Today, I read somewhere on Facebook a statement by an Ojibwe person, saying that in Ojibwe culture, seeing an Owl or hearing an Owl at night is a bad omen. His silent nature and predatory behavior, she said, associates him with dying, and dreaming of an owl or hearing an owl’s hoot foreshadows a certain death.

It reminded me that this is a view that is pretty widespread across Anishinaabe Aki. Owls, the hooting and barking sounds they make at night, their ability to turn their head in an (almost) full circle, their penetrating eyes shining like yellow glass and piercing the darkness and the depths of our very soul, geget, even the dull flapping of their wings in shadowy tree branches, are enough to make our hair stand on end. Who has not listened with horror, and a sickened heart, to the accounts of these feathered harbingers of sickness, grief, and death?

Right?

Why people insist in maintaining the superstition of the "bad-omen bringing owl spirit," I do not know. Perhaps the influence of Christianity has something to do with that? (I say this because the occupiers' religion has instilled many fears in our hearts and minds, clouding our once keen vision on nature in ways that are almost beyond repair...) It is not how gete-ayaa'ag, the old ones who walked the land prior to contact with the Europeans, saw the owl!

Geget, many (post contact) accounts narrate of owls presented as evil spirits, used by Ojibwe adults as a means of making children "be good" - as a threat to keep them quiet, or close to the wiigiwaam or the camp at night. "If you go to the sugar bush at night, Gookooko'oo will come and carry you away in his ear," used to be a standard warning. (But then, didn't parents also use the Wiindigoo (Winter Spirit), the Bwaanag (Dakota), and the Wemitigoozhiwag (Frenchmen) to frighten their children with?)

But all in all, our ancestors, despite their seemingly ambivalent nature, saw owls in a different, much less negative light than most of us see him today.

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Gimishoomisinaan/Gookomisinaan Gookooko'oo, our Grandfather/Grandmother the Owl, offers a window onto the old, old Anishinaabe world in terms of cyclic and cosmic relationships. To the gete-ayaa'ag, Kookooko'oo and the magic sounds they make at night, have always presented a double mirror with light and life on one side, and darkness and death on the other.

To them, Grandfather/Grandmother Owl, whom they associated with giizhig (sky) aki (earth), and nibi (the water) as well as with their respective underworlds, displayed contrasting spiritual powers that were nonetheless closely interrelated. Gookooko'oo symbolized and mediated between light and dark, the natural and the supernatural, and, ultimately between life and death. Despite (or rather, because) of their mesmerizing eyes and sinister, eerie-sounding calls at night, Owls were regarded as helpers, or guides, along the path of Souls toward the Setting Sun, providing for a safe passage of the ancestors who had passed to the spirit world, loaning them their eyes so they could see where they walked; as such they were looked upon as protectors of the dead. But at the same time, they stood for mental therapy and wholeness of those who still live their lives on earth. The sounds of Owl's voice and the gaze of its eyes, as they could penetrate even the darkest places, represented light, insight and innervision, and healing. Several stories tell of owls providing kindness or even shelter to neglected and abused children. Also, they were seen as guides of the four directions and the south wind, and their presence and the sound of their loud hoots at the rapids in springtime (which seem to be competitive with, and even blend into, the loud roaring of the water they sit close by) heralded the end of winter and the beginning of the growing season, and along with it, regeneration, and new life. Owls circling during the day, to our ancestors, were not necessarily an omen of bad news or bad luck, but often a symbol of protection and new life (and long lives) instead.

So, the way I see it, just like the seeds in the rattles of our Midewiwin healers that, when shaken, acoustically ward off evil spirits, the Gookooko'oog showing themselves to us and whose call we hear at night dispel any evil that malicious spirits (or ill-willing people!) may project on us. Like the sound of the rattle, the presence and the voice of Gookooko'oo and its eyes that seem to penetrate us do not necessarily herald misfortune and sickness or even death: it scares it off instead. It keeps the bad spirits at bay. 

