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Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance
Combining socio-legal and ethnohistorical studies, this book presents the history of doodem, or clan identification markings, left by Anishinaabe on treaties and other legal documents from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. These doodems reflected fundamental principles behind Anishinaabe governance that were often ignored by Europeans, who referred to Indigenous polities in terms of tribe, nation, band, or village – classifications that failed to fully encompass longstanding cultural traditions of political authority within Anishinaabe society.
Making creative use of natural history, treaty pictographs, and the Ojibwe language as an analytical tool, Doodem and Council Fire delivers groundbreaking insights into Anishinaabe law. The author asks not only what these doodem markings indicate, but what they may also reveal through their exclusions. The book also ooutlines the continuities, changes, and innovations in Anishinaabe governance through the concept of council fires and the alliances between them. Original and path-breaking, Doodem and Council Fire offers a fresh approach to Indigenous history, presenting a new interpretation grounded in a deep understanding of the nuances and distinctiveness of Anishinaabe culture and Indigenous traditions.
Making creative use of natural history, treaty pictographs, and the Ojibwe language as an analytical tool, Doodem and Council Fire delivers groundbreaking insights into Anishinaabe law. The author asks not only what these doodem markings indicate, but what they may also reveal through their exclusions. The book also ooutlines the continuities, changes, and innovations in Anishinaabe governance through the concept of council fires and the alliances between them. Original and path-breaking, Doodem and Council Fire offers a fresh approach to Indigenous history, presenting a new interpretation grounded in a deep understanding of the nuances and distinctiveness of Anishinaabe culture and Indigenous traditions.
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 21, 2021
Legal history is a thriving and well-supported branch of the disciplines of law and history. Indigenous legal history - that is, the history of law from an Indigenous perspective - is almost non-existent. DOODEM AND COUNCIL FIRE is thus both a unique study and a welcome one. Studying the treaties and other formal agreements between the Anishinaabeg - the Ojibwas, Odawas, Potawatomis, Mississaugas, and Nipissings (inter alia) - and the white settler regimes of Canada and the United States, author Heidi Bohaker introduces readers to the cultural institutions that, for these First Nations, made agreements legally binding. One was the doodem, the totemic animal figure (Crane, Bear, Catfish, Caribou, and others) that identified a particular kinship group within the Anishinaabe nations. One’s doodem conferred not merely identity but legal personhood. It tied an Indigenous person to his or her ancestors, to others within the lineage, and to the supernatural beings for whom the doodemag were named. Personhood, however, wasn’t a passive identifier; it carried with it shared responsibilities to the living and the dead, and one had to re-affirm it throughout life.
The council fire, or ishkode, was the other foundational institution that legitimized political action. At locations like Credit River and Bawating, doodemag gathered periodically to feast, exchange gifts, and affirm their collective identity. These fires concurrently hosted meetings of ogimaag (chiefs) and older women who made decisions about land use and external political relations. Anishinaabe leaders embedded these institutions in the treaties they signed, affixing symbols of the signatories’ doodemag and invoking the traditional council fires where they gathered and took action.
These foundations of Indigenous law eroded somewhat in the nineteenth century. Population decline sometimes obliged men and women to marry within their own doodemag - clan exogamy had been a requirement in previous centuries - and Christian missionaries discouraged reservation dwellers from fasting or undertaking other “pagan” rituals that affirmed clan status. Ogimaag still strove to retain access to the old council fires and to follow traditional treaty protocols, and Anishinaabe men and women held onto their doodemag, if sometimes in attenuated form, into the twenty-first-century era of cultural revival.
The council fire, or ishkode, was the other foundational institution that legitimized political action. At locations like Credit River and Bawating, doodemag gathered periodically to feast, exchange gifts, and affirm their collective identity. These fires concurrently hosted meetings of ogimaag (chiefs) and older women who made decisions about land use and external political relations. Anishinaabe leaders embedded these institutions in the treaties they signed, affixing symbols of the signatories’ doodemag and invoking the traditional council fires where they gathered and took action.
