Robert L. Stearns JR ap Oshewano's Home Page

'NIN NIB.WAKA ISH.KOONI.GADE O.DAMI.NONA.NANJ ANOO.KIGI-KIJI.TOON.'(all things considered, I decided to work before I played.)


family bear ceremony.

'MITIGO-CHIMAN ANISHINABE-WINIKASSOWIN ANISHINABE-MOWIN, WENI.PACH CYBER-AKI BABA.IJA!'(There is a ship [canoe] named chippewa language, that goes where it wants in cyber-space!!)

KABE-GI.JIK (all of us)

Thoughts & history of
Robert L Stearns JR ap Oshewano

Nom de Societie.

4July1999.

We have experienced two earthquakes in the Seattle area in the last forty eight hours, so I suspect I should stop putting off writing this piece. Besides, I find myself on a major calendar anniversary and it seems meant to be the time to express these thoughts.

Nom de Societie. Nom de Guerre. Nom de Plume. Nom de Theatre. Now that we have all the similar vehicles in the same section of the used car lot, let's look inside them, shall we?

Don't rush to your dictionaries just yet. You wouldn't find 'Nom de Societie' in yours anyway. Of the other three 'Nom de Guerre' is likely the most familiar. It is French for 'war-name' or a name taken for use in war. It is seldom seen on an actual battle field, since anyone pretentiously literate enough to consciously take a Nom de Guerre is probably too wiley to be found anywhere near actual weapons being used in anger. More often it is a device of the political arena. Owners of famous Nom de Guerre's include Lenin, Bill Clinton, and the current mayor of Seattle, Paul Schell. Those aren't their real names. Not the names they were born with, anyway. (Now run to the bookshelf, for the biographical dictionary! I am not getting up from my keyboard to go look up the exact spellings of the original names.) For one reason or another (name too foreign sounding, name too forgettable or complicated for the voting booth, name weakens because of its association [for the owner, if not others] with a distasteful father, these three gentlemen, and many others renowned in history or unknown in your neighborhood, changed their names. It is for precisely the opposite reasons that the Nom de Societie was born. Read on and I shall explain!

.......

The Chippewa Language Site was born in my heart about 2 minutes after hanging up from a phone conversation with my Aunt Rosemond. It was the first phone conversation I had ever had with the sister of my father. As a child I had met her, but not as an aunt. Instead I knew her as the wife of my Uncle Red (Red Radish). She had been adopted by the teachers that had been sent to the Soo Band as demanded by my Mishnomis Louis Oshawano under one treaty or another. (It is apparently the same treaty that layed the groundwork for the agreement with the state of Michigan for higher education tuition).


This is about Nom de Societie, not treaties, and I am no treaty expert by any means, just sharing what I have heard from family. I mention this first phone conversation with my father's sister as a touch point for the birth of Nom de Societie. First there is the taking of my aunt by the treaty teachers because she was "pretty and smart" and they could give her a better life. This is not a disparagement of the teachers, my aunt loves them as the kind and loving people who raised her, and if put in historical context, their act is viewable as preservation against great odds of success. There is a doubt that my aunt would have been able to relate the story of my Mishnomis Oshawano if they hadn't raised her. But she was "taken" adopted, raised "apart." Given an identity of whiteness with a romantic Indian past. The "descended from chiefs' romance you hear from so many bar stools in America. My aunt was informed, at least partially of her people, contrasted with my father being beaten by his mother with a sawed off broom handle for speaking chippewa, and also for "looking" chippewa. Again, given those times I am sure my grandmother thought she was doing a difficult but necessary chore in helping teach an Indian boy to 'pass,' as white. The true horror is found in my father and his sister being raised next door to one another, and my father not knowing the relationship.


It is an oft repeated history of identity removed, slipped and torn away, crushed and defaced. The powers brought to bear in this task were gargantuan, colossal, all pervading. From kitchen table chat to the Capital Building's chambers of august pontificating.


