Like many Native Americans, the Anishinabe are known for their self-expression in songs and chants. The following is the traditional love song of an Anishinabe girl:
Oh, I am thinking
Oh, I am thinking
I have found my lover
Oh, I think it is so.
As a married woman and a mother, she might sing the following cradle song:
Who is this? Who is this?
Giving light on the top of my lodge?
It is, I, the little owl, coming,
It is I, the little owl, coming,
Down! Down!
The modern writer Louise Erdrich, an Anishinabe of North Dakota, has continued this tradition of selfexpression through novel-writing, including her first two books Love Medicine (1984) and The Beet Queen (1986). Gerald Vizenor, another Anishinabe author, has written
Anishinabe birch-bark transparency, made from a piece of inner bark, folded and bitten to form a design that shows clearly when held up to light.
The Heirs of Columbus (1991), Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (1999), and numerous works about Native American literature.
Another Anishinabe writer, Winona LaDuke of Minnesota, author of the novel Last Standing Woman (1997), is also a political activist and run for U. S. vice president on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000. In 2004, she published Four Souls.
World History