Gookooko'oo in short, brings us good medicine. (S)he is a spirit that we must not fear, but one whom we, especially in the darkest of our nights, must listen to, intently, with trust, and with an open mind. Gookooko'oo is a fortune teller and a benign mentor and therapist sent to us from the spirit world. Gookooko'oo's call in the dead of night means we are safe from harm and ready to walk toward the light of dawn.

When Gookooko'oo calls, we know we are ready to walk the healing path.

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A list of owl species known to the Ojibwe Anishinaabeg (note that the names vary according to regional dialects):

Beshkwe, plural beshkweg - scar-head owl

Binewi-gookooko'oo, plural binewi-gookooko'oog - partridge-eating owl

Boodawidoombe, plural boodawidoombeg - northern hawk owl, barn owl

Gaakaabisheh, plural gaakaabishehyag - screech owl, ominous news bringing owl

Gaakaabishiinh, plural gaakaabishiinhyag - burrowing owl (shoco), ground owl, screech owl, deaf owl

Gaakaabishii, plural gaakaabishiig - small owl (Northwestern Ontario dialect)

Gookooko'oo, plural gookooko'og - owl, barred owl

Gookooko'ooh, plural gookooko'oohyag - horned owl

Mawinaans, plural mawinaansag - screech owl (Odaawaa/Southeastern Ojibwe dialects)

Niningi-bine, plural niningi-binewag - large horned owl

Niningibin'wenh, plural niningibin'wenhyag - screech owl (Odaawaa/Southeastern Ojibwe dialects)

Oo'oo, plural oo'oog - owl

Oo'oomish, plural oo'oomishiig - great horned owl

Oo'oomis, plural oo'oomisiig - great horned owl

Otawage-gookooko'oo, plural otawage-gookooko'oog - great horned owl (Minnesota dialect)

Waagibin'wenh, plural waagibin'wenhyag - screech owl (Odaawaa/Southeastern Ojibwe dialects)

Waabi-gookoko'oo, plural waabi-gookoko'oog - white owl, snowy owl (Minnesota dialect)

Wawenjiganoo, plural wawenjiganoog - large horned owl (Manitoulin Island dialect)

Wenda-gookooko'oo, plural wenda-gookooko'oog - great horned owl (Minnesota dialect)

Wenjiganoozhiinh, plural wenda-gookooko'ooyag - gray owl, great horned owl

Wewenjiganoo, plural wewenjiganoog - gray screech owl, horned owl, long-eared owl

Wewenjiganooh, plural wewenjiganoohyag - hoot owl (Wisconsin, Lower Michigan dialects)

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*Excerpt from Mishmountains Blogspot, "Teachings to the Tree Of Life."

Illustration: Mishi-gookooko'ooh Omiigiwewin ("Gift of the Great Horned Owl") ©2023 Zhaawano Giizhik 

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About the author/artist and his inspiration

Zhaawano Giizhik , an American currently living in the Netherlands, was born in 1959 in North Carolina, USA. Zhaawano has Anishinaabe blood running through his veins; the doodem of his ancestors from Baawitigong (Sault Ste. Marie, Upper Michigan) is Waabizheshi, Marten. As an artist and a writer and a jewelry designer Zhaawano draws on the oral and pictorial traditions of his ancestors. For this he calls on his manidoo-minjimandamowin, or 'Spirit Memory'; which means he tries to remember the knowledge and the lessons of his ancestors. In doing so he sometimes works together with kindred artists.

To Zhaawano's ancestors the MAZINAAJIMOWIN or ‘pictorial spirit writings’ - which are rich with symbolism and have been painted throughout history on rocks and etched on other sacred items such as copper and slate, birch bark and animal hide - were a form of spiritual as well as educational communication that gave structure and meaning to the cosmos that they felt they were an integral part of. 

Many of these sacred pictographs or petroforms – some of which are many, many  generations old - hide in sacred locations where the manidoog (spirits) reside, particularly in those mystic places near the lake's coastlines where the sky, the earth, the water, the underground and the underwater meet.

The way Zhaawano understands it, it is in these sacred places invisible to the ordinary, waking eye that his design and storyteller's inspiration originate from.