Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion

by Michael D. McNally

Overview

Like many Native Americans, Ojibwe people esteem the wisdom, authority, and religious significance of old age, but this respect does not come easily or naturally. It is the fruit of hard work, rooted in narrative traditions, moral vision, and ritualized practices of decorum that are comparable in sophistication to those of Confucianism. Even as the dispossession and policies of assimilation have threatened Ojibwe peoplehood and have targeted the traditions and the elders who embody it, Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe communities have been resolute and resourceful in their disciplined respect for elders. Indeed, the challenges of colonization have served to accentuate eldership in new ways.

Using archival and ethnographic research, Michael D. McNally follows the making of Ojibwe eldership, showing that deference to older women and men is part of a fuller moral, aesthetic, and cosmological vision connected to the ongoing circle of life—a tradition of authority that has been crucial to surviving colonization. McNally argues that the tradition of authority and the authority of tradition frame a decidedly indigenous dialectic, eluding analytic frameworks of invented tradition and naïve continuity. Demonstrating the rich possibilities of treating age as a category of analysis, McNally provocatively asserts that the elder belongs alongside the priest, prophet, sage, and other key figures in the study of religion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231145039
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	08/06/2009
Series:	Religion and American Culture
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael D. McNally is associate professor of religion at Carleton College. He is the author of Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion and Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance, and Myth of Michigan's Anishinaabe 1946-1955.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Aging and the Life Cycle Imagined in Ojibwe Tradition and Lived in History
2. Eldership, Respect, and the Sacred Community
3. Elders as Grandparents and Teachers
4. Elders Articulating Tradition
5. The Sacralization of Eldership
6. The Shape of Wisdom
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Larry Nesper

A beautifully and intelligently written, brilliant synthesis of soulful ethnography and sophisticated social theory. Michael D. McNally does us a great service by pointing out that we need a fuller reckoning of the centrality of social ethics to Native religions, and then delivering it.

— Larry Nesper, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Catherine A. Brekus

Honoring Elders presents a sophisticated, insightful examination of Native attitudes toward aging and eldership. It challenges scholars to add the figure of the elder to their categories for studying religion and urges them to rethink the category of tradition as something fluid rather than fixed. This book even provides a resource for thinking about how to view (or to experience) aging in America today.

— Catherine A. Brekus, University of Chicago

Editorial Reviews

A terrifically thought-provoking study of what honoring elders means.

The Circle - Heid E. Erdrich

Honoring Elders will prove an important foundational springboard for future studies on eldership to come.

American Indian Quarterly - Cary Miller

This work presents thoughtful philosophical reflections on the very idea of tradition...the author offers refreshing insights... highly recommended.

Choice

Honoring Elders will prove an important foundational springboard for future studies on eldership to come.

— Cary Miller

American Indian Quarterly

This is an extraordinarily fascinating book; an insightful and scholarly exploration of Native American attitudes toward aging and eldership.

— James Woodward

Reviews in Religion & Theology

An excellent resource for scholars studying aging, eldership, or the Anishinaabe people.

— Shelly E. V. Nixon

Religious Studies Review

A terrifically thought-provoking study of what honoring elders means.

— Heid E. Erdrich

The Circle

This is an extraordinarily fascinating book; an insightful and scholarly exploration of Native American attitudes toward aging and eldership.

Reviews in Religion & Theology - James Woodward

An excellent resource for scholars studying aging, eldership, or the Anishinaabe people.

Shelly E. V. Nixon

Honoring Elders will prove an important foundational springboard for future studies on eldership to come.

Cary Millern Indian Quarterly