Great Lakes Enclosures and Un-silencing the Midewiwin Ceremonial Complex

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Midewiwin is a ceremonial complex whose importance among the Algonquin-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes Region was noted frequently throughout the historical era. Various scholars have interpreted this ceremonial complex as an exclusively post-contact phenomenon, as a medicine society that evolved in relation to European-introduced diseases. This interpretation relies on a Euro-centric understanding of the indigenous concept of "medicine" resulting, then, in the silencing of the socio-spatial breadth and temporal depth of this indigenous ritual system. Various lines of archaeological evidence indicate a precontact origin to the Midewiwin. One such line of evidence comes from the circular enclosures indigenous communities built across the Great Lakes during Late Precontact. I have argued these enclosures embed deep and complicated social and religious histories, histories that were implaced in them. Here, I explore connections among enclosures at a large geographic scale in order to contribute to an un-silencing of the foundational, deep-time, and potentially, pan-regional significance of Midewiwin in the centuries prior to colonialism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24236