Customer Reviews

North Spirit: Sojourns Among the Cree and Ojibway

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Paulette Jiles, the author, an American from Missouri, went to Toronto with a draft dodger in the 1970s. When the boyfriend dumped her, she stayed on in Canada and got a job in Northern Ontario running a community radio station for the Ojibway Indians. She lived in a log cabin, learned their language, and learned how to survive during the long cold northern winters. Later, she became a reporter on the Indian language newspaper, writing about forest fires, crimes of passion, and serious bush plane accidents.

Throughout, her love and respect for the Indian peoples shine through her writing as she brings legends and traditions to the printed page. Her quirky personality as well as the world around becomes very real, as does her own inner journey.

She is a reporter and describes what she sees. Perhaps that is why not every character she comes into contact with is fully developed. But there are some Indian elders whose stories she captured in just a few short pages.

And her descriptions of the danger and excitement of being dependent on tiny bush planes made me feel her anxieties.

I thank Ms. Jiles for bringing her experiences to the pages of this book and introducing me to these northern native peoples.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

best read ever! an adveture story as well as profound reflections, there's not another book like it.

THIS IS THE BEST DAMN BOOK I'VE EVER READ! READ IT OR YOU'LL MISS OUT ON THE BEST CREE AND OJIBWAY STORIES! YOU'D BE A FOOL TO MISS THIS ONE!