You're Darned Right It Was Cold:
Trip to an Ojibwe/Lutheran Wedding Near the Canadian Border

The decor and offerings of the cafe in Ely wouldn’t be out of place in Palo Alto. The people, though, that’s another story. The queue at the counter was made up of middle aged couples with teenaged kids, all with high red color in their cheeks from the wind chill and wearing snowmobile suits reeking of snowmobile fuel.

You're darned right it cold. It was 22 degrees below zero yesterday morning (3/3/03) when I left Fortune Bay resort and casino at Lake Vermilion for 9 o'clock Sunday Mass in the nearby town of Tower. The faint squeaking sound my boots made breaking through the super-frozen snow as I walked from my car to the Church struck me as one I hadn't heard for a long time. You don't hear that sound unless the temperature is way below zero. You never hear it where I live now in San José, California.

It warmed up, though, so that by the time my son and I left the resort for the Duluth airport around noon, it was only -17. At around 5 p.m. California time, we arrived at San Jose terminal C. C is the old terminal where you have to walk down a set of stairs to the runway to get off the plane. A woman walking down the stairs ahead of us complained about the 55 degrees cold, and we were amused.

There's a kind of snobbery in those of us who have learned to tolerate extreme weather. My former husband and I once bought a button that read "40 below keeps out the riff raff," when we lived near Fargo, North Dakota. We thought it was ironic. 40 below hadn't kept us out . . ..

It was great being back in Minnesota. Most people were very friendly. I never saw Theresa, the bride, look so radiant and happy. She and Shane, the man she married looked very much in love. Theresa is 32 or so, close to the age of my son, Liberty. They had met while we all were entertainers in the late 80s at the Minnesota Renaissance festival. I grew to especially like Theresa because of her sweet friendliness and because she went on to get an art degree, like me. I saw a little of myself in her creativity in other ways too. We sew, we paint, we both go down strange creative side alleys. When I saw her beading moccasins, I thought of my own experiments in beading in the 60s. And I loved her for her hospitality. We had visited her a few times when she lived in North Hollywood for a few years after college. She had stayed with us a few times in Milpitas, and I had stayed with her once in an apartment she rented in the Grand Avenue area of St. Paul.

Theresa is of Italian-Swedish and other European ancestry. The man she married, Shane, is 26, an Ojibwe Native American. They met at a pow-wow. Theresa is one of many whites who regularly participate in pow-wows. They had met some of their wedding guests through Native American chat rooms. One woman, Mia, had flown in all the way from Sweden for the wedding. Another woman named Lynn drove up from Missouri with her husband even though they had never met Theresa and Shane in person before.

Her parents were delighted because they were praying that Theresa would meet a good man. And everyone in the family was unanimous in proclaiming Shane to be the nicest man they had ever met.

In the north country, the resident population seems to be pretty evenly mixed between dark-haired Native Americans and blonde Scandanavians, predominantly Finnish, and you also find a sprinkling of middle class city people of a slightly wider range of ethnic backgrounds who have vacation or retirement homes up there. Theresa's family fits the latter category.

While I was in the north country, I had other adventures besides the wedding. On Saturday, with 5 hours free before the church wedding was to start, I drove up to Ely to look around and had lunch there in a cafe. Ely is at the end of the road on the edge of a huge network of lakes called (for those of you non-Minnesotans who might be reading this) the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) near Canada.

The decor and offerings of the cafe in Ely wouldn’t be out of place in Palo Alto. The people, though, that’s another story. The queue at the cafe's counter was made up of middle aged couples with teenaged kids, all with high red color in their cheeks from the wind chill and wearing snowmobile suits reeking of snowmobile fuel.

I asked the blonde young female counter clerk who waited on me, "Is this a hangout for snowmobilers?" "It is, now," she dead-panned. I quipped, "I saw all the snowmobiles in the alley. I feel weird because I drove here in a car." She blurted out, "I feel weird selling them beer." When those words first came out of her mouth, she looked a little surprised at herself for speaking so frankly, then seemed relieved when I laughed.

The spectre of news stories of accidents caused by alcohol-impaired snowmobilers hung unspoken between us for a moment.

A group of 40ish trim nice looking mostly-blond women (non-snowmobilers by the looks of them) in the booth behind me talked of many things. It came up that someone named Arla had a baby that was 10 lbs. 11 oz. The speaker said that her own daughter didn't realize how lucky she was that granddaughter Frankie was only 6 lbs. 8 oz. There was a significant pause.

Talk moved to one woman's bout with breast cancer. "I am doing fine," she told them. "Did you keep the breasts?" another woman asked. "Oh no, I don't have anything to do with that sort of thing." Another chimed in, "Some women have ceremonies. They bury them." "Oh, not me," the survivor said again. The drawn-out Minnesohta pronunciation of the "O" sound was particularly strong this time in her voice. "I don't hold with that sort of thing." "Me neither," agreed another.

Many think the way that many Minnesotans typically pronounce a stressed drawn-out "O" is an influence from the Swedish language spoken by many of the white settlers, but at a talk by an Ojibwe artist at the Minneapolis Art Institute one time I heard the artist claim that the elongated "O" is actually from the Ojibwe language.

