Spiritual Power and Everyday Lives: James Bay Cree Shaking Tent Performers and Their Audiences

I focus on the discourses and messages conveyed to the attendees at two shaking tent ceremonies among James Bay Cree in the 1960s. I explore some of the meanings such ceremonies convey through oral dialogue, through ritual symbols, and through the social relationships which are created and acknowledged by the ceremony. Often the dialogues of those who speak in the ceremony are about the spiritual powers they have. They also explore if and how these differences with other people are acceptable. The statements, as well as the symbolic structure of the performance itself, emphasize the services which the those active in the ceremony perform for the community. They also stress the obligations they undertake to spirit powers. They also make light of the differences, and joke about them. I suggest that the dialogues both claim a special access to powerful knowledge, and they point to the power of everyday access to spiritual knowledge that is available to all people. I approach the two ceremonies through the lens of what I learned from talking with many James Bay Cree people, not only those involved with ceremonies, about the ordinariness of everyday lives lived in spiritual awareness.