PAUL CORNISH
Paul Cornish
This is a transcript of a talk delivered at the British Association of Planetaria Conference 2nd September 2022. It was also broadcast online to attendees of the Presenter Network Conference. I’d like to begin with a story told by the Mi'kmaq of North America and Canada. It’s the story of Ursa Major, the great bear. The Mi’kmaq know this constellation as Muin, the Celestial Bear. The story of Muin begins each spring - in the month of March - and continues until October. Muin is standing in the night sky, having just come from her den. If you look up on a clear night, just after the sun sets, you can see the shape of the bear being chased by three other stars. These are the first of the seven hunters that chase Muin across the sky each year. The first hunter to see Muin is always Chickadee. After the long, cold winter he is very hungry and decides that Muin will provide a great feast. Chickadee is very small and asks some of his bird friends for help! First, Chickadee invites Robin and Gray Jay to join the hunt. They agree and join Chickadee behind Muin. These three birds are very small and so they decide they should invite more hunters to help in the chase. First, they invite Pigeon. Then Blue Jay. Then Barred Owl. And finally, Saw-whet Owl - and the chase begins! Muin moves along the horizon with the birds lined up behind her. As the summer goes on, Muin begins to tire and the small birds, Robin, Chickadee, and Grey Jay are beginning to gain on her. The larger birds, Pigeon, Blue Jay, Barred Owl, and Saw-Whet Owl start to fall behind and lose the trail. As autumn approaches Muin begins to turn upside-down in the night sky. The first three birds, Robin, Chickadee and Grey Jay, are almost close enough to strike, but the other four have almost completely lost track of the hunt and will soon begin to disappear beneath the horizon. October marks the end of the hunt. The larger birds have now completely lost the trail. First to disappear over the horizon are Barred Owl and Saw-whet Owl. Finally, Blue Jay and Pigeon also lose the trail, leaving only the three small birds, the hunters that are always hunting. Robin is the first bird to catch up with Muin. He kills her with an arrow and is so hungry after the long chase that he jumps onto the bear and begins to prepare the feast. This causes Robin to be covered in Muin’s blood! Robin flies to the nearest maple in the sky-land and shakes to get clean, the blood lands far and wide onto the leaves of maple trees below, turning them red each autumn. Robin cannot get the red blood off his breast and Chickadee tells him “that will be there as long as your name is Robin!”. As Chickadee and Robin prepare the feast, Gray Jay waits until the work is done before arriving. He is so pleased to avoid the work that he never hunts again. Instead, he always follows the hunters and then enjoys the meat of their hunt. This is how he got his Mi’kmaq name, which means ‘He-who-comes-in-at-the-last-moment’. Chickadee and Robin are generous, though. They allow Gray Jay to share the meat and they all dance around the pot as Chickadee stirs the meat! And so, the story ends. As autumn turns into winter and then into spring, the cycle will start all over again with Muin’s spirit entering a new she-bear each March, coming out of her den to be hunted by the birds throughout the summer. In this way life is passed from generation to generation without end. Over the past few years, I’ve been doing some research into Native American and Indigenous star stories like this one for our live Planetarium shows at We the Curious. I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned with you, BUT I’d like to emphasise that I’m no expert. The purpose of this talk is to discuss the importance of hearing the stories from the storytellers to whom they belong. I’ll share all my sources at the end of the talk, and I encourage you to check them out if this topic interests you. Researching Spring Stargazing I was taught a version of Muin’s story years ago while presenting in the Planetarium in Techniquest, Cardiff. I wanted to use it in our Spring Stargazing show at We the Curious but decided to try and verify its authenticity first. After a bit of Googling, I decided to email the Nova Scotia Museum. The Mi’kmaq Cultural Heritage Curator, Roger J. Lewis got back to me. He was kind enough to share the story I told at the start. He shared a written account and a video of the story being told by a Mi’kmaq elder. From the video I learned that the story should be told in the present tense because it’s always happening. Roger Lewis also shared some advice: “I would suggest that (the story) not be trivialized and (you should) reinforce that stories similar to this one are used for teaching purposes in a culture based on oral narratives.” We included this story in our Spring show – renamed The Ever-changing Sky - and it seems to have gone down well with both presenters and audience. As a result, I decided to find some Native American and Indigenous stories for our Summer Stargazing show – now called Colossal Cosmos. The Summer Triangle Muin’s story wasn’t the only tale I learned at Techniquest. I was also told a story about the Summer Triangle that always stayed with me. Image credit: Stellarium Once again, I went searching for a way to verify its authenticity. I found a version of it on a website called starlab.com that offers lesson plans built around Native American stories for inflatable domes. According to this story the Summer Triangle is actually a giant hand. “The Deneb-Vega line represented the curled fingers and fist, and Altair the tip of the pointing index finger of the Great