ABOUT THIS BOOK

Originally published in 1893 and 1901, Simon Pokagon’s birch bark stories were printed on thinly peeled and elegantly bound birch bark. In this edition, these rare booklets are reprinted with new essays that set the stories in cultural, linguistic, historical, and even geological context. Experts in Native literary traditions, history, Algonquian languages, the Michigan landscape, and materials conservation illuminate the thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge that Pokagon elevated in his stories. This is an essential resource for teachers and scholars of Native literature, Neshnabé pasts and futures, Algonquian linguistics, and book history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Blaire Morseau is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She was the first archivist for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, where she is an enrolled citizen.

REVIEWS

As Sacred to Us unfurls the complexity of Simon Pokagon’s work and the meaning his publications still hold for readers today. As Pokagon Potawatomi acts of bookmaking, his words and the material presentations of them are important intercultural artifacts. Simon includes several languages spoken by members of his community across the generations and gives insight into Anishinaabe philosophy, geosciences, and theology. This reprinting of his narratives allows the land his ancestors knew as “wawkwing dash Au-kee” (heaven on earth) to remain part of the way we understand the southwest shores of Mi-shi-gan (Lake Michigan) today.

—Margaret Noodin, cocreator of www.ojibwe.net, author of two bilingual collections of poetry in Anishinaabemowin and English

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Preface

Introduction | Bmejwen Kyle Malott and Blaire Morseau

A Note on the Texts | Kelly Wisecup

A Brief Survey of Documenting the Potawatomi Language | Corinne Kasper

Summary for Pottawatamie Book of Genesis | Blaire Morseau

Dibangimowin Pottawattamie Ejitodwin Aunishnawbe (Pottawattamie Legend of the Creation of Man) | Chief Pokagon

Summary and Geological Context for Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake | Nicholas Marcelletti and Blaire Morseau

Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake | Chief Pokagon

Summary for Algonquin Legends of South Haven | Blaire Morseau

Algonquin Legends of South Haven | Chief Pokagon

Summary for The Red Man’s Rebuke | Blaire Morseau

The Red Man’s Rebuke | Chief Pokagon

Printing and Circulating Simon Pokagon’s The Red Man’s Rebuke and The Red Man’s Greeting | Kelly Wisecup

Materiality and Conservation of Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Books | Oa Sjoblom and Marieka Kaye

Acknowledgments

Contributors

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