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Michael Pomedli, Living with Animals: Ojibwe Spirit Powers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 335 pages. ISBN 978-1-4426-1479-6. $38.95 paperback.
Living with Animals: Ojibwe Spirit Powers is a unique book by Michael Pomedli, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. It takes as its focus the cultural symbolism of animals based on written and oral sources of the nineteenth-century Ojibwe. The sources range from birch bark scrolls, rock art, stories, missionary accounts, early ethnographies, to the oral history of contemporary Ojibwe.
In his preface, Pomedli situates the context of the uneasy relationship between the discipline of philosophy and the philosophy of Indigenous peoples, the latter often categorized as more of a religion than a serious philosophical topic. In the space of seven chapters he thus sets forth to challenge this assumption and uses the Ojibwe relationship with animals to demonstrate an Indigenous philosophy of human and other-than-human (animal and spirit beings) relations.
The first chapter, titled "The Grand Medicine Society, The Midewiwin," establishes the framework of Pomedli's book. He explains the symbolic meaning of animals and spirit beings in the Midewiwin, the initiation into this medicine society, and the Midewiwin's overall function...