"The Seven Generations and The Seven Grandfather Teachings"

Discover Indigenous wisdom for a life well lived in James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw's book The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings. Based on ancient teachings from the Anishinaabe/Ojibwe people, this self-published (2023) book about the Ojibwe language offers not just historical insight but valuable life lessons for modern times. The book's teachings emphasize the alignment of words with actions and the importance of leading a holistic life. The central theme is the concept of interconnectedness: "Aanji-Bimaadizing means, 'transforming your life'." This is no ordinary transformation. It extends far beyond the self, touching the lives of past, present, and future relatives. We live in a reciprocally interrelated world where every action we take ripples forward and backward in time.
 

Grandparents – family connections in general – figure largely in Kaagegaabaw's story of the way Ojibwe language was handed down by a people who understand the land and their place on it. He points out that when we hear a word like Nookomis (my grandmother), we hear a sound "created by a person who knew this land back when it was covered by ice a mile high, before Gichi-gami, the Great Lake, Lake Superior, existed. When we use the old words, we are using words that were spoken by someone who saw woolly mammoths, giant Mooz (moose) and Misamik (giant beaver)."
 

Kaagegaabaw is proficient at explaining the heart of the Ojibwe language. He demystifies the vocabulary, breaking words into small parts for a clear understanding of their meaning. The primal language conveys a "Great Law" that helps speakers live in peace, harmony and balance. He cites the ancient Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) philosophy of considering the impact of each decision on the next seven generations. Seven generation stewardship is a concept that urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. As we navigate through the labyrinth of modern existence, how often do we stop and ask, "How do my actions today honor my past and pave the way for my future?"
 

The seven generation teachings, known as Gichi-dibaakonigwewinan, are truth, humility, respect, love, bravery, courage, honesty, and wisdom. The chapter about honesty indicates that just speaking the truth isn't enough; it's also imperative to align your words, actions, and intentions. Kaagegaabaw asks why would we use a sacred gift from the Creator, the Ojibwe language, to deceive others? The language demonstrates that the consequence of deceit is disorder. Only those who are out of balance will lie. As Kaagegaabaw put it,"Observe how I live, and the truth will invariably come out of it. It always does."
 

Kaagegaabaw concludes by pointing out that when we change and improve ourselves, we change and improve those who came before us and those to come – connecting them. As Kaagegaabaw so eloquently put it, "If I change myself, have I changed all of my relatives?" Though his ancestors were victims of colonization, genocide, and subjugation, Kaagegaabaw believes they can be healed through his interconnections with them. "I can still heal them," Kaagegaabaw asserts. "We are still writing our ancestors' stories."
 

About the Author
 

James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, a descendant of Turtle Mountain, is a renowned international speaker, author, educator and digital creator. His keen insights were developed through speaking with and recording elders and native language speakers across North America as part of the Ojibwe Language Dictionary Project. James is a passionate advocate for sharing how to live a life of 'mino-bimaadiziwin,' the good life. For over twenty years, he has facilitated community language tables, consulted with public and private organizations on language and cultural programs, and traveled internationally as a keynote speaker. He has been featured in numerous publications, podcasts, radio & television programs. James lives in the Twin Cities, Minnesota with his wife and son.

Ancient Rock Art May Depict Shamanic Music

More than 2,000 years ago, the Tukano people of the Colombian Amazon may have documented the soundtracks to their hallucinogenic experiences in petroglyphs on volcanic boulders. Consisting of what appears to be dancing human figures surrounded by zigzagging lines and other geometric forms, the enigmatic art eludes concrete interpretation, although a new analysis suggests that these abstract shapes may depict the songs that transported participants to other dimensions during Ayahuasca ceremonies. The pre-Columbian designs can be found at Toro Muerto, which contains one of the richest collections of rock art in South America. A desert gorge, the site is strewn with thousands of boulders, some 2,600 of which feature ancient carvings.

 

Describing the drawings in a new study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, researchers explain that the artworks contain "an almost overwhelming repetition of images of dancing human figures (known as danzantes), unique in the region, and an extraordinary accumulation of geometric patterns, most often in the form of vertical zigzag, straight and sinuous lines varying in width, sometimes with accompanying dots or circles." Previous attempts to interpret these zigzags have suggested that they may represent snakes, lightning, or water, although the study authors believe they may have an alternative meaning.
 

Examples of "danzantes" at Toro Muerto. Image credit: Tracings: Polish-Peruvian research team, 

compiled by J.Z. Wołoszyn/Cambridge Archaeological Journal/2024 (CC BY 4.0)

 

To build their hypothesis, the researchers point out the striking similarities between the drawings at Toro Muerto and the traditional artwork of the Tukano culture in the Colombian Amazon. In the case of the latter, geometric designs have been linked to the visions induced by the hallucinogenic brew Ayahuasca, which has been ritually ingested by Indigenous Amazonian communities for millennia. According to the Tukano these drawings were 'yajé images', meaning that they showed patterns they had seen while in an altered state of consciousness induced by consuming entheogens. Concentric circles, dots, wavy lines, zigzags and crenellation motifs dominated among them.

Anthropological analyses of these rituals have repeatedly highlighted the importance of music, with songs known as icaros being sung by shamans as a means of communicating with the gods and journeying through the spiritual cosmos. Ritual in many human cultures involves music; it is a key social technology for building and sustaining community. Ritual music is a universal way to address the spirit world and provide some kind of fundamental change in an individual's consciousness or in the ambience of a gathering. Experiences of ego loss and trance are important for integrating the individual into the group and maintaining community, and music is a significant element of such ritual activity.

Intriguingly, studies into the significance of zigzags in Tukano artwork have revealed that "the Tukano saw in them the representations of songs which were an integral part of the ritual, having also agentive power, and constituting a medium for transfer to the mythical time of the beginning." In other words, within a Tukano context, these shapes depict the shamanic music that mesmerizes ritual participants under the effects of Ayahuasca, delivering them to an alternate reality in which they are able to reconnect to their ancestral mythology.

Admitting that their theory is somewhat speculative, the researchers nonetheless conclude that these pre-Hispanic drawings "illustrated a graphically elusive sphere of culture: singing and songs. The interpretation we propose is of course hypothetical, but the conclusions it leads to constitute a logically coherent counter-proposal to previous interpretations of some of the Toro Muerto petroglyphs. We suggest that zigzag lines could be representations of songs, which seems particularly intriguing given the repeated juxtaposition of these patterns with the figures of dancers at Toro Muerto."