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A Native American Name Story at the UMMA
A Native American Name Story at the UMMA
by Angelé Anderfuren
Everywhere you look around campus of the University of Michigan, you see a Native American-rooted name and may not even know it. Proudly emblazoned in maize and blue, the name of the university, like the state, comes from the Anishinaabemowin mishigamaa, meaning large/great water/lake.
"Day Maker" (2022, gouache on paper) by Andrea Carlson is part of UMMA's Future Cache exhibit. Photo by Angelé Anderfuren.
While the Ann Arbor campus is acknowledged to have been the lands of Anishinaabe (including Odawa, Ojibwe, and Bodéwadmi) and Wyandot Nations, there’s actually very little on the Ann Arbor campus named after any Anishinaabe, Wyandot, or any other Native American person. There’s a multicultural lounge in Alice Llyod Hall named for Alaskan-born, Ann Arbor-based artist-activist Vicky Barner. And in the University of Michigan Museum of Art, you’ll find a striking modern piece of art named after the turn of the twentieth century chief of the “Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians” —Ka Ji Go We, or Day Maker.
The 2022 artwork of gouache on paper is by Andrea Carlson, a contemporary visual artist whose work confronts cultural narratives and colonialism through the lens of her Ojibwe heritage. “Day Maker” is a portrait, a story, a memory, a sign to remember. It’s part of the UMMA’s Future Cache exhibit, which was installed in 2022 and is planned to remain until June 2025. All of the pieces in the exhibit, like “Day Maker,” commemorate, in English and in Anishinaabemowin, “the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who were violently burned from their land in Northern Michigan on October 15, 1900” (“Future Cache”).
“Future Cache implicitly asks those who have benefited from the legacies of colonization to consider where they stand and where to go from here and seeks to foster a sense of belonging for displaced Indigenous peoples fighting for restitution,” the museum’s website states.
When you look at “Day Maker,” you’ll notice the curved lime-green land surrounded by steely-blue with choppy waters. That land represents neyaashi, the village that once stood on a peninsula at Burt Lake in Brutus, Michigan. The blue represents the lake now called Burt Lake (named after William Austin Burt who surveyed the land), though known to the Ojibwe as zhiibaa’igan for centuries before (“Cheboiganing”). It’s the site of a tragedy known as the “Burt Lake Burn Out.”
Described as “the violent colonization of the Burt Lake Band’s village” in a 2024 public radio story, the event involved “a group of men including a sheriff and a land speculator” who “torched the settlement” while the men of the village were away working, throwing out the elderly, women and children who were home in the village (Livingston).
Ka Ji Go We, aka Day Maker, was the chief of the Anishinaabeg who lived there at that time; the one left to help his people pick up the pieces and start their decades-long battle to reclaim what was legally theirs (Wall text; “A Cloud”). It is his name Carlson commemorates as the namesake in this work of art, the one painted simply over the horizon that forms what could be an arrow, having viewers potentially recall themes of rising up and perseverance. The woven-like design around the edges providing the name with the strength of those who’ve come before and those who’ve come after and will come in the future to make needed change for justice.
UMMA's Future Cache exhibit declares "You are on Anishinaabe land." Photo by Angelé Anderfuren.
It should be noted here that UM currently owns land that was a part of the burnout. “Although the U-M Biological Station was established after the Burn-Out, the university now owns large tracts of the tribe’s ancestral homeland,” a Spring 2023 article in UM’s LSA Magazine discussing UM efforts and conversations around Future Cache and undoing past wrongdoings against native peoples notes (Notah-Stevens). The UMBS has details about how they acknowledge the past on their webiste.
Naming customs for Anishinaabe can vary, according to Ojibwe.net, which digitally preserves Anishinaabemowin language and worked with UMMA on the creation of the Future Cache exhibit. The website says that now ”names are given at different points in life and sometimes have a story that does not always match the literal translation,” some may be at a naming ceremony as babies and for others it can be later in life (“Anishinaabe”).
While we don’t know the story of how Ka Ji Go We/Day Maker was named or what his name meant, to us, more than a century later, we could consider taking his name to mean one that literally makes the day, as in a person who makes the sun rise; a person who sheds light. This seems appropriate for a chief who had to lead his people through a violent act that would end up robbing them of their federal tribal recognition status (Notah-Stevens).
We could also take the name to mean a person who makes someone else’s day. There’s a kindness movement in America that uses the term “daymaker” as someone who “performs [an] intentional act of kindness with the intention of making the world a better place” (Nelson). And isn’t that what Carlson is doing with her “Day Maker” piece, bringing knowledge to all who pass by the captivating artwork on the UMMA’s wall and take a minute to contemplate and remember Ka Ji Go We and the story of his people.
Works Cited
Anderfuren, Angelé. Photo of Day Maker by Andrea Carlson. 8 Feb. 2023. Author's personal collection.
Anderfuren, Angelé. Photo of UMMA's Future Cache exhibit. 8 Feb. 2023. Author's personal collection.
“A Cloud Over the Land.” BurtLakeBand.org. Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. ”https://burtlakeband.org/a-cloud-over-the-land/ Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
“Anishinaabe Names.” Ojibwe.net. ojibwe.net/projects/anishinaabe-names/ Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
Carlson, Andrea. "About." Mikinaak.com. mikinaak.com/about. Accessed 15 Feb. 2024.
“Cheboiganing (Cheboygan) History.” Ojibwe.net. https://ojibwe.net/projects/cheboiganing-cheboygan-history/# Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
“English Department Land and Language Acknowledgment.” The University of Michigan. lsa.umich.edu/english/about/Land-Acknowledgment.html Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
“Future Cache.” University of Michigan Museum of Art. The University of Michigan. https://umma.umich.edu/exhibitions/future-cache/ Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
Livingston, Michael. “‘We have always been there’: Story of Burt Lake Band preserved in new book.” Interlochen Public Radio. 2 Feb. 2024. interlochenpublicradio.org/ipr-news/2024-02-04/we-have-always-been-there-story-of-burt-lake-band-preserved-in-new-book Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
Nelson, Laurel. “A Motivational Movement: Story of the Daymaker.” Salon Today. 6 Mar. 2017. salontoday.com/374251/a-motivational-movement-story-of-the-daymaker Accessed 15 Feb. 2024.
Notah-Stevens, Kashona. “A Dream of Fundamental Justice.” LSA Magazine. UM College of LSA. The University of Michigan. Spring 2023. https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/lsa-magazine/Spring-2023/a-dream-of-fundamental-justice.html Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
“UMBS: About Us.” UM Biological Station, College of LSA, University of Michigan. https://lsa.umich.edu/umbs/about-us.html Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
Wall text, Vertical Gallery, Future Cache, Andrea Carlson, University of Michigan Museum of Art. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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