These foundations of Indigenous law eroded somewhat in the nineteenth century. Population decline sometimes obliged men and women to marry within their own doodemag - clan exogamy had been a requirement in previous centuries - and Christian missionaries discouraged reservation dwellers from fasting or undertaking other “pagan” rituals that affirmed clan status. Ogimaag still strove to retain access to the old council fires and to follow traditional treaty protocols, and Anishinaabe men and women held onto their doodemag, if sometimes in attenuated form, into the twenty-first-century era of cultural revival.
April 26, 2021
A well-written, well-researched look into Anishinaabe governance and legal systems, including (but not limited to) the insufficiency of Euro-political concepts like "band" and even "Nation". Not a comprehensive account in the vein of Richard White's
The Middle Ground
(another reviewer suggests that Doodem and Council Fire ought to have been formulated as a paper), but still an important addendum to warfare- and trade-focused histories .
December 27, 2024
Very very very good.
February 21, 2021
Although there is a lot of interesting material in here, this reads poorly and as poor scholarship.
The central concepts of doodem and council fire as political organization are there, but diffuse and poorly-centred. To some extent this flows as a natural consequence of the record from which the author must work - a society without a tradition of written records.
But this problem is exacerbated by two problems: a treatment of the direct subject which is often superficial and a poor grasp of the contrasting "European" traditions from which she seeks repeatedly to distance things. The result succumbs precisely to the "exoticisation" of many aspects of indigenous culture which appear readily comprehensible. While we are warned that we CANNOT use existing categories - that these are different - her explanation of many elements are so undifferentiated that this is unpersuasive.
A few examples.
In discussing the doodem "icons" - line or silhouette images of the doodem creature - the author argues that the common depictions of certain elements represent an artistic choice to emphasize important aspects of the relevant creature's character. We are told, for instance, that the beaver's tail is always emphasized, or that the deer's is upright. She insists (and I don't fault the exaggeration of this) that these choices were made from an infinite number of options and must therefore have been intended to convey significance.
Obviously an artist's options in a simple figure are actually fairly limited. The moreso when these small, individual icons must be distinguished from one another - beaver from marten, pike from catfish, deer from bison. Who would be surprised that a beaver's tail is a major feature in what amounts to a caricature? Or that a deer's tail would point up instead of down, when depicted along other four-legged, tailed creatures?
When the author gets to the catfish, she commits the double-whammy of recognizing that the depiction of barbels is probably necessary to distinguish the image, but then indicating that the barbels' function still has importance. Is she suggesting, without any evidence, that the indigenous artist knew the function of catfish barbels, even as she half-recognizes that the exaggeration of prominent features is readily explained by necessity?
Another example is in her discussion of how councils function. Though we are repeatedly told that leaders have only persuasive authority and that these bodies rule by consensus, we are also told that confrontational exchanges are shunned, and that the later emergence of more aggressive, confrontational would-be leaders effectively leaves the councils' process defenseless. Really, though, how significant is consensus in a place where confrontation is shunned? Perhaps some wiser, subtler mechanism is at work, but it is not referenced here, and the examples given show leaders taking their decisions and, at best, noting dissenting opinion. There may be something to learn from the councils' methods, but it would come from elsewhere - this book hasn't the depth to present a particularly coherent or sensible picture other than that of their locus.
Turning to European "other", we are confronted with a bald statement contrasting approaches to land management which appears ignorant of the tumult over the Enclosure Acts in England; contrasting marriages as fostering alliances in indigenous culture, as though this was not a tremendously popular practice among European nobility; and arguing for a diversity of political entities and diffuse political power as a heavy contrast to a Europe in which the Fronde, the English Civil War, the Holy Roman Empire are current and the Italian peninsula fractious and disunited.
The author falls into the trap of positing a monolithic "Europe" to such an extent that an ethnographic analysis of popular indigenous metaphor is contrasted to everything from Aristotle to Absolutism. This is simply bad history, and it ultimately exoticizes and mystifies where it might instead enlighten through better understanding.
Ultimately, I think that the book's research focus is fascinating, but that the book itself is premature - the information gleaned from examining vast material relating to doodem has not yet been subjected to the rigorous thought which would allow it to be presented coherently (not monolothically, mind) and situated fairly in and within the broader context of society.
