Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral Histories

Gaawaababiganikaag--White Earth

Gaa-waababiganikaag White Earth 151 Joe Auginaush 152 153 Joe Auginaush (1922–2000), whose Anishinaabe name was Giniwaanakwad , was a man of remarkable wisdom. He both watched and participated in incredible changes for Ojibwe people during his years on earth. Those experiences, his intelligence, and time combined to develop his inspiring world view. Joe Maude, as friends often called him, was one of the last Anishinaabe from the White Earth Reservation to have been born in a wiigiwaam or nisawa’ogaan. His family followed the seasonal rounds of traditional Ojibwe life at the large and vibrant Ojibwe village called Gaa-jiikajiwegamaag on the south shore of Roy Lake, where Joe spent the first several years of his life, in the wiigiwaam his parents maintained for their entire family. They built a nisawa’ogaan near Gaaniizhogamaag (Naytahwaush, Minnesota) for maple sugaring in the spring and a new wiigiwaam for ricing at Manoominiganzhikaaning (Rice Lake, Minnesota) in the fall, but Gaa-jiikajiwegamaag was home. The seasonal lifestyle was a happy one for Joe, who remembered with special fondness the now-deserted village at Gaa-jiikajiwegamaag and the large rice camps at Manoominiganzhikaaning, where people from all over White Earth and even the neighboring reservations came for the harvest. It is widely believed that Manoominiganzhikaaning offered one of the largest and finest wild rice beds in the state of Minnesota. Soil erosion, flooding, and chemical run-off from nearby chicken farms and cattle ranches have recently damaged the rice beds there, but during Joe’s childhood the site was truly remarkable, with hundreds of Ojibwe camped out, harvesting and processing wild rice all day and singing and playing moccasin games all night. Joe Maude once remarked to me that he couldn’t understand how so many people got by with so little sleep, as the camp was buzzing day and night. Joe Maude’s father eventually built a log house on Auginaush Creek, not far from the main village at Gaa-jiikajiiwegamaag, where the family lived for several more years. However, as the tribal housing project at Rice Lake expanded, the village was abandoned, and most families moved to Rice Lake or Naytahwaush for the luxury of modern homes j o e a u g i n a u s h 154 and easier access to developed roads and the towns of Bagley, Detroit Lakes, and Bemidji. Adolescence was difficult for Joe Maude, as he was taken away from his family and sent to a Bureau of Indian Affairs residential boarding school at Wahpeton, North Dakota. The school was strictly regimented, and Joe remembered with great anger that he was beaten for speaking the only language he knew—Ojibwe. He recalled that he and other children would gather to secretly converse in Ojibwe and sing pow-wow songs. He got his share of beatings, but he never forgot who he was, socially , culturally, and linguistically. His parents and grandparents weren’t any happier with Joe’s boarding school experience than he was. They stubbornly fought for permission for him to attend the local day school in Bagley. They eventually succeeded; however, day school in Bagley wasn’t much better, as Joe felt isolated from and unsupported by both staff and students. At the age of seventeen, he left the reservation and traveled around the United States and Canada, working in Montana and elsewhere, earning enough money to eat and to travel to pow-wows. In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army and spent the next three years in the European theater. After World War II, he returned to the United States and again traveled to look for work. For several years he migrated from job to job, but he eventually returned to White Earth. There he lived out the remainder of his life, together with his wife Gertrude, raising their children and making himself available as a community resource. He traveled frequently to speak at schools, pow-wows, and educational forums, always using Ojibwe and speaking about the importance of the language and bicultural living. He impressed upon me the nature of the struggle for the Ojibwe language —how the language survives and remains intact but is losing speakers. He also inspired many with his wise words about the importance of language. Joe was dedicated to his family, people, and language. He was a true leader...