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Ojibway Stargazing
Artist Carl Gawboy joined Annette S. Lee's Native Skywatchers project in part because of a 2005 story he did for Lake Superior Magazine.
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Native Skywatchers
The "Native Skywatchers" exhibition runs through August 31 at the Duluth Art Institute. On August 14, celebrate the project and books by Carl Gawboy, Annette S. Lee, Ron Morton and William Wilson during an evening program.
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Ojibwe Sky Star Map Constellation Guide
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D(L)akota Star Map Constellation Guide
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Talking Sky
When you look up to the stars, if you know any of the star configurations, you probably can pick out the Big and Little Dippers, and in winter, maybe even Orion, the hunter in the tunic with the star-string belt.
But as you marveled at the beauty of the night sky, have you ever wondered why you – of Scandinavian, Ojibwe or Irish descent, perhaps – are seeing a Greek guy up there?
“All human beings from all over the earth, all of human history, had a connection to the stars,” says Annette S. Lee, a professor of astronomy at St. Cloud State University. “People think the Greek (constellation) system is the only system. It’s really sad.”
Annette, a mixed-race Dakota Sioux woman and an artist as well as a scientist, has joined with others in reviving interest in the traditional sky interpretations of indigenous people around the world. Her Native Skywatchers project has been woven into two books, Ojibwe and Dakota/Lakota star maps, school and college curriculums and most lately inspired an exhibit currently on display at the Duluth Art Institute in The Depot.
Annette joined Ojibwe artists William Wilson and Carl Gawboy and author/geologist Ron Morton recently at the institute to celebrate the release of their new books relating to the topic: Talking Sky by Carl Gawboy & Ron Morton and guides to Ojibwe and D/Lakota star knowledge by Annette Lee and others.
Carl says that he teamed up with Annette in part because of a story he did in 2005 for Lake Superior Magazine. “Ojibway Stargazing” was based on Carl’s remembrances of night sky stories delivered by his father beside the campfire while they were out trapping.
“We were in the right setting,” recalls Carl. “That was when he told most of it. He was kind of a skeptic of traditional knowledge – he knew it, though.”
It was a blessing that he related these stories because few elders still remember stories of the Ojibwe sky interpretations and Carl today is one of the few with such knowledge. Carl’s father explained the four main constellations, linked to the four seasons – Naniboujou for summer; Moose for fall; Wintermaker, for winter, of course, and what Carl terms the most frightening of figures, Panther for spring. That constellation, which his father also called “Curly Tail,” was the warning of coming spring floods and a sign for people to move to higher ground.
In recalling his father’s explanations of the constellations, Carl was struck one day by how many of the pictographs portrait those figures. The images at Hegman Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness were his rosetta stone – showing Wintermaker, Panther and Moose. “The rock paintings face where something interesting is going on in the sky,” Carl says. He believes that is why the paintings are there.
Annette, who recently returned from an astronomy conference in South Africa, where local sky interpretations are also being reviewed and revived, says this is all part of a worldwide movement to “remember and honor the indigenous knowledge. Remember the past, but also help with the present in every day.”
“There are tons of things that are really amazing,” she says. “It’s why we wrote the book.”