The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives, and Dreams.

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

As part of McGill-Queen’s high-quality Rupert’s Land Record Society series, this book comprises a collection of stories and commentaries from Louis Bird (b.1934) from the Omushkego or Swampy Cree of Winisk by the western shores of James Bay. The collection comes from “over a thousand pages of transcriptions of Louis Bird’s stories compiled by University of Winnipeg students and others over the last several years” (pxvi). There is some overlap between the material in this book and that found in Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay (2005). For readers familiar with Cree stories, you will again get an opportunity to read the intriguing tales of familiar figures such as culture heroes Wisakaychak and Chakapesh, and the feared Wihtigo.

The editor and compiler, Susan Elaine Gray, research associate to a Canadian Research Chair in Aboriginal Peoples at the University of Winnipeg and author of “I will Fear No Evil: Ojibwa-Missionary Encounters Along the Berens River, 1875–1940 (2006). Following the wishes of Louis Bird, and her own inclination to let Aboriginal narrators tell their own stories without outside commentary, Gray edits with a very light hand, with few endnotes other than those that cite sources. Owing to that, the book contains no scholarly overview, but leaves the narrator free to tell his stories and make his commentary, warts and all, leaving his personal interpretations (e.g., concerning the relationship between his people’s traditional beliefs and those of Christianity) unchallenged and barely contextualized. Where Gray adds a much needed hand is in providing a long list of “Suggested Readings”, which includes many useful works, although perhaps the headings for these readings would have been better set as subject areas and not chapter titles, especially for someone new to the subject.

Overall, it is reasonable to state that this book adds another important page in the developing but unfortunately underappreciated literature on Cree beliefs, a literature that should be read by anyone interested in Aboriginal culture and history.