The Universe Of The Ojibwe Anishinaabeg, an illustrated glossary by Zhaawano Giizhik*

The Universe of The Ojibwe Anishinaabeg by Zhaawano Giizhik - 2014
Thus, taken in the widest sense, Aki not only means “earth” or “country” but also
“cosmos” – a diversified and complex social circle of overpoweringly immense and
timeless proportions, completely devoid of emptiness and (linear) time, and permeated
with and unified through certain values and properties such as kinship, mutuality, and
reciprocity. In conclusion, the earth herself, a star, a sand dune, a river, a rain cloud, the
winds, a human being, a fish, and so on – all these myriads of “next of kin persons”
composing the sacred web of life can be traced back to one cosmic source. Some call it
JIIBAMAAMAA, or Source of Powers; others call it GICHI-MANIDOO, or Great Mystery.
In the traditional Anishinaabe conception, the earth, which Sky Woman - with the aid of
a muskrat - created on the shell of a huge turtle, is flat. MIKINAAKOMINIS, or TURTLE
ISLAND as it is called, is filled with the usual beings (plants, animals, humans, and
features of the land) as well as the supernatural. Since the Great Mystery divided the
creation into four inter-reliant orders– physical world, plant world, animal world, and
human world – and four powers that compose the physical world – wind, water, fire, and
rock – and subsequently sent four supernatural beings to the earth to teach mankind
wisdom and medicine - Majiigawiz, Papiigawiz, Jiibayaabooz, and Wiinabozho -, it is only
logical that the Anishinaabeg tend to group everything in fours.
Anishinaabeg recognize four divisions of time:
the day, the night, the moon, and the year;
four directions in the universe: east, south,
west, north; four kinds of plant beings:
flowers, grasses, trees, and vegetables; four
plant beings connected with the four directions
and considered exceptionally sacred: tobacco,
cedar, sage, and sweetgrass (see image to the
left); four parts in everything that grows from
the earth: the roots, the stem, the leaves, and
the fruit; four kinds of animal beings: those
who fly, those who swim, those who crawl,
and those who walk; and four hills that mark
the stages of human life: babyhood, childhood,
adulthood, and old age.
Likewise, in spite of the general Native
American belief that a person – be it a man, an animal, a plant, or a stone - consists of
three parts, being: body (the physical part), spirit/soul (the consciousness associated
with the person), and a mind (which resides in the brain), traditional Anishinaabeg
sometimes distinguish at least four different component parts in each life form that are,
to varying degrees, interchangeable. These are called: wiiyaw, which is the outward
manifestation of self (the body, which may de-materialize into jiibay, or a ghost, after
death); jichaag or ojichaagoma, which is a person’s true life force (spirit and soul, the
core of self); jiiban, or a perceptual essence called “shadow” (a sixth sense); and
jiibaaman (aura), which is an entity that emanates from a person’s spirit/soul/shadow.
By the same token, a lake, or a rock, or a tree, or a blade of grass possesses (at least
some parts of) these substances as much as human beings or fish or tiny insects do. The
possibility of interchanging body/ghost, spirit/soul, shadow, and aura within one and the
same person, along with the occasional appearance of the jichaag of one life form in the
wiiyaw of another, makes the world of the Anishinaabeg an evocative dream world filled
with mystery, a sometimes adventurous or even terrifying place to live in: things are
often not at all what they seem…
Besides Aki, the earth’s surface, there are many other realms of cosmos, of which the
four quarters of the world, the air above the earth, the sky dome, and the underworld
are the most important. These and many other realms are unified in the changeless and
The Universe of The Ojibwe Anishinaabeg by Zhaawano Giizhik - 2014
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