Di-bayn-di-zi-win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways by Jerry Fontaine and Don McCaskill (review)

Abstract

S P R I N G & F A L L 2 0 2 0 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W In a world where the place of Indigenous studies has been, to some extent, accepted within colleges and universities, can we confidently say that this acceptance— or incorporation— is occurring in a meaningful and lasting way? What does it even mean to “incorporate” a field that relies in large part on the use of Indigenous pedagogies, methodologies, ontologies, and epistemologies? Is it a matter of fitting such a field into preexisting colonial institutional structures or must there be a more rigorous process of coming to terms with what it truly means to support Indigenous studies? Can you “indigenize the academy”? Jerry Fontaine (Sagkeeng First Nations) and Don McCaskill take up the above questions in Dibayndiziwin (To Own Ourselves): Embodying OjibwayAnishinabe Ways and challenge the possibility of incorporating Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies into reconciliationbased efforts promoted by Western institutions of higher learning in Canada. Dibayndiziwin is primarily an Anishinabe studies text, one that prioritizes Anishinabespecific world views and “inahdiziwin” and “nahnahngahdahwaynjigaywin”— Anishinabe ways of knowing and being that are loosely compatible with the concepts of ontology and epistemology (p. 15). Though this monograph does speak broadly to Indigenous studies as a whole and to other Indigenous nations’ own Dibayndiziwin (To Own Ourselves): Embodying OjibwayAnishinabe Ways by Jerry Fontaine and Don McCaskill Dundurn Press, 2022