Dr. Heidi Bohaker's book, Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance, is a significant and important work on Indigenous legal traditions. It is difficult to fully capture the contributions to the body of scholarship made by this work because it certainly goes beyond a contemporary analysis of Anishinaabe law and history. As a legal scholar, and not an historian, there is much to be absorbed from Dr. Bohaker's impressive research. This work is broad enough to benefit a variety of audiences including legal advocates, historians, Indigenous studies scholars, and anyone seeking a more comprehensive understanding of European—Anishinaabe relations. Perhaps most striking about this book is its timing. This book catches the emerging global emphasis on the recognition, revival, and strengthening of uniquely Indigenous traditions.
The task before Dr. Bohaker, and any historian of Indigenous polities, is extremely difficult—how to accurately describe an Indigenous worldview, culture, legal traditional, political theory, that has existed outside the parameters of Western thought when the readership comes from that very same (foreign) tradition. But, she recognizes this problem and names it at the outset by stating that meaningful reconciliation, “will require coming to terms with both our shared histories and the separate ontologies that have informed our respective legal traditions and structures of government” (p. xx). This approach of re-examining historical facts long known and understood in light of a renewed appreciation of, and care for, Anishinaabe people drives the entirety of the book.
Throughout the book, Dr. Bohaker clearly pursues this task. The reader is regularly reminded to ask themselves—how did Anishinaabe communities view treaties and other interactions with Europenas? This question is the starting point for refreshing history. Dr. Bohaker does not suggest that long documented historical facts are wrong, but offers a refreshed view of the narrative accompanying those historical facts. Of course, the word “refreshing” throws a double light by suggesting that a reconsidered narrative provides a new understanding while also furthering an equitable and just vision of the longstanding (and continuing) traditions of Anishinaabe sovereignty.
While using well-known sources and contextualizing them within traditional and contemporary understandings of Anishinaabe culture and law from Anishinaabe scholars, Dr. Bohaker makes new and meaningful contributions to the comprehension of Anishinaabe communities and ontology. Once that approach is accepted, everything previously understood as historical “fact” requires revisitation with these newfound instruments of understanding. The traditional effort to translate or map Indigenous concepts onto “near enough” Western concepts leaves the nuance and import of Anishinaabe existence on the cutting room floor. Dr. Bohaker attempts to reconstitute our understanding by rejecting the translation option and instead, she endeavors to provide a more full account of Anishinaabe governance grounded in Anishinaabe worldviews, thereby recapturing its full complexity.
A huge part of grounding that understanding in Anishinaabe worldviews comes from coordinating Anishinaabe stories, places, animals, with the doodem that originate therefrom. Governance is not separate from those stories and kinship relations—these are all interdependent and essential. This approach of situating Indigenous thought and legal theory within traditional storytelling is an approach employed by prominent Anishinaabe scholar and law professor, Matthew Fletcher in many of his recent works (Reference FletcherFletcher, 2017, Reference Fletcher2020, Reference Fletcher2022). Inclusive of the Anishinaabe worldview, Dr. Bohaker explores how doodem are intertwined with both self and community and alliance. Her work emphasizes this by regularly pointing out and tracking the usage of doodem illustrations on treaties and other documents. These are not just symbols of community identify or self-identification, they are much more than that and speak to the role of representation, alliance, and care-taking of land embedded in Anishinaabe being. Without a thoughtful examination of culture, tradition, and community, the relevance of doodem is completely missed.
Beyond her commentary on doodem, Dr. Bohaker's development of an Anishinaabe-based comprehension of the role of alliances is a primary contribution to the literature on Indigenous law and governance. The council fire is an instrumental component of Anishinaabe governance and law. Anishinaabe governance is inherently complex and multilayered with alliances playing a central role in shared operations. Dr. Bohaker's re-examination of the historical record exposes the errors in comprehension committed by various European agents. As a general matter, Anishinaabe peoples did not see the various land agreements and treaties as singular transactional efforts to negotiate one particular aspect of life or commerce. These actions to engage in discussions and memorialize those in writing was understood by Anishinaabe peoples as existing within their own legal and cultural traditions of alliance and the council fire. Very few Europeans took the opportunity and devoted the time to understand this point. For the most part, Europeans were unconcerned with the nuance implicit in Anishinaabe culture and law, which of course lead to misunderstandings and conflict.
For example, Dr. Bohaker looks at treaties signed by French officials and Anishinaabe leaders from within the confines of Anishinaabe thought. By looking at the role of council fires, alliances, and doodem, the text carefully demonstrates that treaties are not simply viewed as transactions of land or agreements regarding military alliances (as per a typical Western legal vision). Instead, through Anishinaabe perspective, these treaties are evidence of Anishinaabe alliance with Europeans and an attempt to incorporate them into their pre-existing political and legal understanding of the world. In particular, Dr. Bohaker closely follows the history of one particular council fire: Credit River, which serves as a granular discussion of history, European relations, Anishinaabe kinship, and governance from the perspective of Anishinaabe peoples.
Dr. Bohaker's books succeeds in trying to unravel the errors committed in translating Anishinaabe culture into purely Western concepts. She does so by carefully re-evaluating the historical understanding and calling into questions longstanding narratives accompanying the factual record. A new narrative emerges. One that is harmonized with Anishinaabe culture, law, and worldview.