The central concepts of doodem and council fire as political organization are there, but diffuse and poorly-centred. To some extent this flows as a natural consequence of the record from which the author must work - a society without a tradition of written records.
But this problem is exacerbated by two problems: a treatment of the direct subject which is often superficial and a poor grasp of the contrasting "European" traditions from which she seeks repeatedly to distance things. The result succumbs precisely to the "exoticisation" of many aspects of indigenous culture which appear readily comprehensible. While we are warned that we CANNOT use existing categories - that these are different - her explanation of many elements are so undifferentiated that this is unpersuasive.
A few examples.
In discussing the doodem "icons" - line or silhouette images of the doodem creature - the author argues that the common depictions of certain elements represent an artistic choice to emphasize important aspects of the relevant creature's character. We are told, for instance, that the beaver's tail is always emphasized, or that the deer's is upright. She insists (and I don't fault the exaggeration of this) that these choices were made from an infinite number of options and must therefore have been intended to convey significance.
Obviously an artist's options in a simple figure are actually fairly limited. The moreso when these small, individual icons must be distinguished from one another - beaver from marten, pike from catfish, deer from bison. Who would be surprised that a beaver's tail is a major feature in what amounts to a caricature? Or that a deer's tail would point up instead of down, when depicted along other four-legged, tailed creatures?
When the author gets to the catfish, she commits the double-whammy of recognizing that the depiction of barbels is probably necessary to distinguish the image, but then indicating that the barbels' function still has importance. Is she suggesting, without any evidence, that the indigenous artist knew the function of catfish barbels, even as she half-recognizes that the exaggeration of prominent features is readily explained by necessity?
Another example is in her discussion of how councils function. Though we are repeatedly told that leaders have only persuasive authority and that these bodies rule by consensus, we are also told that confrontational exchanges are shunned, and that the later emergence of more aggressive, confrontational would-be leaders effectively leaves the councils' process defenseless. Really, though, how significant is consensus in a place where confrontation is shunned? Perhaps some wiser, subtler mechanism is at work, but it is not referenced here, and the examples given show leaders taking their decisions and, at best, noting dissenting opinion. There may be something to learn from the councils' methods, but it would come from elsewhere - this book hasn't the depth to present a particularly coherent or sensible picture other than that of their locus.
Turning to European "other", we are confronted with a bald statement contrasting approaches to land management which appears ignorant of the tumult over the Enclosure Acts in England; contrasting marriages as fostering alliances in indigenous culture, as though this was not a tremendously popular practice among European nobility; and arguing for a diversity of political entities and diffuse political power as a heavy contrast to a Europe in which the Fronde, the English Civil War, the Holy Roman Empire are current and the Italian peninsula fractious and disunited.
The author falls into the trap of positing a monolithic "Europe" to such an extent that an ethnographic analysis of popular indigenous metaphor is contrasted to everything from Aristotle to Absolutism. This is simply bad history, and it ultimately exoticizes and mystifies where it might instead enlighten through better understanding.
Ultimately, I think that the book's research focus is fascinating, but that the book itself is premature - the information gleaned from examining vast material relating to doodem has not yet been subjected to the rigorous thought which would allow it to be presented coherently (not monolothically, mind) and situated fairly in and within the broader context of society.
April 23, 2021
A fascinating read - but a book that could have benefited from more time and research. What was said in two hundred pages could have been said in fifty. The topic is relevant, the author is well-known and highly credible, her insights invaluable; but the research is incomplete for a book. This is enough for a great article, yet insubstantial for a published book, which is truly unfortunate as what Bohaker has come to find about the nature of Anishinaabe alliances, treaty making, and doodems is incredible for understanding relationships between these Indigenous people and non-Indigenous in North America.
Read
February 20, 2023I've returned to this book after some initial distaste for what at times seemed to be an "exoticization" of Anishinabek kinship, governance, and legal traditions (Which, Bohaker is mindful of avoiding. I agree, yes, she certainly struggles to strike a careful balance in her analysis at times.). I feared this reinscribed the binary of the west/other, but I think Bohaker makes a strong and thoughtful case overall for making this difference legible. As for the nitty-gritty, only Prof. D. gets to read the rest of my thoughts
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews