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.