American Indian Representations of Totemism Today at Indian Summer Festival 2016

Indian Summer Festival, reportedly the largest such festival for Indian People, took place from September 9th to 11th at the Henry W. Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee's downtown lakefront. Indian Summer Festival presents a somewhat different view of American Indian life and culture compared to what I saw at the Shalom Wildlife Zoo. I was particularly gratified to see an explanation of Great Lakes Indian tribal organization that presented the structure, meaning, and history of Great Lakes Indian totemism. As an anthropologist, totemism is an important symbolic cultural system that is foundational to our field. It continually re-emerges as a pillar of anthropological insight because it links the domains of symbolic, social,animal, and material worlds. Indeed, it would seem that under American Indian clan organization, there is limited separation between the animal, material, and human worlds. They are interrelated in a symbolic social system. They were represented in a grassy knoll with installations by 'living cultures of the Great Lakes.'

At the Shalom Wildlife Zoo totemism was represented as a personal avatar. A sign near the beginning of the zoo trail explained that Indians chose a totem animal that they felt close to; then it explained that if visitors had an animal that they felt close to as a child, then that is the visitor's "true totem." The placard finishes by referencing the phenomenon in which dogs and their owners tend to look alike.

There is some reasonable truth in some of this explanation. Emile Durkheim established social anthropology with his study of totemism in the late 19th century. He explained that people do indeed have individual totems that may be animals.

But totemism as presented at Indian Summer Festival 2016 emphasizes the social and collective levels of totemism, which is also the focus of anthropological studies of totemism.

At Indian Summer Festival totemism is presented as a structure for organizing tribal society. The totemic animals symbolize the divisions within this system. More than one's name - let alone a personal totem - the presentation at Indian Summer Festival shows that the most important aspect of one's identity was once one's clan within the totemic system. "What clan are you from" one would ask, not 'what's your name?'

This explanation of the clan/totemic system explains that the totemic system and its clans define both the meaning and location of 'community' for Ho-Chunk, Oneida, and other Great Lakes Indians groups, but also the overarching structure into which these community elements fit. Totemism, then, provides a multi-level social order as well as a symbolic map for keeping that system straight in one's mind. Moreover, according to the display at Indian Summer Festival, social functions and values are connected with different clan totems.

 

This explanation of Great Lakes totemism and clan organization also accords with Carol Mason's account of Ho-Chunk (aka Winnebago) totemism. But what seems most illuminating here is the presentation of a historical representation of Great Lakes clan organization. In this image (below) we see multiple clans represented by their totem with lines connecting them through their eyes and hearts. Notice that all lines go into the crane and leave through the crane's eye as a single strand. The Cran Clan was tasked with leadership and external communication (see above). This image, then, is a pictorial representation of Chippewa (Ojibwe) tribal structure and authority. Here we might interpret this image to say that the leader of the Cran Clan - probably Oshcabawis of "Monomoneau, WI" - is the legitimate spokesperson of the Chippewa clans. We might also interpret the twin badger-like creatures as depictions of the moity system Mason attributes to Great Lakes tribes. The small badger-like creature may be an additional division - an anomaly to a perfect moiety system.

At the Indian Summer Festival Milwaukee's Indian Peoples both presented and explored the past and present of Great Lakes area tribes. Indeed, as I suggested in my Shalom Wildlife Zoo post, Indian People are plenty able to speak for themselves; and they do, for our collective benefit.

Que los dioses bendiguen a Univision...well, almost...

"May the gods bless Univision...well, almost..."

I've long had an issue with cable TV. Actually two issues. First, there's so much crap on cable TV that directly contravenes everything I'm trying to do as a knowledge-worker that I really don't want to support it. The History Channel, of course, is enemy #1 for continually broadcasting anti-science (worse than pseudoscience) so intensively that it's often impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone on the street about archaeology. Typically I end up spending a few minutes kindly explaining that, while I wouldn't rule out the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, there is no evidence at all that extra-terrestrials had anything to do with any of the amazing archaeological sites that raise the profile of archaeology. I think that's a pretty accommodating and appropriately open attitude to have. Unfortunately, it also means that I spend a few minutes undoing the bad work of the History Channel and never get to talking about basic things like some surprising similarities and differences between our own and prehistoric societies.

Secondly, I cable is expensive. With my meager budget, cable is not a monthly expense that I want to take on. So, I make do with broadcast TV and whatever I can find through online on-demand subscriptions. Frankly, I tend to watch only PBS News and Masterpiece Theatre. That's plenty. Plenty to make me a real snob, probably, too.

But it also means that I'm completely unable to watch hockey, soccer, many American football games, rugby, cycling, and many other sporting events that are incredibly important to a lot of the rest of the world.

For example, today is the first semi-final World Cup match being contested between Brazil and Germany. I checked my local TV listing and it's not on broadcast. This is one of the most watched sporting events on the planet. And it's not on broadcast. That's to say, it's not on English language broadcast TV. The other FIFA affiliate is broadcasting Katie and Eyewitness News while Germany perpetrates what will be one of the most memorable soccer games ever by 5PM tonight. No one will remember either of those daytime programs on the English language station.

So, while the gringo networks snooze along mid-afternoon, Univision is broadcasting - free of additional charge - the semifinal. Now, I'm not offering a full-on and unconditional applause for Univision. Like many media outlets, it certainly has its issues; not least among them is the role of women on television and machismo, more generally.

However, what it is certainly doing is providing a consistent and dependable opportunity for virtually the entire world - certainly the entire Spanish-speaking world - to contemporaneously experience a major world sporting event. For example, when I travel to Peru next week, I feel confident that I'll be able to discuss with my Peruvian friends how Univision's comentaristas declared this game Brazil's worse loss since the 1920s. That is, only 30 minutes into the game, with at least 60 yet to play. At 34 minutes in, was this game a fait accompli? Maybe so. More important is that the rest of the Spanish-speaking world and I will now have a common point of reference for an interesting debate.

Univision's foresight to broadcast (or is it that they would never consider not broadcasting?) the World Cup is an example of the production of a global public. Literally, an enormous segment of the world population tunes into Spanish-language television because it's the most dependable and economic means to tune in. Myself included because - among other things - cable is expensive.

Rather than sincerely thanking Univision, what I might do instead is to highlight the pleasure of participating in a 'culture' beyond the one in which I was raised. All critiques of media-consumption-as-participation aside, it's pretty great to be able to watch the World Cup at home (and not by paying table-rent at a bar) and to do so knowing that much of the world is following the same video feed.

PS: A note on the actual contest between Brazil and Germany. This game highlights for me the power of teamwork. Four of five goals by Germany were scored because a potential shooter passed the ball. Each time, Brazil's players converged on the attackman, thereby leaving open one or more players slightly behind. In each of those cases, the likely shooter passed back to a less-likely shooter who shot and scored. I don't know if this is unique to World Cup soccer. It may be a reasonable strategy to assume that players from diverse club teams will shoot rather than pass because they're not accustomed to assisting their fellow national team players. Alternatively, it may be that Germany has absolutely focused on fundamentals that the Brazilians had entirely underestimated.