Manitou or Great Spirit. When this hand pointed directly south early in the evening, it was time to start travelling south, for cold weather was on its way” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any other examples of this story anywhere. This article on starlab.com was by a lady named Doris Forror who seems to have retired. I couldn’t find any recent contact details or any information about her other than the fact that she once worked at a Planetarium in Ohio. I didn’t feel that this was enough to verify the authenticity of this story. I contacted Starlab but these days they are an equipment vendor and nobody working there now has any knowledge of these old lesson plans. But through them I was put in touch with an astronomer and Earth scientist named Chris Vaughan. He directed me to the work of Annette S. Lee – an astrophysicist and artist. Lee is mixed-race Lakota and she is the director of Native Skywatchers, a program created to record, map, and share Indigenous star knowledge. The website for this program – nativeskywatchers.com is fantastic. It contains recordings of talks and seminars given by astronomers, scientists, and indigenous cultural experts. Lee says on the website that the “overarching goal of Native Skywatchers is to communicate the knowledge that indigenous people traditionally practiced a sustainable way of living and sustainable engineering through a living and participatory relationship with the above and below, sky and Earth.” Carl Gawboy is one of the co-founders of nativeskywatchers.com. He’s a member of the Ojibwe and a painter. I recommend the book he and Lee have written about Ojibwe constellations. In one of the videos on the website, Gawboy gives a lovely example of the relationship between the sky and the Earth that Lee refers to - the Ojibwe story of the Great Moose. Image credit: Stellarium/ William Wilson The moose is very important to the Ojibwe. They provide food and clothing for the people. You may recognise the Great Moose as Pegasus and his antlers as Lacerta the lizard. The Great Moose constellation gains power as it rises throughout the Summer and loses power as it descends in the Winter. This reflects what happens with actual, real-life moose. They are powerful and aggressive throughout Summer, which is the best time to hunt them. Throughout the Winter they are weaker and skinnier, and their antlers fall off. This is not a good time to hunt them. Image credit: Etphonehome, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons At Hegman Lake in Minnesota there are Native American pictographs on the rocks that are thought to be between 500 and 1000 years old. One of them depicts a moose. Gawboy has argued that this is a painting of the Great Moose constellation – he was the first person to make this connection. Image credit: Stellarium He points out that the moose is a square-ish shape and has two blank spots on its chest that correspond with two stars that lie within the square of Pegasus in that exact spot. There’s another Ojibwe story that I like very much, and like the Mi'kmaq story I told, it’s about Ursa Major. The Ojibwe see this constellation not as a bear but as a fisher, which is a sort of North American weasel. Image credit: Stellarium/ William Wilson Fisher and his friends were hunting for food. The hunt had lasted for weeks, and it was snowy and cold. Fisher and his friends sent Wolverine up a giant pine tree to the sky-world to see why Spring was taking so long to come. He was gone for many days, but finally he returned. Wolverine reported that a giant ogre was keeping all the birds trapped in birch bark baskets, preventing the Spring from coming. The baskets were guarded by the ogre’s brothers. “We must kill him and free the birds!” said Fisher, picking up his bow, arrows, and knife. Fisher climbed the giant pine tree and jumped through an opening in the sky. He found himself in warm world full of flowers. He soon arrived at the ogres’ encampment where he was confronted by the ogre’s two brothers. Fisher was quick and he darted between their legs, freeing the birds from their baskets. The sky was black with the escaping birds as they all flew towards the opening into our world. They all passed through the opening in a great tornado of wings. The ogre and his brothers were furious, but once again Fisher was quick. He dashed between their legs and back to the opening. As he fell through the opening, he saw our Earth below him changing from white to brown to green – the Spring had finally come! Down Fisher fell towards the ground, the ogres’ arrows whizzing all around him. He landed on soft mossy ground but knew the ogres were close behind. He dodged their arrows as best he could, but he couldn’t shake them off his trail. Thinking he could fool them by going back up the pine tree and then doubling back, Fisher climbed the tree once again. The ogre and his brothers spotted Fisher and fired their arrows. From the tree Fisher leapt to the North but was struck by an arrow! Fisher was pinned to the sky by his tail and left to go around and around – where he remains to this day. But Fisher’s efforts were not in vain. Now that the birds were free the ogres’ lost their power over our world. They went back up the pine tree and never bothered our world ever again. Image credit: Stellarium/ William Wilson The illustrations you’re seeing are by an Ojibwe artist called William Wilson. He painted these constellations in the traditional Ojibwe “X-Ray” style. In Wilson’s words we are seeing the pictures “as the spirits see us. They see right through.” These Ojibwe constellation images can be found on Stellarium. I’ve included a link at the end of this talk to