Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (review)

Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe. By Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. xxvii + 259 pp., illustrations, foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, epilogue, bibliography, index. $50.00 cloth.)

Blessing for a Long Time is an important work in both ethnohistory and material culture studies, combining the two to better understand the meanings of a particular object within the different contexts of its history, thus elucidating those contexts themselves. Several years ago Arjun Appadurai coined the phrase “the social life of things” (in the book of that title), a notion that has generally been applied to the participation of objects in different kinds of exchange networks, the ways that social (but generally economic) interactions between humans have involved certain kinds of objects. Blessing tells of the social life of a central figure in Omaha society, Umon’hon’ti (“the real Omaha”), the Sacred Pole, an object that can be understood in the category “other-than-human person” that Hallowell described for the Ojibwe and that is found in many native societies. Economic interactions are a part of this social life, but only a part. As one might minimally expect, the historical events of Umon’hon’ti’s life are chronicled, but what sets this work apart is the way these events are tied into the webs of meaning that the Sacred Pole participated in, both in past contexts and in the new context it has been brought into.

Although the writing, language, and argument are straightforward, this is not necessarily an easy book to read. It is written in a mode analogous to the patterns of traditional native speech, replete with repetition, indirection, and assumptions that the reader shares certain background knowledge. Readers unfamiliar with the contexts are eventually furnished the information they need, but to get to it they must be willing to read on with the faith that more understanding will eventually come, just as listeners in traditional speech communities must put together pieces of discourse that are not necessarily given in a linear fashion. Even those accustomed to such modes in speech may be uncomfortable with them in a written work, and some readers may be either frustrated or bored. The story could be told in a linear way that is more familiar to Western eyes, but much of its subtleties would be lost. The form of storytelling reflects the primary context of the story being told. Although many recent scholarly efforts in this direction, driven by interests in reflexivity and literary expression, read like the contrived exercises they generally are, this book does not. The authors’ personal experiences in native communities—even though Robin Ridington is best known for his work in a completely different cultural setting—enable them to tell this story in a mode that seems quite “natural” for its expression. The work makes certain demands on the reader but rewards them with a discourse as text that conveys a deeper sense of meaning.

The book begins by describing itself as “a circle of stories” (xvii) and introducing the Sacred Pole and his companion, the Sacred White Buffalo Hide. Umon’hon’ti was given to Francis La Flesche by his last keeper for safekeeping in the Peabody Museum (the nature of this exchange has been questioned and the book considers these questions), where he remained for just over a century until being repatriated to the Omaha in 1989. Ridington and Dennis Hastings describe the social world of Umon’hon’ti and those people whose lives he touched, drawing heavily from the ethnographic work of La Flesche (including extended quotations where relevant). Although Blessing reflects on Omaha ethnography, its focus is much more restricted, and it should not be seen as a substitute for the original. Added to this ethnographic history is discussion of the place of Umon’hon’ti in modern Omaha life, the considerations that led to...