Carrying my Grandmother's and Mother's Bundles

For Anishinaabeg who identify as women, mothers, and grandmothers, our izhitwaa-gashkibijigan, our sacred bundles carry the culture, traditions, and language of our ancestors. To survive colonization, many bundles were taken away, lost, put away, hidden, or not even created. Women's bundles create and carry our stories, customs, and ceremonies. They understand, survive, resist, revitalize, build, and nurture matricentric culture. In Carrying my Grandmother's and Mother's Bundles: A Collection of Essential Writings on Anishinaabeg Maternal Knowledge, Philosophy and Cultural Ways of Being, Renée E. Mazinegiizhigoo-kwe Bédard locates Anishinaabeg matricentric culture in her izhitwaa-gashkibijigan, which she opens as a practice of cultural resurgence rooted in uniquely Anishinaabeg theorizing, storytelling, philosophizing, and ceremony. Using an Indigenous-Anishinaabeg feminist approach to writing, organizing, and thinking about matricentric ways of being, she builds a space, aazhwagamig, the space between lodges, for everyone to come and bear witness to the revitalization of Anishinaabeg intellectual traditions.