told her there was a strange man in the yard, Kaapiidashiik locked up the doors and windows and huddled in the corner of the house behind a rocking…