Midewiwin

The Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society, is a religious society of the Anishinaabe peoples, among them the Ojibwe, of the Great Lakes, New England and the Maritimes. Ojibwe tradition ascribes its founding to the culture hero Wenaboozho.

One account tells how the Creator saw that the people he had made suffered sickness and death, and sent the Sun Spirit to earth as a boy who taught them the Sacred Medicine. Initiates rose through degrees by completing the required teachings and ceremonies. The lessons were drawn in pictographs on birch bark scrolls; two scrolls found in Ontario were carbon-dated to about 1560.

Ceremonies were held in the domed, oval Grand Medicine Lodge. The cowry, or miigis, shell was a sacred emblem of the society.