BOOK: Heidi BOHAKER, Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). ISBN 9781442647312, USD 48.75

(Source: University of Toronto Press)

 

The University of Toronto Press is publishing a book on the Anishinaabe and clan identification markings on treaties and legal documents during the 17^th-19^th centuries.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Combining socio-legal and ethnohistorical studies, this book presents the history of doodem, or clan identification markings, left by Anishinaabe on treaties and other legal documents from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. These doodems reflected fundamental principles behind Anishinaabe governance that were often ignored by Europeans, who referred to Indigenous polities in terms of tribe, nation, band, or village – classifications that failed to fully encompass longstanding cultural traditions of political authority within Anishinaabe society.

 

Making creative use of natural history, treaty pictographs, and the Ojibwe language as an analytical tool, Doodem and Council Fire delivers groundbreaking insights into Anishinaabe law. The author asks not only what these doodem markings indicate, but what they may also reveal through their exclusions. The book also ooutlines the continuities, changes, and innovations in Anishinaabe governance through the concept of council fires and the alliances between them. Original and path-breaking, Doodem and Council Fire offers a fresh approach to Indigenous history, presenting a new interpretation grounded in a deep understanding of the nuances and distinctiveness of Anishinaabe culture and Indigenous traditions.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Heidi Bohaker is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1. The Doodem Tradition

2. Family in All Four Directions

3. Anishinaabe Constitutionalism

4. Governance in Action

5. Doodem in the Era of Settler Colonialism

Conclusion

Bibliography

 

More info here