The Horn Bow

by Mauro Ruscello

During the 19th century Bodmer, Catlin and other artists painted Indians holding horn bows. The horn bow originates in the Plateau - Great Basin area, where the big horn sheep live; the Indians traded their precious bows at the tribal rendezvous at a fine price: a bow against two horses. The article goes on describing in detail the making of the bow, from the softening of the ram horns to the finished bow. Today these horn bows are not made any longer by the Indians, but they live among the non-Indian lovers of Indian artifacts, the Old Timers.

Environment and Tradition: the Chippewa

by Francesco Spagna

The Algonquian speaking Ojibwa are one of the largest Indian nations in North America and live on a wide area of boreal forest, from the Great Lakes region to the plains of Manitoba and Montana.Their ethnical boundary line is rather shaded down with their northern, eastern and southern Algonquian neighbors, but it is more definite with the western Siouan tribes. The Ojibwa or Anishinaabe, never formed tribal units, but organized themselves in bands culturally linked by linguistic and clan ties. The Chippewa, that is the Ojibwas living in Wisconsin and Minnesota, have a story of relatively peaceful contacts with the French, who began colonizing the area at the end of the 16th century. These newcomers sent young Frenchmen to live with the Indians, in order to learn their language and way of life. These coureurs de bois spent their summers at the Chippewa villages organizing the delivery of beaver pelts to their trading forts, then they went back to their country, but after some years more and more Frenchmen began to stop at their Chippewa wives' villages all the year round, favoring the birth of a French-Indian high country culture. This was made possible by Indian inclination to assimilate the European newcomers, but European demographic pressure during the 18th century, animal depletion on Chippewa hunting grounds, the establishment of missions and urban development, provoked serious changes for the native inhabitants.

In the 18th century the Chippewa and other Indian nations were involved in the colonial wars between Britain and France; pushed westward by the wars the Chippewa began a century long conflict with the Sioux tribes that lasted well into the mid-1860s. From the 1820s to the 1860s Wisconsin and Minnesota Chippewa signed many treaties with the USA, selling most of their lands and the mining rights of the rich Lake Superior copper lodes. The treaties recognized the Indian right to hunt and fish in the ceded territories, however, but when they were confined in their small reservation, they discovered that the meager resources had made them even poorer. In 1850 the yearly payment of the ceded lands was transferred from La Pointe, on Lake Superior, to a much more western location in Minnesota, Sandy Lake. This obliged the Wisconsin bands to move there walking for hundreds miles. The reason was usual bribing and exploitation of Indian alcoholism, so delay in payments, bad whiskey and a terrible winter journey in 1850-51 provoked the death of many Wisconsin Chippewa in the so called "deadly march". Desperation during these terrible years was relieved by the failure of trasferring the Chippewa west of Mississippi: Chief Buffalo succeeded in gaining the support of Wisconsin liberal and democratic people and avert this breaking of the treaties. This success has permitted the Chippewa to stay on their ancestral lands and, even if very poor and destitute, they could overcome diseases, starvation and underemployment and survive on a strict margin of economical self-sufficiency for some time.

This historical introduction enable us to understand the present situation in Chippewa reservations, where a strong push to assimilation coexists with the memory of the traditional way of life and a revitalization of old traditions. So the Chippewa exploit the forest and the many lakes of the region. The Chippewa have elaborated their identity on the birch ( for canoes, domed houses called wigwams, and containers), the maple tree (sugar) and wild rice (Zizania palustris). The Chippewa still hunt (especially deer and bears) and fish (especially night spearfishing of sturgeons and other fish attracted by torches) not only in their reservations, but also outside of them, reviving the old treaty clauses. Recently revived Indian spearfishing has provoked the reaction of local groups of non Indians, but international support has favored the Indians in court.

Starving to Death on Rabbits

by Sandra Busatta

The Subartic Shield is an ethnographic unit, even if linguistically divided into Athapaskans and Algonquians; it is geologically dominated by the Canadian Shield to which three main vegetation regions are superimposed: from north to south the tundra or barren, the northern transitional forest or tundra-forest ecotone and the closed boreal forest proper. Even if the barren areas are exploited seasonally, no Indian group lives permanently there. The uniformity of the Subartic environment has caused a substantial uniformity of way of life, which revolves around the summer-winter cycle. Especially winter has marked the inhabitants, requiring the greatest effort to survive. The Algonquian and Athapaskan peoples of the Subartic were big game hunters and animals supplied most of their food and raw material for colthes and tools, while the rest had vegetal origin. The most important animal game were the Barren Ground caribou, woods caribou and moose; other big game ruminants had very restricted distribution: elk, white tail deer, woods bison and musk - ox. Bear can be found everywhere in the forest but was not often killed, even if it was an important quarry for its fat and religious importance. Beaver was part of the diet especially in the eastern part of the Subartic and other small animals were killed, such as porcupine and hare. Birds and waterfowl were captured only seasonally in certain areas as well as fish. Small fur animals were killed only after the Indians entered the European fur trade, and waterfowl became a more important food resource only after the adoption of rifles and twines.

Subartic hunters needed a great quantity of meat for themselves and their families: in fact a hunter might "starve to death on rabbits", since their meat is lean all the year round. Big game supplied most meat with minimum effort, but when it was scarce the Indians' needs were satisfied by small game and fish, that required much more work. Starving periods are remembered in the reports and hinted by the windigo cannibal of the stories. Periods of bounty and scarcity were complicated by the need of saving food in shelters, while the Indian hunters could rely only on their small dogs for help. Only the Chipewyan used them for transport, while the strong dogs of British origin to draw tobogas were adopted by the Indians only at the end of the 19th century, even if the "sledge dog complex" had been a characteristic feature of the Great North since the 18th century, together with the Mйtis, the Hudson Bay Company factories and the other fur companies. Dog teams required a large quantity of food; they required rifles if fed with meat and a lot of time and twine nets if fed with fish. Even if it is true that if you are starving you can eat your dogs, while a snowmobile is not edible (and also requires fuel - food), snowmobiles have become common among Indian hunters, together with small areoplanes that transport them on the hunting grounds and avoid very dangerous back and forth journeys. Therefore the Indians find themselves in a very contradictory situation: they exploit technology to ameliorate their living conditions in a very harsh environment, keeping up a way of life which has been traditional for about 300 years. On the other hand they must face the threat posed by the industrial development of the Subartic and market economy, from which their present living tools come; they have less and less to sell on this market economy, beacuse their pelts are more and more losing value, while wearing fur has been contested by that economy's urban animalist children.

Even so called traditional native social organization and its idea of territory derives from the history of the fur trade: the name of "nation" given to the Indian groups is European. Cooperation almost never involved the whole "nation", but it involved smaller units, that sometimes united together in regional bands, whose composition was very amorphous. The local band composed of some families linked by blood ties was the most common hunting group. The settlement of the trading posts gave origin to the post band while the need of controlling the trapping lines favored family dispersion. Also the idea of territory changed: until 1850 "family hunting grounds" did not exist and access to land resources was "free"; the developing of the fur trade and especially of trapping favored the idea of family hunting grounds. They are considered a traditional division of the territory today; however the Indians have not been able to live on hunting without the help of the government for more than 50 years. The closing of most of the Hudson's Bay posts and the fur trade slump has been and is a tragedy for the native peoples of the area, while the efforts to disrupt "traditional" economy has almost destroyed native social organization and favored social collapse and degradation. In fact the Subartic does not offers many jobs to the Indians, discriminated racially and not educated to urban types of jobs. The fur trade, that softened the impact of European contact during the centuries, has proved an obsolete way of life: does this consideration give non Indian society the right to sweep it off as economically useless and culturally meaningless?

Spirits and Masters of Animals

Though nominally Catholic the Innu preserve most of the beliefs registered by the missionaries in the 17th century, but they do not see any contradiction in believing in Jesus, whose sphere of influence is human, and in the Masters of Animals. Hunting, in fact, depends on the benevolence of the Master of the animal hunted and respect must be shown obeying some rules, such as wearing decorated clothes, saving animal bones, etc. Distribution of game is also regulated by the laws of the animal spirits, that stress cooperation and sharing. Men cannot speak to the Masters directly, but only through "specialists of the sacred" that use drums, dream analysis, scapulomancia and the shaking tent. One of the most important Innu festivals is Makushan, when caribou meat and bones are eaten. Old people enjoy a very special status, coming first when food is distributed because of their relationship with animal spirits and withcraft. (from P. Armitage)

Caribou Hunters or NATO Bombers?

by Francesco Spagna

The lot of the Native Americans is various: exterminated, glorified or both. Innu lot is being invisible. Goose Bay is the gloomy capital of a world "at the end of the world" for NATO pilots in the middle of Canadian wilderness and has become, for more than 10 years, the main NATO low flights base for German, English and Dutch pilots. Italians and Belgians are going to join them. Those pilots consider this area a "no man's land", but Indians have been living in Nitassinan (eastern Quebec and Labrador) for thousands years. These Algonquian speaking small communities have always lived on hunting caribou, trapping fur animals, killing geese, fishing and berry gathering. The Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) see their quiet, silent country violated by the terrible, shocking noise of foreign armies jets. In the crisis of Innu traditional economy connected to the fur trade and Catholic missions, some Indians have managed to revitalize their hunting culture. Now this effort is threatened by NATO. "Our way of life seem outlawed; the only thing we are allowed to do is getting drunk", says a Sheshatshit Innu inhabitant. Jet sound shocks not only have serious psychological consequences on people and particularly children, but can produce the effects of an explosion on the human body. Also environment is endangered: animals either have miscarriages or stop milkimg or hatching. Waterfowl and fish have been found dead on river and lake shores. This disaster threatens Innu survival in the wilderness. Some Innu community have been forced to leave their hunting grounds and move elsewhere, settling in permanent villages. Many Innu communities have not given up fighting this imposition, especially now that the flights are going to be doubled or tripled on Nitassinan. Though Canadian government has answered repressing Innu protest, the Innu are going to resist.

Paralized Ecuador

by Robert Andolina

A report of the Indian revolt that paralyzed Ecuador for a week in June 1994.It was the second time the Indians united to paralyze the country's economic activity and this time they were supported by non Indian workers and peasants. Notwithstanding army intervention they succeeded in having reformed agrarian law in August.