As Sacred to Us

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.

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

• 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