Talk in the booth behind me moved to plans for brunch together again with their husbands the next morning. "Are you going to Church?" Nobody said anything. The silence was a little uncomfortable. Finally someone volunteered a chipper: "I can pray at home." There was a little titter. To ride on the success of that remark, "If you go, say one for me," added another woman.

Typically, the talk was full of quips, but since dry humor is favored in Minnesota over any other sort, their mutual appreciation did not include anything so overt as a laugh.

I must have taken the wrong road out of Ely on the way back because I got lost on two-lane roads lined with pines and birches in blowing snow for over an hour. When I got to a tee in the road and saw signs pointing left to Babbitt and right to Embarrass, I waved down two men in a pickup truck who told me that I needed to go right and drive to a crossroads with a flashing light--to catch a road that would take me back to where I was staying. They drove off towards Babbitt and I drove off towards Embarrass.

I started wondering how long it would be before the crossroads. The men hadn't given me a clue. Minnesotans' minimalism in directions-giving is a big contrast with the detailed California approach. When someone gives me directions in California, I start writing on a slip of paper, and always run out of room.

"You'll pass a Bank of America. Then there'll be a Baker's Square on your left." "Should I turn?" "No, no, keep going. A few streets down you'll see Santa Clara Street." "Should I turn there?" "No. Keep going until you see a Hollywood Video, make a U turn at the next light, turn into the second turn off behind the Marie Callendar's. . .."

I always want to say, "Cut to the chase. What's the street address of the place where I'm supposed to meet you? What are the names of the streets where I'm supposed to turn? And which way, right or left. Spare me the landmarks, puleeze."

But Saturday I would have appreciated a landmark or two. Not that there were any that a city dweller like me would recognize. How would I know when I had gone too far? After driving another 20 minutes, not seeing another soul or a town, I started doubting. Maybe they had been putting me on? I tried to call my son to tell him to catch a ride to the wedding with someone else, but there was no cellular service out there.

I didn't realize exactly how slippery it was until I braked when I spotted a small store open in Embarrass and spun around completely out of control. I parked and went to where an older blonde man was standing in the doorway of the store looking out, opened the storm door, and asked directions again through the inside door. The man told me the same thing the other men had told me, that at the crossroads up the road, now only a few miles away, I should make a right.

After a pause, he asked: "Did you just make a big circle out there?," gestured towards my tire tracks in the snow, and looked into my face to gauge my reaction. I looked where he pointed, and I blithely said, "Yah! I've lost my knack of driving on ice after 13 years in California." As I looked at him while I talked, I realized that my nonchalant reaction was not what he wanted. I continued anyway, "Thank God there wasn't anyone else on the road." He turned away from my attempt at an ingratiating smile, and dismissed me with a motion of his hand, lifting it up to his shoulder and then flinging the palm down towards the ground.

Back in the car I finally felt shakey. At the same time I realized the man had waved me away because I hadn't been properly chagrined by his remark.

As my face got red, I thought that driving in through woods in a snowy afternoon wasn't turning out to be as much fun as it had seemed at first.

I recall now Minnesota women seem to be expected to be exceedingly apologetic about things--even when they haven't done anything that could be construed as being stupid. A skit by Garrison Kielor that included a woman serving a superb meal and apologizing for how bad it was came to mind. My conclusion was that for that man, I just hadn't been apologetic enough.

As I neared the flashing light for my turn off, I realized that I had forgotten to ask to use the store's phone. Finally I saw some signs for the resort. Just a mile from the resort, even though I was driving even more cautiously by then, I ended up gliding down an ice-glazed hill while I braked to no avail.

When I'd left Minnesota I had been an expert ice driver. I've often bragged to people how I'd barrel along highway I 94 at almost the posted limit while semi trucks were going off the road to the right and the left of me. But that was when almost all cars had rear wheel drive and brakes that you pump. Because I was driving a rental, I just didn’t know what kind of brakes I had. "Do I have anti-lock brakes? Should I be slamming the brakes or pumping them?" With the few seconds of hesitation, I was lost. I tried steering into the skid, but that didn't change my direction. The road curved to my right and the car's continued an uncontrolled movement towards the edge of the road that was so gentle I hoped that the curb would stop it. But the momentum was enough to carry the car up and hang it up on that curb. I couldn't rock the car out of the snow (another winter driving technique I once had gotten to be really good at) because the tires couldn't get traction.

I waited a little while and when nobody drove by, I got out and hiked the rest of the way. The real cold snap hadn't hit yet, so it was only about 25 degrees above zero. Not too bad.

And so it came about that I missed the Lutheran wedding while the Fortune Bay maintenance staff was pulling my car off the curb.

My son caught a ride with the groom's cousin and her husband, who had arrived late at the resort from the Twin Cities and had rushed up to their room to change. The blonde desk clerk had remembered the couple was still there and called them in their room. Incidentally, most of the employees at the Indian-owned casino resort are white, including the guy who cleaned our room.

