R.I.P.

I was reading Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri’s Ojibwe; Waasa Inaabidaa, and began to think about the contrasts of our two cultures. 

I found it interesting especially, the contrast of our respect for the dead and the Ojibwe’s.  In our society, the only time that we really respect dead is at their funeral when they are buried, then we forget them.

We have dug up so many slave and Indian burial grounds to make way for supermarkets, parking lots and office buildings.  We would even dig up our own parents’ grave to make way for “progress.”  This is not how the Ojibwe teach their children to treat the area in which their dead lie: “They need to know their roles in protecting the area from any future development and of their responsibility to work to have the area forever set aside as a place to honor the Lake Superior Ojibwe,” (Peacock and Wisuri p. 41).

I like the awareness and respect that is carried from generation to generation in the Ojibwe culture for the people that have passed away.  There is a great effort to remember them.