Ojibwe Anishinaabe Star Map
Native Woodland artist Zhaawano Giizhik presents to you with a grateful heart the above 23,622 x 23,622 inch (60 x 60 cm) digipainting wall print, titled Gaagige Giizhig ("Everlasting Sky"). It is part of a large collection of art prints, conceived in an ancient and most sacred Indigenous tradition of Anishinaabeg and Ininewak (Cree) storytellers.
Zhaawano's elegant line art tells his People's aadizookaanan, their legends and sacred stories — stories that were used as a teaching tool long before there were schools. The stories and narratives that are being shared through his prints are as strongly allegorical as in the old tradition of storytelling, yet they also contain lessons that reflect today’s world. Stylized in the powerful painting discipline of the Woodland School of Art, and carefully wrapped in ancient metaphors and age-old symbolism, each one of Zhaawano's art prints is a teaching mirror, instilling in the minds of those who make the effort to look in it a living sense of the unique worldview, dreams, and visions of the original inhabitants of the northern land of woods and lakes of Turtle Island.
The above image, an Indigenous Ojibwe Anishinaabe-oriented storytelling star map, is a free artistic rendition of the Waawiyekamig, the "Round Lodge" as the Anishinaabeg traditionally conceive the cosmos. The image highlights the connections between the odoodemag (clans) in the below-world and the anangoog and aadawa'amoog ogimaag (stars and planets) in gichi-giizhigong, the upper-world.
> See The Anishinaabe Clans in the Everlasting Night Sky for more information.
