Vessels for Recollection - the Canoe Building Renaissance in the Great Lakes (2015)

Abstract Over the last thirty years, members of Indigenous communities in the Great Lakes region of the United States have been involved in a revival of traditional birch bark canoe building. This essay is an outline of the significance and salient features of these grassroots endeavors, an assessment of this movement, and a proposal for understanding such revivals at the intersections of meaning, memory, power, and identity. This article articulates an alternative to models of social behavior, such as and nativism, by highlighting a contemporary movement in the United States that focuses upon cultural production, the reclaiming of iconic indigenous technology, the strengthening of identity, and perpetuation of community through memory work, while also emphasizing a counter-colonial resistance to assimilation. Exploring the canoe building renaissance in the Great Lakes region, I propose a new understanding of the events and perceptions that motivate Native peoples to reengage and recollect with past cultural practices. The catalyst of such is the recognition that turning to past cultural practices is a practical and efficient way to enhance individual and community indigenous identity. The article is an effort to assert the uniqueness of the community's history, culture, and the importance of the past and it is re-collection of both material culture and individual and community identity.Key words: Native American Indians, Great Lakes, Revitalization, Memory, Identity, CanoesDuring the past thirty years, American Indian communities1 in the Great Lakes region of the United States have been involved in a revival of traditional birch bark canoe building. Individuals and small groups of Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa Indians have initiated such projects in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Canoe building at the community level involves the recollection of technology and material culture at the intersections of memory, meaning, power, identity, and history. This renaissance is about representations of one's self and others, individual and community survival and sovereignty, and claiming the authority to reverse and rewrite history for Great Lakes area Indians. The canoe as a vessel is a tangible object, symbol, and a rich metaphor for carrying Great Lakes Indigenous peoples into their futures on their own terms.The catalyst for such is the recognition that reengaging the technology and material culture of the past is an effective way to support individual and community identity while resisting the continued onslaught of non-Native influences upon Indigenous cultures. This article is an effort to mark, reestablish, and assert the uniqueness of a community's history and practices and the importance of that legacy. It re-inscribes histories of dispossession with narratives of contemporary activism and influence. It is about the ways in which memory and history are constructed and deployed (ffalbwachs 1992; Megill 1998). This article contests the hegemonic narrative of American Indian history with what author Gerald Vizenor has called survivance by celebrating the ingenuity of their ancestors (Vizenor 1994). It promotes solidarity within the community while protecting the identity boundaries essential to maintaining a distinct sense of indigeneity.Cultural revivals have intrigued scholars for some time. Anthony F.C. Wallace was one of the first scholars to articulate a model for what he termed movements while studying the Seneca (Wallace 1972). In an analysis of the prophetic movement of Handsome Lake, Wallace concluded that such social represent a transformation of identity; a revitalization during which the identity of a community becomes transformed. Wallace argued that share three common characteristics: (1) there is an internal change usually resulting from outside pressure, (2) the process of change may be formalized, but it is not consciously initiated, and, lastly, (3) some form of religious revival often accompanies the process of change (Wallace 1972, 303). …