IO #1 -- Basil Johnston (Anishinaabe, Ojibwe)

[radiantfracture]

Okay, here’s my imperfect offering. I was posting these to my personal Instagram and then it occurred to me that someone over here might like to see them too.

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It’s Indigenous History Month, and I thought I might do a little series on some of the Indigenous authors I teach about in my classes and the role of these folks in cultural resurgence.

Mine is a pretty limited and flawed settler perspective, but I hope the awesomeness of these folks will shine through anyway.

First off is an obvious one:

Basil H. Johnston (1929 - 2015) -- Anishinaabe language revitalizer, author, scholar, storyteller, and teacher

Johnston is one of the breakthrough authors who, in the 1960s and 1970s, began to create space for Indigenous voices in Canadian publishing. Using his position at the Royal Ontario Museum, Johnston did incredible work in Anishinaabe language revitalization, gathering and saving traditional stories and creating language curricula.

Johnston’s two essential essays from Canadian Literature issues 124 (1990) and 128 (1991), “One Generation from Extinction” and “Is That All There Is?” are available for free online. In these essays, Johnston identifies and critiques the way settler scholarship fetishized physical objects while ignoring and/or belittling the profound knowledge and philosophy of the peoples who created them.

His clarity about the power and philosophy embedded in his language has been transformative for me as a reader and student of Indigenous literatures. Anishinaabe scholars and writers like Leanne Simpson and Louise Erdrich develop on his discussions of language and philosophy, and he was an influence on myriad Indigenous authors in the generation following him (Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor, etc.).

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When I posted this to Instagram, I found out that a friend of mine knew Johnston during the 1980s and had family connections to him (he used to babysit her brother). I wouldn't have known that unless I posted this little profile, so that was a fantastic outcome in itself.

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Comments

[sovay]

It’s Indigenous History Month, and I thought I might do a little series on some of the Indigenous authors I teach about in my classes and the role of these folks in cultural resurgence.

Especially since I don't take your classes, I appreciate this series!

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! It's nice to talk about some of my favorite people I've never met.

[sabotabby]

This is incredibly relevant to my interests, both personally and professionally. So thank you so much.

[radiantfracture]

Yay!

Happy to chat here and elsewhere.

[sabotabby]

Awesomesauce. In the meantime, I downloaded the two essays. I still have no idea how to run an English course, structurally speaking, but I figure it's good to have some short, free things to read as a whole class.

[switterbeet]

Johnston identifies and critiques the way settler scholarship fetishized physical objects while ignoring and/or belittling the profound knowledge and philosophy of the peoples who created them.

Ohhhhhhhh, I have some feelz about this one. Thank you for sharing.

[radiantfracture]

It's a great critique -- that's especially in "Is that All There Is."

Thanks for reading! If you read the essay, I'd be delighted to know what you think.

[switterbeet]

I have finally gotten back to this and appreciate the opening scene quite a bit. I remember (vaguely) learning about different First Nations cultures in grade 7 & 8 and the focus was on testing which groups used what kinds of traditional dwellings. I don't remember much about worldviews, although there may have been some creation stories, and from what I've seen of recent grade school curricula, it's gotten much better at least.

I also love learning more about the multiple layers of words... A conversation I had with a Cayuga man a long time ago spoke to this a bit. He said something like, "Even if we know our language, we can't talk like our great-grandparents talked, where a single word would have an entire story behind it, so they would have layers and layers of meaning in what seemed like a simple sentence. Now, we talk like babies talk, only knowing the very surface meaning of the word so the sentence is actually very simple."

I think my initial comment to your entry though, was based a lot on a statement a coworker made, while we were discussing a current project I'm working on with protecting an archaeological site on conservation lands I steward: "So many people here wander around farm fields collecting arrowheads as a hobby, but they don't actually care [at all about the culture/history or First Nations people here today]. It's just a cool hobby to them to collect these objects without understanding."

[sylvanfae]

I'm so glad I happened to look at my friends page today! Thanks for sharing these!

[radiantfracture]

Yay! Glad it's useful.