North Spirit: Travels Among the Cree and Ojibway Nations and Their Star Maps

by Paulette Jiles

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 038525539X
• ISBN13: 9780385255394
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Important for Everyone

In addition to the other comments made by earlier reviewers, with which I agree, this book provides an essential and extremely thoughtful look at the varied roles played by language and communication media in culture. During the brief narrative Jiles engages with film, theater, radio, television, newspapers, and several modern (English, French) and native (Cree, Ojibway) languages. She also transitions between "native" and modern technologies and living styles. Her extremely canny and wry observations on these phenomena provide more than they seem on first glance. This book is a deep meditation on the very nature of modernity, media and the social nature of language.

Casting a Spell

Paulette Jiles cast a wonderful spell over me with North Spirit, and when I awoke, I wanted to return to the world of the Cree and Ojibway: a world of simplicity, honesty, humour, community, connectedness, blessed silence. A world that perhaps never was in the white person's world. North Spirit comes at a time when I am shedding as much material wealth as possible. A time when I seek spirit within. A time when I would like to return to elders telling stories of the past, a time of magic. A time I would like to dwell in the northern woods. Paulette Jiles is magic, and she lyrically, poignantly shares her wondrous sojourn amongst the Cree and Obijway with eloquence, humour, compassion, elegance, care. A beautiful read. A keeper. I will visit North Spirit and Paulette again and again. It connects me with what feels right, real, and true.

A Story You Won't Want To Put Down

In North Spirit, Paulette Jiles has this amazing non-patronizing voice, which at the same time is conscious that she is a white person writing about Indian people who are letting her-this often goofy white person-see herself as a white person watching Indian people and being watched by them. You get the picture. The book is never sentimental or dismissive; the book never stumbles. I love the fact that she can poke fun at herself learning to be a white Indian, as seen through the eyes of her Ojibway and Cree friends and co-workers who help her to help herself in the new environment. I recommend this highly.

This is a wonderful book....

This book deserves to be far better known than it is. Though it is specifically about the First Nations peoples of Canada, in the end, it becomes clear that their struggles are everyone's struggles. Most dramatic of all is the story of the Elder who must continue to live in the same house with his unfaithful wife and illegitimate son. The Elder has killed the father of the son, while in a drunken rage. As the years have passed, the son has come to hate the Elder and the wife has too. Yet the Elder has become respected as a wise and reliable voice among his people. Endurance of his plight --his own moral frailty, and the suffering, deserved and undeserved, that it has brought him --has made him into a valued member of the remote village where he lives. The book is chock full of similarly valuable and hard-hitting vignettes and will leave readers of all races in wonder. As a source for detailed information on many aspects of Ojibwe and Cree culture, it also has a very useful place. The accounts of how perception of constellations varies greatly is especially interesting. "Orion The Hunter", for example, was and is for these northern woods dwellers merely part of a much different and larger picture, that of a canoe with two paddlers. Of course, a wonderful story attaches to the canoe, the paddlers, how they got in the sky and where they are going. Hats off to Paulette Jiles. Who cares if so few know and appreciate your accomplishment? In the next world, smiling Ojibwe and Cree people will be greeting you all the time and saying, "Hey, good job!"