a video of Carl Gawboy telling this story which is definitely worth watching. He tells the story a lot better than I do and the video features a lot more of Wilson’s artwork. Kumeyaay Nativeskywatchers.com is a fantastic source of stories and information, but I still couldn’t find anything matching Doris Forror’s story. I had also contacted the National Museum of the American Indian in the States and they put me in touch with Michael Conolly Miskwish of the Compo Band of the Kumeyaay Nation in the San Diego/ Baja California area. Mr Miskwish recommended his book to me on Kumeyaay cosmology - Maay Uuyow. In this book, Miskwish explains that the cosmological knowledge of the Kumeyaay was once extensive. It was, however, suppressed - along with other beliefs and cultural practices - by Spanish invaders in the 1700s. In his book, Miskwish has pieced together the cosmological knowledge of the Kumeyaay using anthropological research and what has survived through Kumeyaay oral tradition. Although I couldn’t find anything specifically about the Summer Triangle, there were stories about the constellations associated with the triangle, including this lovely one about Cygnus. Image credit: Stellarium Instead of a swan, the Kumeyaay see Pehkay - the cross. This cross is associated with the human spirit at the end of its life, travelling to the east, west, and north to collect its shadows. The spirit then heads south on a long journey to a high mountain that connects with the path to the Maay hetat kur, or the ‘spine of the sky’. This is the path to the next world! When it’s very dark we can see this path running through the Summer Triangle. It’s more commonly known as the Milky Way. We went on to include the Kumeyaay story of the cross in our Colossal Cosmos show, but you may be wondering - what about my hunt for the story of Great Manitou’s hand? Well, Doris Forror’s story remains elusive. It may well be an authentic Native American story - after all, these stories are passed down orally and so maybe that’s how it was passed to Doris Forror. But since I know so little about Doris Forror, I didn’t feel comfortable using the story in a show. However, while endeavouring to find a primary source for her story I heard many other incredible stories and was able to learn a bit more about cultures other than my own. It’s very easy to repeat a story you’ve heard on the internet but seeking out the actual original storytellers can be a much more rewarding and enriching process. I would encourage you not to repeat these stories as I’ve told them to you but to check out nativeskywatchers.com and have a read of the two books I mentioned and hear these stories being told by the people to whom they belong. I’d like to finish with one of my favourite Kumeyaay stories. It’s one I would never have known about had I not begun my search for an authentic source for Doris Forror’s story. It’s a children’s story from Mr Miskwish’s book that was told to him by Stan Rodriguez, a Kumeyaay teacher who learned the culture from his grandmother and other Kumeyaay elders. The Sun and the Moon were getting married. They invited all the animals to a ceremony on top of Kuchumaa mountain. All the animals rushed up the mountain, except for two frogs, who lagged behind and decided to stop at a pond to mate. Afterwards the frogs began to set off up the mountain, but the girl frog realised she was in distress. Her belly had swollen, and she insisted on returning to the water, where she gave birth to lots of little tadpoles. She said, “Look what happened when we mated!” “We’d better warn the Sun and Moon!” said the boy frog. They hopped off as fast as they could but when they reached the ceremony, the Sun and Moon were angry with them for their tardiness. “Where have you been?” demanded the Sun. “Stop the wedding!” said the frogs. “But we’re in love!” said the Sun and Moon. “But if you marry, you’ll mate!” said the frogs as they pointed towards the pond full of tadpoles “And then look what happens! You are both sacred. There is only one of each of you. But if you marry and mate, the sky will be filled with Suns and Moons!” So, the Sun and the Moon agreed that they would separate. The Moon would have the night-time and the Sun would have the daytime and each would sleep while the other was out. But sometimes, the Moon comes out to visit the Sun, and we can see it in the daytime. Sometimes the Moon even kisses the Sun in the daytime. This is called “enyaa wesaaw” and is also known as a Solar Eclipse. Any questions? Bibliography
Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GBycod3qC0 Annette S. Lee, William Wilson, Jeffrey Tibbetts, Carl Gawboy ‘Ojibwe Sky Star Map - Constellation Guidebook: An Introduction to Ojibwe Star Knowledge’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ojibwe-Sky-Star-Map-Constellation/dp/0615986781 Michael Connolly Miskwish ‘Maay Uuyow: Kumeyaay Cosmology’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maay-Uuyow-Michael-Connolly-Miskwish-ebook/dp/B01MT2ZOXO/ Native Skywatchers www.nativeskywatchers.com The Great Moose https://www.nativeskywatchers.com/two-eyed-nasa-ojibwe.html Fisher https://vimeo.com/230360857 The Summer Triangle https://www.starlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/D.-9.-Native-American-Myth-v616.pdf UPDATE: A very relevant essay by Annette S. Lee and other experts was brought to my attention after this talk was written: Indigenous Astronomy: Best Practices and protocols for including indigenous astronomy in the Planetarium setting. Planetarian: Journal of the International Planetarium Society, December 2021, Vol. 50, No. 4.
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