It was all intended to fail. Else I would not be sharing these words. I don't know how or why, but some force, some wind of honor blew through the whole thing. My people live, and know themselves. The door could never be fully closed. So many people intuitively, instinctively, claw back to the truth. I know this is because mine are a people of honor and justice. Justice is the heat and honor the light of the Three Fires. I wear my Nom de Societie in the warmth of acknowledgement of my people, and the shimmering surrender to them being me and me being them.


I bear a Nom de Societie and not a Nom de Guerre' simply because it is a name of peace, not war. I think the ultimate victory is in finding peace, in living in peace and dieing in peace. It is not a name to write under (Nom de Plume) to conceal my identity in order to speak more freely, nor is it a name for stage or film (Nom de Theatre).

My Nom de Societie was not born in a dream vision, picked up at the local tourist's version of a naming ceremony , handed to me for a few dollars paid to someone reading a lexicon of Original People's languages or even imagined, wished for, after watching some moving, romantic film, like, 'Dances with Wolves.' A Nom de Societie isn't a word poster, pinned up and taken down when it no longer inspires the pumping blood of emotions or quiet reflections of oneness. My Nom de Societie is my "Indian Name" but yours may be your Polish name, or your English name, or your Chinese name. My Nom de Societie is based, 'earned' in my family history. The appelation "ap" is scot/celt, for those wondering. It means 'son of' and by extention "descended of." I made it a part of my Nom de Societie to honor my mother. This web site is about preserving language, culture, history, and what better way to preserve my ancestory than to force the world at large to address me as descended from Oshawano? What better way to use the honored names, the original language, in a meaningful way?


Taking a Nom de Societie is a conscious act, a pronouncement to the world of who you should be identified with, what side you stand on. It is a reminder to you of who you are. I sign mine on letters to the city council, letters to the editor. I speak mine when addressing an assembly. It is a sign, a notice that what I am saying comes from the same place I come from. It is a signal that I thought about this because to honor my past I made sure I respect the present and lay good things down to welcome the future. It means I am serious. It means I am sincere. It means in council, that you are getting the very best I can give because I speak words flowing from blood brought forth by a sawed off broom handle. From the body of a child alone in a snow swept winter night with no hope of ever seeing his father again.


I am, Robert Leicester Stearns JR ap Oshawano. These are my thoughts today.


Words from my Journey.

11October98.

Long journey to come to these words. In such a short time! Like all good journeys, this one leaves me with a world view I could not see before. The wind felt different on my face before I began. The fire warmed me in another way. Water quenched my thirst well, before, but refreshes me in a new way. The earth moves beneath my feet in a manner I had never noticed.

From Queen Anne in Seattle I (of the Soo Tribe Diaspora) can see with new keeness, these things. The cities of my day now seem like villages, crowded, prideful, impermanent; re-inhabeted by the re-animated on the arrival of each opportunity to look directly at the sun. Like layers of geologic time at an archeologic dig, yesterday's litter pulls the blanket of today's trash over itself. The forest, migrating with millinial slowness to flee the puddeling fabrications of this post-modern age, glistens and sways majestic¸¸; each green thing however, wears the dirty face of unwashed children. Anticipating the sky, mountains sit on the distance, reminding me of fate-submitting elderly blankly and only momentarily occuppying nursing home lounges, while their replacements train hard in the disciplene of growing old.

The chinook wind is empty when it comes, no smell of smoking salmon, no chinook people to build the fires or feast from their labor come winter. The salmon, like sperm cells once fluttered and fought their way home to the sea-salt, engorging the birth-channel of the world, gently waking fertility to action. The greed of sheer numbers has drunk the water dry. Do Chief Sealth's (Chief Seattle's) people still so love this eden that they keep us shadowy company in our shops and sitting rooms?

In this, my day, Sacred tobbacco is used to kill and sicken; the power of the life that was here before is put into machines that mark the evening sky with a yellow-brown crown, trapping the body-heat of the world, crowding the lungs of the weakening two and four-legged. The beingness of the Medicine Hoop is translated, not to protective shields, but wheels for the machines.

Yet from the centre of the universe, from Baweting, a phrase of meaning arrives, a trophy of my journey. "We prepare for the seventh generation."

Those are my thoughts today.

ISH.KOOTE GA.NOODAN WAYA.WIYE!

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