"The ancestors of the Ojibwe lived throughout the northeastern part of North America and along the Atlantic Coast. Due to a combination of prophecies and tribal warfare, around 1,500 years ago the Ojibwe people left their homes along the ocean and began a slow migration westward that lasted for many centuries.
Ojibwe oral history and archaeological records provide evidence that the Ojibwe moved slowly in small groups following the Great Lakes westward. By the time the French arrived in the Great Lakes area in the early 1600s, the Ojibwe were well established at Sault Ste. Marie and the surrounding area. An Ojibwe prophecy that urged them to move west to "the land where food grows on water" was a clear reference to wild rice and served as a major incentive to migrate westward. Eventually some bands made their homes in the northern area of present-day Minnesota.
The most populous tribe in North America, the Ojibwe live in both the United States and Canada and occupy land around the entire Great Lakes, including in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario." https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/native-americans/ojibwe-people (***Anishnabe is the overall group of culturally-related people that inhabit the area***)
"No matter what subject we turn to, the past is there within us. I try each time I write to listen honestly to those voices that inhabit me. Sometimes one echo rises up and gives shape to a whole poem. Sometimes the memories saftly shade the background like a painter's wash. But prominent or invisible, the stories I carry, the past I rememberm provide the relational depth and balance that I hope ground my work in a truth larger than my own small vision." - Kimberly Blaeser
Poem - Rituals, Yours -- and Mine