Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being by Lawrence W. Gross (review)

In the Anishinaabe oral tradition there are prophecies foretelling the cycles of time and experiences that the people will experience. Known as the Neesh-wa-swi’ish-koday-kawn’, or Seven Fires, these prophecies predicted the coming of Europeans and the devastation of Anishinaabe cultural traditions that would ensue.¹ Many Anishinaabe people believe we are in the time of the Seventh Fire, an era proceeded by mass destruction of our cultural lifeways. While the Seven Fires prophesies predicted the loss of our cultural traditions and tremendous hardship, they are not cataclysmic warnings; they are teachings of endurance, hope, and renewal. The Seventh Fire is a time when a new generation of the Anishinaabe will go to the elders to relearn the traditional teachings and initiate a resurgence of the people and our culture.²

In Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being, White Earth Anishinaabe author Lawrence Gross explores how the Anishinaabeg endured the devastating impacts of Euro-American colonization through maintaining traditional worldviews. Gross understands and articulates traditional worldview in an effort to build a new future for Anishinaabe people. He is committed to documenting an intellectual understanding of Anishinaabe worldview as a way of not only teaching and preserving the culture but also elevating it. Gross’s detailed and complex understanding demonstrates time spent working in tribal communities and learning from language speakers and Anishinaabe elders. Building on the previous scholarship related to American Indian historical trauma and the soul wound, Gross adds to the literature by articulating a theory of “postapocalypse stress syndrome” (PASS). He asserts that the Anishinaabe today are starting to move beyond the effects of PASS by reaffirming the traditional role of silence in the culture; the quantum nature of Anishinabemowin (language), humor, storytelling, and rhetoric as oratory practice; and spiritual practice and growth.

The book seeks to address what happens to a society that has undergone an apocalyptic event like colonization whereby the effects of the apocalypse continue as part of the lived reality for survivors who “are faced with having to deal with the consequences of imposed cultural destruction” (33). Gross uses the phrase postapocalypse stress syndrome to describe the “resulting personal trauma, social dysfunction, and crisis in worldview” (33). Gross argues that American Indians have experienced an apocalypse as the “lifeway of a culture has come to an end. . . . The situation with the culture has changed so much that the previous way of life can never be reconstituted as it once existed. No matter how much Native Americans wish to return to life the way it was before . . . that is not going to happen. The end of their world is final” (33–34). The author makes the interesting distinction that while the American Indian world has ended, the worldview continues. He describes seventeen personal and institutional characteristics that manifest in the postapocalypse including abandonment of productive employment, hopelessness, and multiple forms of abuse. Gross’s theory is critical as it describes the impact of the apocalypse not only on individuals and family but on the entire social order, including the weakening or collapse of social and cultural institutions that “would normally help people recover from societal wide trauma” (36). However, Gross offers hope for American Indian people today who are rebuilding new lifeways for their communities.

Gross’s experience of Mahayana Buddhism is reflected throughout the book particularly in his observation of the use of silence among Anishinaabe people. According to Gross, long periods of silence as practiced by the Anishinaabe foster connection with the natural world, facilitate an understanding of one’s own nature, and open one’s heart and mind to the world. The author also provides a compelling discussion on the role of humor in Anishinaabe culture and the cultural importance of learning from pain. The embedded cultural practices of silence and humor assist in moving the people beyond the effects of PASS. Gross’s chapters on the comic vision and comic mind of the Anishinaabe make an important contribution to the literature. For Gross...