At the church wedding and the reception, Theresa wore a traditional European-style long white dress with her own hand-beaded mocassins underneath, mostly, she said, because she would tower over her groom if she wore heels.

An Ojibwe "recognition" ceremony for the upcoming marriage had been held the day before at the new-looking Nett Lake reservation community center. That day, Theresa had worn a homemade sleeveless, burgundy velvet dress trimmed with hammered brass circles, along with the same mocassins, and Shane had worn a beaded burgundy velvet vest, also sewn by Theresa. The groom had also worn a backwards sports cap with a Nike swoosh and Nike athletic shoes.

The ceremony had featured an Eagle feather held by an elder almost the whole time and a drum, which the elders asked us not to photograph. One of the two elders who officiated said that the drum had its own spirit.

Serendipitously enough, in the New Yorker I bought at the MPLS airport, there was a short story by Louise Erdich about an antiques dealer who steals an Ojibwa [sic] drum that resonates inexplicably without being struck. Images of drums with strong powers stay with me. (But I'm still sceptical.)

The drum at the ceremony was about two feet across, the sides painted with colored circles within circles. At the center of each circle was a painted stylized arrow, pointing up, looking somewhat like an arrow you would see on a box to indicate "this side up."

Both elders mentioned the fact that the groom handed over tobacco to the elder whom he had asked to lead the ceremony. The elder leading the ceremony told us that he once had a question about why tobacco was used. "We get our questions answered by dreams or visions," he continued. In a dream he had learned that when Manitou, their name for the Creator, had created man, tobacco was already growing for man to use in communication with Him.

The other elder said that tobacco is like picking up the phone and getting connected to the Creator, without having to dial a bunch of numbers. The first elder lit a pipe full of tobacco and prayed and pointed the smoking pipe to the spirits of the North, South, East, and West, and to the Earth and the Sky. At that, he pointed the pipe up to the vaulted ceiling of the room. A partly deflated balloon from a previous event was caught in one the four large dream catchers with spray painted feathers hanging from the peak of the ceiling.

I recalled that when I stayed with Theresa the last time in St. Paul, I noticed that her morning prayers involved tobacco and some sort of feathers.

Later, I told my son, tongue in cheek, that the pack of cigarettes he smokes every day is getting him in touch with the Creator 20 times a day. He didn't seem convinced. Taking my tongue out of my cheek, I sometimes mull about another idea--that addiction to tobacco and its health consequences could be seen as a subtle revenge that Indians have had on the white man.

The way I understood what the elders were saying, the couple originally requested an Ojibwe wedding ceremony. Both elders talked about how there really wasn't such a thing before Christianity. Marriages weren't formally contracted in the old days. The word for living together means married. One of the elders told a story about how his own mother had once used the word about their own relationship to tease him.

One of the bride's relatives told me later that original elder who had been asked to perform an Ojibwe wedding ritual had dropped out when he discovered that a Lutheran wedding was scheduled for the next day. The two elders were called in as last minute replacements. One of them spoke about how he had driven overnight down from a reservation in Canada, and together they decided to hold a "recognition" ceremony instead. The relative was relieved, she told me, because the way it turned out meant that God didn't want the couple to start their marriage with a pagan ceremony.

At the end, before a buffet that included several kinds of wild rice and venison dishes and a blue-tinted cake, the bride and groom held a giveaway. At first there was a little confusion, because the elder thought that the goods for the giveaway were going to be bundled up and sent to another village far away, as is often done. After the couple's intention was made clear, the bride and groom distributed their gifts around the room.

Theresa handed me a set of yellow towels. We were all invited to dance, and so I danced around in a circle with the others who were willing to join, holding up my towels in one hand, while the elders drummed in the middle and chanted.

My son and I both agreed that giving gifts to others in honor of one's happiness at such an milestone in one's life is a very good thing to do.

The next day, at the wedding reception back at the casino/resort, the blond bar hostesses told me that they had taken the short way to work by driving from a town on the other side of Lake Vermilion across the 2 ft. thick ice. A road is kept plowed across the lake all winter.

As people chatted after dinner, some of the guests at my table told me it's been a mild winter, and the ice hasn't been as thick as usual. They also told me that because of the thinner ice a young couple had recently died in Lake Minnetonka (250 miles further south near the Twin Cities) after the car they were driving went through the ice. Even worse is that the divers pulling up that car found another car containing two teenaged boys from a similar accident a few days earlier. Nobody had reported them missing, or had realized what had happened to them until then.

Back in my home in San Jose with crocuses and roses blooming in the front yard, I have to say, it sure is a different world out there.

-------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 08:37:36 -0700 (MST)
From: Nancy Precie
Subject: Re: Roseanne out of the office Thurs. and Fri. this week

And I bet it's cold too.

> More about Lake Vermilion:
> In the 1940's the National Geographic Society declared
> Lake Vermilion one of the top ten most scenic lakes in
> the United States. And it still is today. With its
> 40,000 acres of water, 365 islands and 1200 miles of
> shoreline, it stretches 35 miles across the heart of
> Minnesota's Arrowhead Region.

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Last Updated: February 3, 2004